For a dozen years I have taught a freshman seminar at Northwestern University, entitled “Scandal and Reputations.” When I first selected the topic “Bill and Monica” it was the topic du jour, filled with phallic cigars, hypocrisies and conspiracies. I had planned the course to capture that sour, if momentarily historic, time.
Over the years I have never been without subject matter. I could pick and choose among the birthers, the deniers, the earthers and the truthers. Would we discuss churchly pedophiles or Abu Ghraib? DUI or DNA? Tiger Woods, Charlie Sheen, Britney, Paris or OJ Redux? Always some claim of conspiracy or scandal emerged that would capture the attention of students.
This week demonstrates that whether we run out of oil, we won’t run out of oily elites. The case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund and prominent French socialist politician, is instructive. (Yes, yes, innocent until proven…). Mr. Strauss-Kahn is currently holed up in a snug government-supplied suite on Riker’s Island (a neo-socialist dream of free housing for all). Mr. Strauss-Kahn has been arrested and accused of having attempted to rape a hotel maid in his self-paid suite at New York’s Sofitel. No doubt several of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s new compatriots will be happy to turn the tables on their new friend. DSK, don’t drop your soap in the shower.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn was apparently naked in the bathroom when the maid arrived. As a prominent economist, he surely figured that since he was already naked, intercourse was simply a matter of structural efficiency. Perhaps he saw her as “my cute little Portugal.” Never having interned at the IMF, she had not been adequately educated in recognizing how the powerful organize the lifeworlds of the powerless. Metaphors gone wild.
But the tawdry events at a slick hotel reveal something more. First, they remind us that often what makes bad behavior scandalous is when it emerges outside the local domain in which “everyone knew” of its likelihood. As more evidence appears, it seems that Strauss-Kahn’s colleagues were aware that he was a sexual predator. Possibly they were surprised that he would be as rough and rushed as reports of his hotel encounter suggested, but he leaves a trail of accusations, discretely excused by friends and colleagues. Perhaps he was embarrassing, but this is what (some) rich men do. Most shameful is Anne Mansouret, a Socialist party official and the mother of a young French journalist, Tristane Banon, who Strausss-Kahn apparently attempted to rape nine years ago. Knowing this, Ms. Mansouret suggested that her daughter not press charges, presumably satisfied to have a politically correct rapist as the president of France. There are just some things that we provincial Americans will never understand. Strauss-Kahn had been previously criticized for his inappropriate sexual behavior by the IMF for a coercive affair with a subordinate in 2008. Ho-hum. He’s our colleague and by winking we can make the embarrassment disappear.
A scandal is not just bad or criminal behavior. A scandal is different than a crime (of which this rape is both), but scandal results from a form of behavior that “everyone” knows about, but which had been defined as normal or innocuous, leading the perpetrator to be conclude that he is protected. How many people knew about Tiger Woods’ behavior or that of former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger? More than zero. The inner group considered the behavior acceptable, if undesirable, until it broke outside its charmed circle.
Finally, the Strauss-Kahn imbroglio reminds us that the capacity for conspiracy never dies. Some French socialists, once they learned of the arrest, concluded that the event was a frame-up by the supporters of Nicolas Sarkosy, Strauss-Kahn’s likely opponent in the next French election. Just another vast right-wing conspiracy. Mr. Sarkosy, of course, has his own problems, political and ethical, although surely less than his neighbor, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi. A Euro-conspiracy to discredit Strauss-Kahn seems laughable today, but one is well-advised “never to say never.” Still, the claims speak to the belief that some enemy will always stand behind the breach in reputation of those one admires.
Today Strauss-Kahn’s future is dim, but mine is bright. As I prepare to teach Scandals and Reputation this fall, I prepare confidently, knowing that my students and I will analyze lustily – as we have each year.
What is surprising about this scandal is that many prominent French figures have rushed to defend Strass-Kahn, quite absurdly I may add, and have lamented his treatment in custody in the US as “sickening.” Because this is in many ways a cross-cultural scandal it presents an opportunity to compare the reactions of the French and Americans, as Prof. Goldfarb pointed out. What I haven’t seen much in the American press is the reaction of Strauss-Kahn’s political enemies. Perhaps the idiom concerning a “glass house” applies here and has muted the responses the responses of French politicians making it possibly less interesting to the American press. I think what this reveals though is a very different political culture in France, particularly concerning attitudes towards sexuality and the treatment of women: http://watchingamerica.com/News/105241/different-definitions-of-sexual-harassment/
Of course, almost all of what we know about this scandal comes from the media. As much as the public and private have been blurred I’m sure there is still much that remains backstage, that is, truly private. At least for now.