jollyroger's picture

    Shorter Strauss-Kahn lesson:Video your sexual encounters--it might keep you outta jail!

    Holy reversal of fortune, Batman!

    A dizzying array of profoundly damaging details about the pious and hard working hotel employee who took down the head of the IMF are cascading into public view

    Credibility? Shredded.

    Character? Sliced and diced.

    History? Shadier than one could imagine.

    (I will reproduce the catalog in some detail, for those who cannot access the NY Times):

    "Since her initial allegation on May 14, the accuser has repeatedly lied, one of the law enforcement officials said.... Among the discoveries, one of the officials said, are issues involving the asylum application of the 32-year-old housekeeper, who is Guinean, and possible links to criminal activities, including drug dealing and money laundering...the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded...That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania....she was paying hundreds of dollars every month in phone charges to five companies. The woman had insisted she had only one phone and said she knew nothing about the deposits except that they were made by a man she described as her fiancé and his friends... she told investigators that her application for asylum included mention of a previous rape, but there was no such account in the application. She also told them that she had been subjected to genital mutilation, but her account to the investigators differed from what was contained in the asylum application."

    And this comes from the  prosecution! !

    What do we learn from this bit of peripetie?

    1. When housekeeping offers you a blow job, think twice before you accept,

    2.  If you are rich and important, video your sex because nothing says innocent like a slo-mo deconstruction.

    3.  If you are not rich and important, video your sex anyway.  You will appreciate having the video later in life as a cherished memento, even if you never need to refer to it for vindication.

    4.  There is a reason why we have trials, rules of evidence, and juries of our peers.  Short circuiting that safeguard is a bad idea.

    Comments

    Excellent little bit of posting there JR!

    I've thought quite a bit lately about the extraordinary focus there is on the private lives and businessof the powerful.  It's interesting because while they know they are powerful and their actions, no matter how trivial, could become fodder for the tabloid press (meaning all the mainstream media nowadays) yet they feel like and proceed in their lives as though they were somehow just like the rest of us.  There is the well known sense of invulnerability which we all knowis a delusionbut those suffering from it cannot see how frail their cocoon is.  Tawdry and unseemly incidents like that of Strauss Kahn, Schwarzenegger and Wiener istantly become the circuses part of the bread and circuses fixation of our great empire and her allies and the crowd revels in the complete destruction of the lives of the people caught in lurid or unsundrie behavior.  Then I think about the wee folk and how if just about anybody's sex life, the details of it all, what you said, what you did, who you said or did it with/to became public it would look equally grotesque even if that normal person did nothing "wrong". It reminds me of a short routine Sam Kinnison did on SNL once when his featured guest was Seka.  He asked the audience if they'd ever videotaped themselves having sex and said that he had recently.  He then quickly told the audience never to do it, that while Seka might look good having sex regular people look horrible, like rutting bears or fat cattle, etc...  It seems to me that the entire world, and certainly the US, would be better off if the sexual pecadilloes and other personal, traditionally private and off limits portions of life were once again pretty much off limits. Criminal activity is different than most of what we see in the headlines which is just seedy bad behavior in most instances.  In the case of Strauss Kahn perhaps the rush to judgment was not so wise if what you've posted it to be believed.  But the Larry Craig's and the Vitter's of the world step over the line of legality whereas the Schwarzeneggers, Wieners, and Clnton's of the world are not and those legal yet tawdry things that go on really just debase the entire society.


    Our private parts should remain private?


    Well, actually, no

    Refer to item #3.

    It will perhaps not surprise you to learn that from time to time my partners and I amused ourselves with video equipment...and yes, I have always cherished the resulting footage (to commit a pun...)


    I will date myself by not only acknowledging that I know just who Seka is, I also believe that I recall that she was the consort of Long Dong Silver in the notorious video that Clarence Thomas was revealed to have *rented when his videotape account was made public...

     

    *Not that there's anything wrong with that...


    Okay but what if housekeeping is like 6'3"; kind of broad at the shoulders and narrow at the hips and wants to give ME a bunch of money?


    Then you will assuredly want to video the encounter, because since someone is bound to do so, it might as well be you...No shame in your game, as the saying goes...


    Parenthetically, I think Larry Craig was shabby did--what exactly is the offense in tapping your foot, and if, in fact, it is meant to indicate an inclination to share your stall with your neighbor, who exactly is harmed?


    I believe, though my memory could be wrong, that Craig's actual criminal offense was solicitation* in a public place.  It was not a felony, but it is not a civil offense either.

     

    *update: Craig's offense was "lewd conduct" later changed to disorderly conduct.


    Well, see, there you have it.  No less a beacon of jurisprudence than  Oliver Wendell Holmes once said in a decision "It never hurts to ask"

    And what, after all, is solicitation except asking?

    As for lewd conduct,  please.  While toe tapping while white may be a crime against rhythm (there is nothing scarier than white people dancing) it is not a crime against nature.


    It was Morse code.


    Oh, well then, no worries.  He was probably asking if the guy next door could slip him some paper as his roll had run out.  He can plead an emergency.


    What he probably said was "Hey buddy  I got some good shit over here, you got any papers and I'll roll one.

    You really have to watch your sentence structure doing Morse code


    dah-dah DIT (the morse code rim shot--oops, bad place t bring up rims...)


    I am at a loss. I am thinking you had an accident, if so I am unaware of the details.  


    Your clean living habits have kept you insulated from this colloquialism which perhaps extends our bathroom humor well beyond the limits of this family oriented site...


     Innocent


    I'd have to agree with Kinison. Back in the 80s, one of my tennis buddies got a videocamera, so three of us took turns filming two of us hitting then went back to his place to critique our form. We were soon three deflated weekend warriors. We were all in reasonably good shape and we thought we were playing hard, but we looked so ... lackadaisical compared to the pros on TV.


    I think the French are very lucky to be spared having DSK as their president.


    I do beleive the French were correct to be appalled, when we made DSK do the perp walk in front of the cameras and on all the front pages of the tabloids. before he was found guilty.

    You're Innocent until found guilty? 

    Can you here the gloating   

    The French are going to be so vindicated while we got egg on our faces.

    The prosecution reminds me of the Lacrosse fiasco.


    As I suggested over at Destor's related post, David, Strauss-Kahn may be back in the game. He's obviously arrogant and sex-obsessed, but if it's him against Marine Le Pen in the runoff, he'd get my vote. A lot of French electors may feel the same way.


    At first, I believed the accuser because DSK changed his story from "it never happened" to "It was consensual."  But now it looks like an enormous rush to judgment.  And there should be consequences for this. The cops and the prosecutor practically preened about this arrest.  They leaked to the press that he was some sort of primadonna who demanded special treatment in jail. The judge set an absurdly high bail.  He's had to pay for his own house arrest, at a cost of a quarter million dollars a month.  He had to step down from the IMF and lost a shot at the presidency of France. Meanwhile, the accuser remains somewhat anonymous, the judge will continue in his career, the cops who paraded him around and leaked pictures and detaiils to the press will go unpunished and Cyrus Vance, scion to a New York politico family, will continue on with his fabulous life.  It's pretty sick what we put the accused through, but we only see it when a criminal case falls apart.


    If only he had been declared an enemy combatant, we would have been spared this embarrassment.


    Excellent blog! I definitely love how it’s easy on my eyes as well as the facts are well written. I am wondering how I might be notified whenever a new post has been made. I have subscribed to your rss feed which need to do the trick! Have a nice day!


    Update from Neil de Grasse Tyson--video your NON sexual interactions, (me)too.

     

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/01/arts/neil-degrasse-tyson-sexual-misco...

     

     


    One problem with some of these allegations is the lack of specifics. The allegations is that Tyson touched a woman's tattoo of the solar system and, looking for Pluto, followed the tattoo up her dress. What exactly happened? From the picture it appears the tattoo was on her upper arm though the article doesn't say where the tattoo was. It appears he followed the tattoo up her "dress" to at most her shoulder though again the article doesn't say. I doubt the tattoo went from her upper arm to her breast so he didn't grope her breast though the article doesn't say. So my best guess is he touched her tattoo up to her shoulder. Perhaps boorish behavior but far from sexual harassment imo.


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