By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, July 1st, 2011 
It is my custom before sleeping to read a novel. I turn off the events of the day and start my journey into the world of imagination. Last night, I was reading Madame Bovary when my wife told me about the latest turn in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case. I was surprised, but left it to the morning to find out what happened. The New York Times report made it clear, the person who had every right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty by the courts, appears to be really innocent, a victim, not a criminal.
The implications for French and global politics and culture are significant. I worry that France, which desperately needs a serious political alternative, may be deprived of a capable public servant as President because of a false accusation and prosecution. I also worry that very serious problems concerning the relationship between public and private, the intimate and the open, sex and politics, may now go unexamined because the case is being closed, when serious deliberate consideration is what is needed now more than ever, there and here.
Daniel Dayan and I have been discussing the case as it unfolds. A few minutes ago, I received an email from him, continuing our discussion. We will actually make this discussion a part of our “Media and News in a Time of Crisis” seminar at the Democracy and Diversity Institute in Wroclaw, Poland, later this month.
He wrote:
“Just a little note to set up our discussions to come: I may have told you that I was talking with a friend on a bench in Central Park, one Saturday morning, around 11 AM just when the Strauss-Kahn episode was going on, 10 blocks south. Uncannily, I was telling my friend that Strauss-Kahn was likely to win the elections unless he was the victim of some trap. I did not realize the trap I was anticipating was functioning already while my friend and I were . . .
Read more: Dominique Strauss-Kahn: A Play in Three Acts?
By Gary Alan Fine, June 13th, 2011 
Silly season comes early in Washington, along with the steamy weather. It is just barely June, and we are already watching the meltdown of Congressman Anthony Weiner, an outspoken liberal Queens Democrat and a one-time candidate for Mayor of New York City. This disgusting and delightful episode began innocently enough with the question of whether the Congressman sent a photo of his filled-out jockey shorts to a West coast co-ed. She assured us that she was not offended by such japery. Stranger things have happened, even in the New York Congressional delegation. The episode seemed like a pleasant, if erotically-charged, diversion. As Claude Levi-Strauss pointed out in another vein, it was “good to think.” Now we learn that the Congressman has checked himself into the Eliot Spitzer wing to deal with a whimsical mental illness that the DSM-5 might label “cad-atonia.” Weiner may be needy, but psychiatry is not likely to provide a cure.
At the time I marveled at how Weiner made such a hash of his own defense. If he did Tweet young women, admit it as ill-conceived teasing and move on. Taking seriously Weiner’s (at first) plausible assertion that his Twitter account was hacked, I worried about the prevalence of Candid Camera politics. I spoke of those luscious gotcha moments in which politicians were upended by trickery of which conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart and his associate James O’Keefe of the famous NPR-Arab donor sting have become so expert. In this case my suspicions of Breitbart were unfounded. Despite being an articulate defender of progressive policies, it has become clear that the Congressman was a fully engaged politician.
Here is yet another instance in which the cover-up proved far worse than the crime. Early on Weiner was accused of sharing lewd pictures of himself. “Lewd” seemed to be something of a term of art, although apparently there is a photo that is more explicit in the mix. Still, the original photo of filled out briefs, the basis of the scandal, would hardly qualify as foreplay in . . .
Read more: The Weiner Follies: The Personification of Politics
By Gary Alan Fine, May 26th, 2011 
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 . . .
Read more: Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the Charmed Circle of Scandal
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