It's very difficult to talk about (okay, I'll say it) outgoing IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, if you want to say anything other than "let's let the justice system turn and accept the ultimate result," without swallowing your own foot.

Amanda Marcotte wrote in advance about the rape apologists who showed up online to attack the credibility of the female accuser that they know nothing about.  She points out that many of these people who are aghast, just aghast, that Strauss-Kahn has been detained at Riker's tend not to leap to the defense of other accused criminals who are similarly plucked out of their lives and processes through New York's "system" every day.  Frankly, I think that the treatment of the accused in (by both the system and the media) America is deplorable, unfair and stacks the deck in the favor of the prosecution, which has unlimited resources and freedom of movement to build a case against the accused while the accused is confined with limited access to their lawyer or other reosurces that might help them build a defense.  I doubt Marcotte would argue with me on that point.  Her point, which I agree with, is that certain people are very loud about the presumption of innocence when a man is accused of rape, and not loud about it at all when some one is accused of any number of other crimes.

Up for debate is whether or not conspiracy theorists who believe that Strauss Kahn was set up (or that Julian Assange was set up, for that matter) are people who will resort to wild flights of fancy to justify their insistence on the innocence of prominent men accused of this sort of thing or they're cynics or, even, particularly astute cynics.

Paul Krugman noted that apologists for elitists like Ben Stein have come forward to express sympathy for the wealthy and powerful.  Stein argued that, in deference to the professional accomplishment of Strauss-Kahn that Riker's is hardly the appropriate place to keep the man as he awaits trial.  I'm not holding my breath for Stein to make similar arguments in favor of releasing the other suspects awaiting trial there.  Indeed, since some of those people aren't prominent in any way, they are currently sharing cell space with one another while Strauss-Kahn is held in a separate wing, separate from perhaps some of society's rougher elements.

The elitist apologists and the rape apologists are easy and appropriate targets for ridicule.  What I haven't seen anyone write about, though, are the other libertines out there who are wholly depressed by this.  In this camp I might include Bernard Henry-Levi, the French intellectual who lept to his friend's rhetorical defense and was roundly criticized for doing so.

I don't think Henry-Levi is either a rape apologist or an elitist apologist.  I think he's a libertine, which is exactly how Strauss-Kahn has been described (and how he's described himself.)  The essence of libertinism is a combination of hedonism and freedom from social constraint.  It's not about hurting people or forcing any sort of non-consensual activity on anyone.  When that happens, it is no longer libertinism, it's thuggery.

Libertines have come under harsh moral judgment from others (i.e. "busybodies") who want to tell us when we can drink absinthe, when we can gamble, and what's acceptable bedroom behavior.  We're told, every time we break a social norm, that we're sliding down the road to immorality, illegality, and victimizing other people.  The scope to which an innocent and personal action can cause harm to others has been stretched to outrageous extremes ("Those ecstasy tablets you bought are supporting terrorism!") and the consequences of failing to obey society's moral commandments (whether you agree with them or not, whether they cover anything that's society's business or not) can be quite intense.

So it's nice to see that somewhere in the world (mostly in the world of the Italian intelligentsia) that people can be successful and respected while otherwise doing whatever they want in the company of willing accomplices (and if you don't like it, go away, thank you very much).  It's also sad to see, if the allegations against Strauss-Kahn are true, one of these people go so far off the rails.  Because we know that society's petty prudes and moralists will point the finger at all sorts of perfectly acceptable libertine behavior and label it wrong and dangerous.  Which would be fine if these people didn't also get to make the laws that govern us.