Dominique Strauss-Kahn Quize to the NY DA

It’s been reported that the “day after”, the “victim” was on the taped phone chat with some imprisoned dope dealer discussing the financial benefits from the accusation. How long does it take for the DA to pivot? This must be on the same day that DSK was shipped off to Rikers. Turns out they only translated the conversation past Wednesday – NYT. Still someone found the time to leak to the media that DSK was on a suicide watch at Rikers. NY Mag elaborates:

“We Americans pride ourselves on the presumption of innocence, when in fact everything about our culture works to spin the arrow the other way around. In the court of public opinion, what matters is not facts but story lines, and especially with a defendant like DSK, it is easy to see signs of guilt. The French were horrified by the way he was paraded before the press, droopy-eyed and stubbly as Khalik Sheihk Mohammed; our mayor, conceding the humiliation point, argued that “if you don’t want to do the perp walk, don’t do the crime,” as many a New Yorker nodded along. He left the hotel in a rush, maybe. He was on suicide watch, said a leak out of Rikers. When the history emerged of the terrible way DSK has treated women — as if he were a Duke lacrosse player all grown up and handed the keys to one of the world’s elite institutions — we built the case a little more in our heads. This was imperious entitlement at its very worst, a modern-day morality play. Also: He’s French.

It bears noting that along with the tabloid excesses, the media’s protocols for reporting about sex crimes also paradoxically plays a role in shaping how we perceive this kind of scandal. Out of respect for her privacy and because of the particularly fraught nature of the crime, in the American press, we don’t name the accuser. (The French lack a similar guideline, which is why photos of the housekeeper are now easily found on the Internet, for those who wish to draw further inferences from her appearance.) It’s a noble principle, certainly, but the shield afforded the woman has a way of making us automatically categorize her as a victim, not simply an accusing witness. “

With all the talk of the setup. A potential presidential candidate in France and the IMF bunker responsible for setting the terms and conditions for the bankrupt countries, DSK is a big target. Indeed the $100K deposits in the accuser’s accounts, was it the drug laundering or the down-payment on the setup?

An interesting comment in the NYT article by Satyam:

“I think the most significant line for the case is in the last paragraph: the woman told her jailed boyfriend essentially the same thing about what happened to her as she told the police. Speaking in her little-known native language to a person she relies on and without any idea that the conversation was being recorded you’d expect her to tell the truth. That she hoped to profit from it as well as variations in her story about the incident as well as her reasons for asylum can be construed as all-too-human weaknesses of a born-poor survivor who at all times has an eye to how to better her situation in a harsh world and can’t “afford” the literal truth. Furthermore, as anyone acquainted with traditional societies knows the idea of literal legalistic truth which is exactly reproducible upon repetition in the manner of a scientific experiment is alien to them. It is not that people are not capable of it, but that they don’t assign it the same value as they do to other aspects, i.e., human and narrative interest, emotional intensity etc. It leads to much frustration and misunderstanding when people of a traditional culture meet one of us moderns who are baffled by their circuitous responses to a simple inquiry and in turn baffle them by our treating the inquiry matter of factly rather than as an opening to further contact and exchange of stories.”

For the similar reasons westerners are baffled when they come in contact with the Arab, etc., culture. The world is not factual but an evolving narration. The dynamics between the participants in a conversation and the story plot is vastly more important and “real” than the actual events.

Tagged as: crime, law, new york, news