A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
Sometimes I think I ought to share my father's bon mots with the rest of the world; it would be selfish to keep them to myself. This is such a time. His e-mail to me about l'affaire Dominique Strauss-Kahn, written from Paris, begged to be published on Ricochet. He has graciously given me permission to do just that.
DSK
by David Berlinski
“What do you think,” my dentist asked yesterday, “of our DSK?”
What do I think? “There are a great many opinions in this world,” Chekov once observed, “and a good half of them are professed by people who have never been in trouble.”
If no one in France knows what to think, everyone in France knows how to react. The verb of choice is accabler – to be overwhelmed, stunned. The natural sympathy of the French for a man that they had admired has been eroded by the accusations against him: une femme de chambre, a mother, an African, and an immigrant. It is a measure of grace that this woman was not wheelchair bound.
If nothing else, the French have been given a vivid demonstration of what equality might mean in a legal system in which it means something. Mais regardez! There is our DSK in handcuffs – menotté -- doing the perp walk or sitting glumly in the company of drug dealers, petty criminals, house breakers, wife beaters, the riff raff and the glory of the human race.
Who could have imagined that equality might prove quite so equal?
Not the French journalists. Witness Stéphane Jourdain, who took one look at our DSK and shuddered: Hier soir, l’image glaçante de DSK menotté nous a cloué le bec.
Perhaps only the French police were at ease with their own reaction. "Il est bien foutu," one of them said to me last night.
Un coup monté?
I got back only a cool knowing contemptuous stare.
Un coup monté, Monsieur? Par qui?
The Socialists are in disarray. DSK was one of their own. It is a measure of their distress that they have been reduced to invoking the presumption of innocence. In this, they are less worried about DSK than about themselves.
Any with every good reason. They have lost their champion. François Hollande is a nebbish; Segolene Royal is endeavoring still to channel the spirit of Eva Peron; and Martine Aubry, although intelligent and well-spoken, is so colorless as to appear transparent.
The beneficiary in all this is certainly not Nicolas Sarkozy. He has performed credibly under the immense stresses of the financial crisis; and he is smart. But Nicolas Sarkozy and DSK are too much the same man. They stands for too many of the same things: Europe, the euro, and the ineffably remote, ponderous, and largely useless EU bureaucracy. No one can quite imagine Sarkozy bursting out of the bathroom nude and proceeding to attack a chambermaid, but just one week ago, no one could have imagined DSK doing that either. The advantage is illusory. So long as Sarkozy remains in office, he will be conducting urgent meetings with Angela Merkel, both of them on the wrong side of history, both doomed, or swaggering with his bantam-cock walk into a meeting of a dreary bureaucrats or bankers.
The beneficiary of DSK’s humiliation is Marine Le Pen and the National Front. How could it be otherwise?
And DSK, now languishing in a small prison cell?
How the mighty are fallen. But equally, how the fallen are mighty.
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Jun '10
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
I imagine there are several young working-class women in France who are not the least bit shocked.
May '10
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
Do men just go temporarily insane? (Yes, I am a man, but not that kind.)
If he did what he is alleged to have done, what on earth did he think would happen? How did he get this far up without learning a bit of self-control and discipline?
Or is it just power that makes people think they are invincible, above it all?
The mind boggles. Not just at the fact that someone could so callously hurt another person for a temporary fleeting moment of gratification; but that even at a more selfish level, they could do so with such total disregard to the consequences for themselves.
Edited on May 17, 2011 at 12:13pmMay '10
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
Perhaps not surprised, but shocked-- yes. The hurt of rape does not heal so easily, and having it come out in the news just reopens the wound.
Dec '10
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
Hearing (seeing?) your father speak, makes me want to learn French. How refreshing!
Jul '10
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
Thanks for sharing this. But can we have some translations? I tried Babelfish, and I got results like "it is well foutu", which isn't as helpful as you'd think.
I'm guessing un coup monte is French for "the [Yay Code of Conduct!] set me up".
May '10
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
Claire, by the way, I'm a fan of your father's-- at least, to the degree that I have heard/read him. I wish I had more time to read more of what he's written.
May '10
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
See, Clinton, William Jefferson.
Apr '11
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
Although a powerful person acting criminally stupid is an all too common event, it reinforces for me, rationally or not, the rot at the heart of liberal internationalism. I wonder if it doesn't strike some of the French, at least subconsciously, in the same way.
Feb '11
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
French and Yiddish in the same post. Just glad there wasn't any Turkish. I wouldn't have understood that.
At least Marine Le Pen is better looking than the lot of them.
Jun '10
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
Wylee Coyote: Thanks for sharing this. But can we have some translations? I tried Babelfish, and I got results like "it is well foutu", which isn't as helpful as you'd think.
I'm guessing un coup monte is French for "the [Yay Code of Conduct!] set me up". · May 17 at 12:21pm
The CoC doesn't apply if you can say it in French - so much more refined than those Anglo-Saxon vulgarities
May '10
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
It's been months! Your dad rocks. Though of course he is more in touch with French politics than I, nobody could have foreseen DSK emerging nude from the foam like an especially raddled old Venus and assaulting a chambermaid? I suppose not. We all knew Edwards was a sleaze, but didn't know the extent.
Al Gore, the crazed sex poodle, is our nearest recent parallel, but there were no charges. And who ever thought of Gore as a crazed sex breed of any kennel? A creep, sure, but wow.
What we get from this is the astonishment among the bien pensants that a powerful man could be brought down by a mere chambermaid. Quelle horreur! Liberte, egalite, in full flower. Where's the fraternite, dude?
Feb '11
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
When conservatives behave this way (and sometimes they do), does it reveal some sort of rot at the core of conservatism? Or does it reveal that people of all political persuasions sometimes act criminally stupid?
Apr '11
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
sdb
When conservatives behave this way (and sometimes they do), does it reveal some sort of rot at the core of conservatism? Or does it reveal that people of all political persuasions sometimes act criminally stupid? · May 17 at 1:48pm
Umm, It's not either or; it reveals that people of all political persuasions sometimes act criminally stupid AND there is rot at the heart of international liberalism. That's why I included the qualifiers "Although a powerful person acting criminally stupid is an all too common event..." and "rationally or not".
May '10
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
I guess this is exactly the mentality that enables people to act this stupidly, thinking they will get away with it. They're royalty, you know. We don't take well to that kind of thinking in this country, even if it does happen here too.
If there is sufficient proof (which I also demand) let us please have him punished exactly as any other common rapist.
Feb '11
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
It's the "AND" that confuses me. What's the connection between his alleged behavior and international liberalism?
Apr '11
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
sdb
It's the "AND" that confuses me. What's the connection between his alleged behavior and international liberalism? · May 17 at 2:36pm
If he were a conservative and/or an American his behavior would never have been tolerated for as long as it apparently was. Paul Wolfowitz was bounced from the IMF for a much lesser "indiscretion" (promoting his well-qualified girlfriend). But DSK was part of the in-group (right political background for some, French for others). So, while people of all political ideologies are corrupt, failing to hold someone accountable for their behavior tacitly approves it. Thus rot.
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
Pilgrim
Wylee Coyote: Thanks for sharing this. But can we have some translations? I tried Babelfish, and I got results like "it is well foutu", which isn't as helpful as you'd think.
I'm guessing un coup monte is French for "the [Yay Code of Conduct!] set me up". · May 17 at 12:21pm
The CoC doesn't apply if you can say it in French - so much more refined than those Anglo-Saxon vulgarities · May 17 at 12:58pm
I debated translating the French. An accurate translation would not conform to our Code of Conduct; a code-compliant version would not be accurate. Given that these were direct quotes, I thought it best to leave them as is and let you use your imaginations. Il est bien foutu is something like, "The man is in deep trouble." But more the way they'd say it on The Wire.
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
Chris Deleon: Do men just go temporarily insane? (Yes, I am a man, but not that kind.)
If he did what he is alleged to have done, what on earth did he think would happen? How did he get this far up without learning a bit of self-control and discipline?
Or is it just power that makes people think they are invincible, above it all? May 17 at 12:07pm
Edited on May 17 at 12:13 pm
In France, it would have been hushed up. As I pointed out in my post yesterday and noted again today, this was not the first such incident.
Sep '10
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
Whatever happened to Sabine Herold the young libertarian activist? Too much to think she could benefit from this?
Mar '11
Re: A Guest Post from My Father, David Berlinski
What a remarkable piece!
I have had similar discussions with my friends in Greece, who because of DSK's IMF position and the fund's pivotal role in bailing out Greece (or throwing good money after bad, depending on one's perspective) are aghast at his "treatment", handcuffs and open necked shirt and all. I pointed out many times that he was treated exactly the same way a US citizen accused of the same crime and arrested under similar circumstances (i.e. on his way out of the country) would be treated. But the expectation was that a former cabinet minister and leading light of the Socialist Party would be given preferential treatment. Equality in the eyes of the law has a different meaning in Europe, I guess, all people are equal but some are more equal than others.