Editor's Letter: C'est la vie? Pas ici

last updated 8 January 2015

France’s political class is shocked at how the brutish Americans are treating Dominique Strauss-Kahn after his arrest on rape charges (see Best columns: Europe). The editor of the weekly Nouvel Observateur, indignant over the IMF director’s humiliating perp walk, even wondered this week whether the French and “the American people belong to the same civilization.” In France, you see, the powerful and monied elite truly believe they are exempt from rules applying to common folk. When I lived in Paris a few years ago, my wife and son frequently ran into fugitive rapist Roman Polanski at the local park; his son, Elvis, went to my son’s school. What the director had done years ago to a teenage girl was of no import—he was an artist, was he not? During the 2007 presidential campaign, candidate Nicolas Sarkozy’s marriage was crumbling, and both he and his wife had lovers. The press and the public were utterly blasé. C’est la vie.

Americans may spend a bit too much time cluck-clucking over political sex scandals, but France’s “sophisticated” attitude also has its perils. When all sexual behavior of politicians is considered a private matter, and skirt-chasing is proof of male “vigor,” serial predators like Strauss-Kahn see no reason to constrain their behavior. Three years ago, a subordinate at the IMF accused him of relentlessly coercing her into an affair; France shrugged and continued to treat Strauss-Kahn with fawning respect. He was, until this week, a potential presidential candidate. At the police station and in court, Strauss-Kahn looked as startled as he did worried. How could this be? his facial expression said. What kind of country is this?