Everyone’s favorite Gallic charmer is back in jail:
Former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn is being questioned by French police as a suspect in a prostitution ring inquiry, a prosecutor says.
Mr Strauss-Kahn, once a front-runner for the French presidency, is being held in custody at a police station in Lille, northern France.
To be honest, I was surprised that being mixed up in a prostitution ring is a crime in France. But apparently, while consorting with ladies of the evening is legal, pimping them to your pals and charging them as a business expense is not. I wonder if DSK’s chum Bernard-Henri Lévy will once again get his knickers in a twist and insist that “the Strauss-Kahn I know” bears no resemblance to “this caveman, this insatiable and malevolent beast” now that it’s the local gendarmerie rather than those ghastly vulgar NYPD flatfeet who’ve tossed him in the clink.
One thing I rather like about M. Strauss-Kahn is the way his defense never varies. In New York, he denied rape on the grounds that he and the Sofitel maid were enjoying consensual sex, as who doesn’t during a 23rd-floor room-cleaning shift. Back on home turf, he’s now denying sex-ring charges on the same basis:
Police have questioned a number of prostitutes who have admitted having sex with Mr Strauss-Kahn.
He insists he did not know that the women were prostitutes.
“I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman,” his lawyer Henri Leclerc has told French television.
For an unprepossessing leering toad, DSK seems to have a splendid confidence in his magnetic irresistibility to the fairer sex. To modify Kathryn: Where aren’t the women?
Wot, don't French labor laws allow for unpaid internships?
Thus do Democrat presidents out-French the French.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"“I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman,” his lawyer Henri Leclerc has told French television."
So is the lesson, all women are prostitutes or you can't judge a prostitute by her naked body?
In any case, as a lawyer he should know, you can't judge a prostitute by looking at her naked body, but rather by looking in your bare wallet.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhile running a ring appears clearly to be a crime, this sounds like a case of 'subcontracting' a ring to appear at parties. Is that a crime in itself or does it depend on whether or not the subcontractor, um, partakes of any services?
Pretty nuanced semantics, those deconstructing French.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWait...what? Whoring is illegal in France? I thought it was their national sport.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"“I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman,” "
Just before the prostitute became naked, she ran your credit card through a portable credit card reader?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWho says she did it *before* she got naked?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDang, and here I missed the obvious riposte: "Well, I am willing to try! Bring 'em!"
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell, I don't know how they do it in France, but here in the US (I've heard!) that the one charging you money is a prostitute.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWas that wrong? Should I not have done that? I tell ya, I got to plead ignorance on this kind of thing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"...he and the Sofitel maid were enjoying consensual sex, as who doesn’t during a 23rd-floor room-cleaning shift..."
Another gem of Steynian wit!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn France, it's being called the Affair of the Hotel Carlton (l'affaire du Carlton de Lille) as if the news interest had nothing to do with DSK.
Sky News: External Link
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseStrauss-Kahn is clearly an out of control sex addict, boosted into powerful positions for which he's manifestly unsuited with such a proclivity by his powerful and wealthy wife who planned on making the first Jewish French President out of her horned toad husband. What's frightening is how close this hyphenated sleazebag came, having been the favorite Socialist Party candidate until the NY maid incident bared the tip of his subterranean iceberg of licentiousness. His panderers providing the naked women were ingratiating themselves to and logging future leverage with what they thought was going to be the most powerful man in France. Does Strauss-Kahn not look at himself in a mirror? The only reason a young woman would do the dirty with him is for money.
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