The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Frenchman Shocked to Discover It’s Illegal to Sodomize Your Hotel Maid in U.S.

Posted on | May 15, 2011 | 29 Comments

Even in New York City!

The managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was taken off an Air France plane at Kennedy International Airport minutes before it was to take off for Paris on Saturday and arrested in connection with the sexual attack of a maid at a Midtown Manhattan hotel, the authorities said.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 62, who was widely expected to become the Socialist candidate for the French presidency, was apprehended by detectives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in the first-class section of the jetliner, and immediately turned over to detectives from the Midtown South Precinct, officials said.
The New York Police Department took Mr. Strauss-Kahn into custody, where he was “being questioned in connection with the sexual assault of a hotel chambermaid earlier this afternoon,” Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said Saturday night. “He is being arrested for a criminal sex act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment.” . . .
Mr. Browne said that it was about 1 p.m. on Saturday when the maid, a 32-year-old woman, entered Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s suite — Room 2806 — believing it was unoccupied. Mr. Browne said that the suite, which cost $3,000 a night, had a foyer, a conference room, a living room and a bedroom, and that Mr. Strauss-Khan had checked in on Friday.
As she was in the foyer, “he came out of the bathroom, fully naked, and attempted to sexually assault her,” Mr. Browne said, adding, “He grabs her, according to her account, and pulls her into the bedroom and onto the bed.” He locked the door to the suite, Mr. Browne said.
“She fights him off, and he then drags her down the hallway to the bathroom, where he sexually assaults her a second time,” Mr. Browne added.
At some point during the assault, the woman broke free, Mr. Browne said, and “she fled, reported it to other hotel personnel, who called 911.”

I’m sure lawyers for Strauss-Kahn will explain to the judge:

  • He’d been watching too much TV and figured, if Charlie Sheen could do it, why not the director of the IMF?
  • In France, sodomizing your chambermaid is a traditional custom.
  • Something about the phrase “room service” got lost in translation.

(Via Memeorandum.) Excuse my sarcastic tone of my response. My sympathies are entirely with the victim, despite my habitual wisecracking — including my Twitter suggestion that Charlie Sheen should be the next director of the IMF.

Others are similarly unable to resist the sarcastic temptation, including Gary Pearson on Twitter: “The leader of the IMF was charged with sexual assault of a maid. Usually the IMF’s rape of the third world is a little more symbolic.” And there’s this from the Economist:

It makes you want to join the tea party
Leave aside the details of the allegations against Dominique Strauss Kahn, the head of the IMF (his lawyer indicates he will plead not guilty) Just note that the New York Times states that he was staying in a $3,000 a night suite and was taking a first class flight to Paris. This is the IMF, the body that imposes austerity on indebted countries and is funded by global taxpayers. And this was the likely leading socialist candidate for the French presidency.

Irony piled up so high you can’t see the top of the stack.

Category: Crime, France, New York, Sex

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