Dominique Strauss-Kahn fucks anything that moves, especially if it is a prostitute, goes to lavish sex parties and apparently likes assaulting women on special occasions. Here’s the buried lede:
The exclusive orgies called “parties fines” — lavish Champagne affairs costing around $13,000 each — were organized as a roving international circuit from Paris to Washington by businessmen seeking to ingratiate themselves with Mr. Strauss-Kahn. Some of that money, according to a lawyer for the main host, ultimately paid for prostitutes because of a shortage of women at the mixed soirees orchestrated largely for the benefit of Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who sometimes sought sex with three or four women.
On Thursday, Mr. Strauss-Kahn broke a long silence to acknowledge that perhaps his double life as an unrestrained libertine was a little outré.
The Times article is all about the kinds of sex that DSK had, which other than the sexual assaults, is legal in France. It just mentions in passing that these parties were paid for by big money influence peddlers, while concentrating on whether the kind of sex he had would be scandalous (or, to use their prissy word, “outré”). Aside from the rape, I don’t care where DSK was sticking his dick, but I sure do care if the head of the IMF was being bribed. The Times seems to be more interested in how many hookers he was banging at once.
Jack the Second
Everyone knows our politicians are corrupt; we just don’t want them to be cheap.
amk
And this guy has been doing this shite for years. And yet he was supposed to be IMF chief as well french president material. Shows how the press keeps its mouth shut by keeping it pressed to the asses of influentials.
Schlemizel
I think this fits nicely with my comment about Edwards in the last thread. Its not the ‘morality’ of the individual but how they execute the duties of the office they hold. As long as its consensual I don’t care what you stick in, have stuck in or what outfit you wear while the sticking, licking or kicking takes place. But I do care that you give others the same benefit and perform your job honestly trying to make this shithole a better world and not just yourself richer or your genitalia happier.
Stuck In 60s
Of course it’s The Gays who are destroying marriage.
Anyone know if Focus on the Family has predictions about DSK corruption of our society?
PsiFighter37
@amk: To be honest, I think foreign press (let’s frank – no one in the domestic press paid much attention to Strauss-Kahn until he was pulled off a plane at JFK) cares much less about the private lives of public figures than the U.S. press does. I think that’s admirable, but I also think that leads to people turning the cheek quite a bit more than should occur.
The U.S. press will pretty much write a story about anything that touches both politics and sex as long as it has a pulse. However – if it’s a Republican, they’ll just say they chatted with God and are all square (like Senator Diapers), and the press will say it’s all good. Otherwise, down with the morally relativistic Democrats! Just another instance of IOKIYAR
Villago Delenda Est
Well, that’s the Village for you.
Remember Sanford in SC? The man basically deserts his post, goes AWOL, and the Village does not care. Once an Argentine Firecracker is discovered to be involved, and suddenly the story has LEGS!
It’s always about the sex, never other matters that are infinitely more important. Bribery is nothing…unless it’s someone getting a blow job, THEN suddenly it’s important.
The “scandals” surrounding Clinton went no where UNTIL a blow job was involved, THEN it was a huge deal.
Bring on the meteor. Quickly.
SiubhanDuinne
@mister mix: props for the “Strangelove” ref.
El Cid
This would be a surrealist French film about the ludicrous avarice, hungers, and corruptions of the internationalist ruling classes, except for the whole “reality” aspect of it.
Spatula
Of course you do. Check out your first line of this post.
Like most Americans, you’re a prude, yet fascinated by sex.
Embrace it.
NonyNony
@Villago Delenda Est:
The news media makes 3000% more sense once you realize that it’s a branch of the entertainment industry and not anything more or less than that.
The news media is trying to get eyeballs for their advertising. And they’re trying to get the same eyeballs that the people making “Jersey Shore” are trying to get.
Villago Delenda Est
@Stuck In 60s:
He’s French. Isn’t that enough of a reason for the morally depraved vermin of Focus on the Family to have their fucking panties twisted in knots?
Villago Delenda Est
@Spatula:
How you determine that mistermix is a prude eludes me.
Could it just be that you’re a disembodied anus?
Yeah. That’s the ticket.
Misterpuff
He’s a Cock Monster, Frencie Division.
Emma
@NonyNony: The news media is trying to get eyeballs for their advertising. And they’re trying to get the same eyeballs that the people making “Jersey Shore” are trying to get.
(edited after further thought) Close. I think it’s a bit more than that, though.
Personally I think that the gentleman’s personal life was his and his wife’s problem, not mine. UNTIL it crosses into assault at the personal level and bribery/blackmail at the political level. But the American press is paid to keep our eyes in the sexual pecadilloes so the corruption of their masters goes unnoticed.
Misterpuff
He’s a Cock Monster, Frenchie Division.
PurpleGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Oh, you’re good. I read the title but it didn’t clink with me and I usually think I know that movie so well.
Spatula
@Villago Delenda Est:
Reading comprehension is the key: Check out his headline for this post.
Let us analyze: “Deviated,” “pervert,” yet no mention of bribery.
Rather telling, no?
Svensker
@Spatula:
Dude, it’s a quote from Dr. Strangelove.
RaflW
The thought of the IMF imposing austerity in country after country around the globe in order to perfect it for rapacious capitalism, all the while Dominique Strauss-Kahn and a cadre of morally dubious bankers are guzzling Champagne and banging lots of people in orgies is, well, disgusting.
Not the sex. I don’t even care if any of these moral vacuums cheated on their spouses or got v.d.
I care that these people party in penthouses, eat trays of canapes and swill the finest grape. While condemning millions to the predations of hunger, misery and capitalism’s exploitative wonders.
mistermix
@Spatula: If I ever mention Jack D. Ripper be sure to tell me how stupid I am for not knowing that it’s Jack The Ripper.
RaflW
Oh, and any way we can link DSK to the absurd EU “peace prize”?
There needs to be some sort of public corrective action to let the fine Norwegians know that they’re temporarily insane. That they’ve once again managed to severely dent the value of a peace prize after some other doozies like the Kissinger award.
If they persist in laughable grantings like this year’s the prize will become useless except as a nice cash bonus to another failing meritocrat.
Chris Hayes is right. Our institutions are utter failures. But they congratulate themselves and fete themselves as if they are the very cream of the world.
Reklam
10 thousand euros is less than DSK’s speaking fee I would guess.
NonyNony
@Svensker:
Dude it’s Spats. He’s a jackass. I’d bet he doesn’t know the difference between Dr. Strangelove and Dr. Teeth.
Xenos
@PsiFighter37: The British press goes mercilessly after MPs who are fooling around. Many, many scalps collected over the last few decades. By comparison the US press is quite tame.
Reklam
@RaflW: The elites must be doing something ‘right’ if they can throw such ‘elegant’ parties.
Play your cards well and you can snag an invite! (in a non-service capacity even…)
/snark outré
amk
@RaflW: This. Have your sex parties on your dime and time. Who gives a shite ?
Matt McIrvin
@RaflW: Note that Norway is neither in the EU nor in the eurozone, whose troubles are no skin off their nose.
(Edited for correction: I’d thought Norway was in the EU.)
Spatula
@Svensker:
And what is the subject matter of that quote? Sex or bribery?
PurpleGirl
@Spatula: And what is the subject matter of that quote? Sex or bribery?
John Birch Society right-wing paranoia.
amk
@Spatula: There are different ways of skinning a cat, humorous nuance being one of them.
Reklam
@Matt McIrvin: But they are in Schengen and EEA. Skin in game (though oil in bank).
RaflW
@Spatula: Do you not get 1) irony or 2) film references?
I didn’t know the post title was from a specific movie, but I knew as soon as I read it, based on syntax and who put it up and his fine quotation habit, that it was lifted artfully from somewhere.
And that it’s mocking. Do you grasp the concept of mocking, Spatula? Do you listen for tone in your careful, so clever contextual analyses?
SiubhanDuinne
@mistermix:
Spatula is full of bat guano. Ignore him.
RaflW
@Matt McIrvin: The Norwegian Nobel Committee awards the Peace Prize, that’s the linkage…
Uncle Cosmo
@Matt McIrvin: Easy mistake to make, since they are in the Schengen Area, which
(NB Part of the Schengen agreement requires the signatory nations to strengthen their border controls with non-Schengen states. I experienced this last month traveling by overnight train from Slovakia into Ukraine & then back from Ukraine to Poland. Being awakened after midnight & forced to lie awake at a dead stop for 3 hours with the lights blazing, repeatedly being ordered to show my passport & open my bags while the border police & customs agents searched over, under, around & through every compartment, reminded me of the bad old good old days of European travel…& not in a nostalgic way,either…)
Nom de Plume
@SiubhanDuinne: props for the “Strangelove” ref.
Why do people do this? Ruin a perfectly good thing by pointing to it and shouting “Hey, I get it! That’s a reference to…!”.
stfu about it.
Spatula
@RaflW:
The denial here is hilarious.
Mistermix puts up a post and claims it’s all about his disgust and concern for bribery.
But his post title and lead sentence are all about SEX SEX SEX.
This is exactly the tendency in the American MSM and you know it. But because your tribalism aligns you with Mistermix, you feel you must leap to his defense.
I understand, it’s ok.
Spatula
@Nom de Plume:
To let the other tribe members know they are IN THE KNOW.
Kind of like you just did.
arguingwithsignposts
@Nom de Plume: I actually appreciate the people who point out some of the obscure references. I get lots of them, but some are less obvious.
so you stfu.
xian
@Spatula: yes, yes, it’s everyone else who has “issues”
Chris
@RaflW:
The best part of it was the Republicans who tried to pick it up and run with it as an indictment of socialism, because DSK is a member of the Socialist Party.
xian
@Svensker: scatula is somewhat literal minded, does not understand indirect discourse, ironic distance, allegory, allusion, etc.
zeroes in on personal hot-button issues, then turns around to tell mommy/daddy/others that they are the ones who pooped in the corner.
Chris
@arguingwithsignposts:
Quoted for truth.
SiubhanDuinne
@Nom de Plume: stfu yourself. Others here were pleased to have the reference pointed out. And I am always glad when someone explains a song or movie reference that may have escaped me — and feel a sense of camaraderie if I got it too. You’re just pissed you didn’t get there first.
Spatula
@xian:
Oh no, my friend. I was raised in southern Kansas. Give me a break.
But it’s useful to be AWARE of one’s issues, no?
Villago Delenda Est
@Spatula:
The meteor needs to be aimed at you.
Dipshit.
Lojasmo
@Spatula:
May want to backtrack from “comprehension” to “basic reading skills” You seem to be missing the latter, asshole.
xian
@Spatula: i’m glad a course of taunting and shaming helped you out so well. it must be nice to take a topic and bend it into a projected extension of your internal mental landscape of the “real” point.
Nancy Cadet
Mister mix highlighted the same part of the Times story that caught my eye—corruption, bribery. There ‘s also the funny detail that two of the men involved, including DSK, met because of their membership in the French Freemasons. French history is full of scandal and conspiracy mongers denouncing the Masons!
Not mentioned in the Times story, I think, was a presumed corrupt link to French police. DSK, I’ve read in Le Monde, employed a retired police official as his enforcer or fixer and that is the subject of a criminal investigation.
Frankly , as a long time observer of French politics, the oft repeated claim thatDSK was going to be the next Socialist party candidate for the Presidency was rather weak, but it spiced up the story !
Petorado
When it comes to press coverage of political sex scandals, this Monty Python sketch always comes to mind … wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more.
The screwing at these parties doesn’t bother me, it’s the metaphorical screwing of peoples not in attendance at these parties that the hosts were trying to affect that’s really irksome.
Henry Bayer
I thought Kubrick’s movie “Eyes Wide Shut” involving a sex party cult was an old man’s pathetic fantasies. This story says it was closer to a documentary.
Citizen_X
If you try any preversions in there I’ll blow your head off.
Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937
I thought ‘rapists’ are usually convicted of a crime, not simply an allegation that never held water. The allegations were thoroughly investigated and found to be false – there were video cameras everywhere that showed who was where at what time and lets just say the ‘victim’ was a bad liar. The bribery allegation is a serious charge that should be investigated.
Roy G.
Who knew that DSK and Iggy Pop were soulmates?
Well I’m trying to break in
And I know it’s not for me
And the sight of it all
Makes me sad and ill
That’s when I want
Some weird sin
That’s when I want
Some weird sin
Just to relax with.
Spatula
@Villago Delenda Est:
So, as usual…nothing?
Spatula
@xian:
Always glad to help.
PsiFighter37
@Xenos: Well then, maybe it’s just the French press. That said, not surprising about the British, given the lines the tabloids there disregard when chasing any kind of story…
Mandalay
@NonyNony:
This, a gazillion times over.
I wish the FPers would be more mindful of that before they go off on a poutrage rant about what was on Fox last night, or what Matthews or Sullivan said, or demanding to know why McCain is on the Sunday shows yet again.
Water is wet.
The sun sets in the west.
The news media is a branch of the entertainment industry.
MTiffany
Total hit job. When did the NYT become such a piece of shit?
g
Yeah, just like you and me.
Not saying how I know this
It’s the sexual assaults and the bribes that are the problems.
I know working class and middle class couples who put on monthly orgies at their homes for their friends…$10 per couple attendance fee, non-alcoholic drinks and snacks provided, free condoms for everyone, whole thing costs the hosts maybe $300. And no sexual assaults…anyone who tried something like that would be beaten within an inch of their lives by irate husbands.
Our plutocratic Galtian overlords can’t even put on a good orgy without screwing it up with money and greed.
Goddess damn them….I try very hard not to hate people, but I’m human…and I hate these plutocratic bastards and the Republican Party they support.
aimai
The obvious point of Mistermix’s “buried the lede” is that it is because the Times is acting asa purient puritain entertainment scandal sheet that it missed the obvious point which is that one man’s sex life is apparently just another Return on Investment scheme for other bankers, not just a fun free for all for other perverts.
I’d also like to point out that Strauss Kahn will not fuck anything that moves. He actually seems to need to pay to make sure that what he is fucking doesn’t run away.
aimai
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@SiubhanDuinne: I saw what you did there.
\golf clap\
Mandalay
@mistermix
But if you care about the head of the IMF being bribed then should care even more about him being blackmailed. Therefore you should care about where he was sticking his dick.
It would be simple to create a blue video with DSK as its star performer. Preferably taken with his knowledge and consent, and preferably one that could send him to prison for a long time. That wouldn’t be too difficult.
Voila! A few days later we will have the head of the IMF doing whatever the cameraman asks.
Important people behaving badly are a very serious liability.
Mandalay
@Emma:
But the risk of bribery/blackmail immediately existed because of what he was doing. Therefore, as head of the IMF, he should not have done it.
The morality of his conduct is irrelevant; his behavior made him a massive security risk.
aimai
There is zero evidence that SK needed to be blackmailed. He was being bribed by the very people who could have blackmailed him and he seems to have been very satisfied with his payoff. Its ridiculous to think there was some kind of principled stand he might have wanted to take w/r/t his role at the IMF that he wasn’t basically offering to compromise in order to get the free sex parties.
aimai
jimbo57
One fine day in the 18th century, the Duc de — entered a bedroom in a little hotel prive in the Marais, only to find that the Archbishop of— was already there, and busily shtupping his (the Duke’s) mistress. Without a backwards glance, the Duke strode over to the windows, flung them open, and began loudly blessing the people in the street. When a bemused archbishop asked him just what the hell he thought he was doing, the Duke replied, “As Monsieur has seen fit to assume MY functions, the least I can do is return the favor.”
The American 1% dream of recreating the Gilded Age of the robber barons. The point of reference for their French counterparts are the bewigged courtiers of the Ancien Regime.
jimbo57
One fine day in the 18th century, the Duc de — entered a bedroom in a little hotel prive in the Marais, only to find that the Archbishop of— was already there, and busily shtupping his (the Duke’s) mistress. Without a backwards glance, the Duke strode over to the windows, flung them open, and began loudly blessing the people in the street. When a bemused archbishop asked him just what the hell he thought he was doing, the Duke replied, “As Monsieur has seen fit to assume MY functions, the least I can do is return the favor.”
The American 1% dream of recreating the Gilded Age of the robber barons. The point of reference for their French counterparts are the bewigged courtiers of the Ancien Regime.
Emma
@Mandalay: Well, yes, that’s the corollary, isn’t it?
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
@aimai:
Yeah, that caught my eye too. A man that powerful can usually find willing sex partners. It says something about him that he either couldn’t, or chose not to.
Brachiator
@aimai:
Not really true at all. DSK was into brutish sex and found many willing partners. But he was also despicably disrespectful, and he assaulted women who did not want to have anything to do with him.
The Times story is typically hypocritical. Wasn’t there a recent story about a woman pleading guilty to running a brothel on the Upper East Side? As usual, none of the names of the clients ever was revealed. Sometimes, there actually is honor among thieves.
@amk:
Can you say Sir Jimmy Saville? He was a British entertainer who died recently, noted for raising millions for charity. Now that he is safely dead, the revelations are finally emerging that he raped pre-teen girls for years. Law enforcement officials and even the BBC are complicit in keeping a lid on the story and suppressing interviews with victims.
This stuff is so foul that it makes Penn State look like bumbling amateurs.
Saville wasn’t particularly powerful. But he was famous and popular and “did good work.” As with Penn State and Joe Paterno, various people decided that some ridiculous notion of the greater good made it acceptable to silence and sacrifice children.
SRW1
“Libertines are people like you and me: people who have a normal life,” said Mr. Vandamme, who said his client invested around $65,000 in party expenses, betting on the political rise of Mr. Strauss-Kahn.
Yeah, lovely how that didn’t imply the expectation of a return of that investment. But the the most hilarious quote was the one which suggested that for our betters sex for money is not prostitution:
“Prostitution was more regulated before,” Mr. Delarue said, “but it was for a certain type of population.
Hilarious, because a)’certain type of population’ apparently is French for ‘those people’, and b) the mental image of a middle-aged, lawyerly guy speaking in a French accent: “Bat prostitushen is such an agly worde!”
El Cid
The reason all these countries are having all these economic problems is that the poor and working classes can’t control their greedy and short-sighted impulses.
It’s the Protestant work ethic and commitment to delayed gratification which explains the success of the rich.