IMF - Uh . . . That's NOT What Those Initials Stand For

Reality to Earth . . . Indiscretions Are One Thing, Raving Lunacy Another

There are certain things you expect from the rich and/or powerful, and in certain instances they rarely disappoint you. You expect an overdrive of hungers for the best things in life, to the point where they spend money on things that make you ask if you'd do something similarly crazy if you had the money. You expect marriages by the dozen, divorces by the truckload and news articles following the merry-go-round of their lives arriving by oil tanker. You expect the indiscreet; with leanings towards the sensational.

Rich men chasing maids down the hallway? Possibly, if it's in one of those fluffy post-Victorian class comedies where everything comes out alright when one is actually caught and marriage to the rich fool is in the offing.

That's not what the director of the International Monetary Fund, a man with the nickname "The Great Seducer" is accused of. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was thought to be a contender for the presidency of France, when finding a maid entering his suite in the early afternoon, is said to have chased her through the suite naked and forced himself on her. He then hit the bricks in what has been described as a big hurry, to the point where NY-NJ Port Authority Police had to pull him out of his first class flight home and drag him off to "La Bastille Americain."

Having had an affair with an IMF staffer previously, and in admitting it apologized for an error in judgement, I wonder what sort of response he's going to make for (excuse the pun) a boner like this.

I also find myself wondering just what state of mind you have to be in to act like that. At the base of this, I see a rich man in New York who wants something, and either isn't halfway smart enough or just too damned lazy to go out and get it in a way which doesn't involve committing a felony. (A misdemeanor possibly, but not a felony.) A hotel maid, or any other woman in any other profession, has the right to go to work and not assume some twit playing master of the manor is going to think he can get away with whatever he pleases just because . . . Well, it pleases him. And at the top of this, the behavior is coming from one of the men in charge of a major part of this planet's monetary policy.

On the up side, if he's guilty as charged and convicted of the crime, not any more he isn't. If he isn't smart enough to stay out of trouble on multiple occasions in the pursuit of getting his rocks off, France and the rest of the world doesn't need him in charge of anything more important than his own pocket change.