Quotulatiousness

June 14, 2011

Random links

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:11

A few links which don’t lend themselves to becoming full blog posts:

The SlutWalk double standard

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:41

Abigail Ross-Jackson wonders why SlutWalkers would want to “live in a world where women can wear what they want but men are never allowed to woo or whistle?”

Why should men be demonised for wolf-whistling or for attempting to chat up a woman whom they think is attractive? The Slutwalkers’ demand of the right not to be judged is profoundly backward and anti-social. Several of the banners on Saturday’s protest seemed to suggest that men are more like animals than rational human beings. One said: ‘Why am I dressed like a slut? Why are you thinking like a rapist?’ This is worrying, because it points to another serious problem with the Slutwalk phenomenon: its embrace of the widening definition of ‘harassment’. While most people would agree that stalking, groping and so on is unacceptable, amounting to harassment, the idea that looking, thinking, flirting and chatting someone up is also no longer acceptable, and that it amounts to ‘thinking like a rapist’, shows that everyday human interaction is now increasingly being labelled ‘harassment’. What next: no eye contact without written permission?

One woman who took part in the London Slutwalk later tweeted: ‘Thirty-seven people have taken my photo so far on #slutwalk. Just one sought consent first. (Of those I challenged, it’d not occurred to them to ask.)’ This just about sums up the preciousness, and the social aloofness, of Slutwalkers: they seem to imagine that even on a public demonstration at which they have dressed in the most attention-grabbing way, it is somehow a violation of their person for someone to take a photo. Feminists are warping the word ‘consent’, taking it from the realm of rape and applying it to such everyday actions as chatting and taking photos in public. But if we had to seek consent for every form of human interplay, nothing would ever happen; it would be a boring world indeed.

[. . .]

Many millions of us negotiate our relationships, sexual or otherwise, on a day-to-day basis; we don’t need contracts or written consent or any clearly established boundaries. In trying to formalise human relationships, the Slutwalkers’ attitude is actually quite arrogant: they seem to want to reshape the public sphere, and even parts of the private sphere, according to their own tastes and desires, with no regard for the rest of us. One Slutwalker said: ‘I wear what I want. Because I dress this way it doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. I get upset if a girl gets dressed up for male attention.’ This really gets to the heart of the double-standard in the Slutwalk phenomenon: they can wear what they like because they are apparently empowered and strong women, but if other women chose to dress in order to attract attention then they should be pitied and looked down upon. Meanwhile men can’t look, pass judgement or flirt for fear of being branded sexist and vile, while women apparently exist in a bubble where they are elevated and protected from the prying eyes and judgements of society.

June 13, 2011

QotD: Canadian foreign policy

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:03

Further proof of the Americanization of our politics: the journalistic elevation of the drunkard’s walk known as Stephen Harper’s foreign policy to the level of a “doctrine.” We spent the post-Gulf War nineties hearing about “the Powell doctrine”, and in 2001, Charles Krauthammer gave George W. Bush a doctrine of his own as a post 9/11 present. Today, the Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson gifts our prime minister with his very own “Harper Doctrine,” spelled out as follows:

     “We know where our interests lie and who our friends are,” he declared, “and we take strong, principled positions in our dealings with other nations, whether popular or not.”

I’m no foreign policy guy, and John Ibbitson has taught me more about how Canada works over the years than I like to admit. But apart from supporting Israel “four-square, without reservation” — which Harper does seem keen on — I don’t see the evidence for the rest of it. “No foreign aid funding for abortion” doesn’t seem like much of a doctrine to me. As for “aggressively asserting our sovereignty in the North” … how so?

Andrew Potter, “Canada’s foreign policy, in black and white and orange”, Maclean’s, 2011-06-13

June 8, 2011

Ontario’s (pathetic) choices in the next election

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:04

Read ’em and weep:

Dalton’s McGuinty’s record is so well known it barely justifies repeating: the health tax he promised not to introduce, but did. The HST. The eco tax. The soaring power bills. The epic borrowing. The multiple boondoggles. The “wage freeze” that turns out not to apply to police, nurses, civil servants or anyone who actually gets paid by the government. The big bonus for eHealth workers for overseeing a billion dollars in wasted spending. Stop me before I break into tears.

Tim Hudak says he’ll end the agony, but can’t be believed. Sorry Tim, but it’s true. If the campaign platform recently released by the Tories was handed in as a project in a first-year finance class, it would be returned with suggestions that the author find another line of interest. Like line dancing; something that doesn’t involve numbers, or adding and subtracting. Mr. Hudak says he’ll raise spending on all the important programs, but make up for it by finding “waste”. We all know that isn’t going to happen. Politicians never find waste. What they find is that if they keep spending money, their chances of re-election improve. The federal Tories have been promising to find waste for five years now, and have jacked up spending every year.

It’s been widely understood that this election was the Tories’ to lose . . . and they’re determined to do exactly that. This is how the NDP might finally get another chance to form a government . . . perhaps the misery of the Rae experiment has finally been forgotten. Between McGuinty and Hudak, the NDP could run a cardboard cut-out of Jack Layton and be (significantly) more appealing to the average Ontario voter.

June 7, 2011

Intolerance of educational experimentation

Filed under: Britain, Education, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:07

Brendan O’Neill surveys the range of responses to the proposed establishment of a new private for-profit university in London:

It is ‘odious’, ‘repugnant’, ‘parasitic’, ‘hypocritical’, a ‘travesty’, a ‘money-grubbing’ scheme, and ‘it would be better all-round if its doors never opened’. Wow. What is it? A whorehouse? A Satanic church? A junk-food chain that specialises in feeding fat straight into children’s veins via a drip? In fact it’s a proposed new London-based university, called the New College of the Humanities, which says it will teach students the best of literature, culture and history for a fee of £18,000 a year. And yet judging from the unhinged coverage, you could be forgiven for thinking that someone had proposed opening a Ratko Mladic fanclub in Islington.

The response to Professor AC Grayling’s educational experiment, for which he has recruited other ‘star’ professors such as Richard Dawkins and Niall Ferguson, has been extraordinarily intolerant. No sooner had the press release about the new university been emailed than Grayling and Co. were being accused of selling out working-class students and the ideal of ‘education for all’ by opening an institution that only the wealthy (and those lucky enough to secure a scholarship) will be able to afford. As one journalist summarised, the initiative has met with ‘universal scorn from commentators in the national press’. Journalists have described the university as a ‘disgrace’, ‘nauseous’ and ‘disgustingly elitist’. The Twittersphere, always keen to ape the pronouncements of its heroes on the op-ed pages, heaped 140-character fury upon Grayling’s vain/pathetic/evil/doomed initiative.

Not to be outdone, members of the University of London Union and other radical student groups called an ‘emergency meeting’ last night. Not an emergency meeting to discuss the corrosion of liberty and free speech in the West or the future of the Arab uprisings — as radical students might have done in the past — but an emergency meeting to discuss how to crush this new uni. ULU’s vice president called for it to be blacklisted, insisting that the University of London refuse to recognise or work with this ‘repugnant’ institution. There was a serious debate about how to shut it down before it had even opened. One left-wing group said we must ‘stop Grayling’s sham university’ because it’s the ‘thin end of the wedge [of privatisation]’. Without so much as a whiff of self-awareness or irony, it went on to describe New College as ‘an attack on free education’. Yes, that’s right — this educational institution must be smashed in order to defend ‘free education’. Perhaps we should also burn its books in the name of defending book-reading.

Of course, if the quality of teaching at the New College of the Humanities is not up to an acceptable standard, it will fail and the university will close. That does not appear to be any part of the motivation for all the screaming and wailing. It rather implies that they’re actually afraid it will succeed, which might start raising questions about the existing university system.

June 6, 2011

SlutWalk arrives in Britain

Filed under: Britain, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:32

Brendan O’Neill is not impressed with the SlutWalkers, calling them “the most anti-social sluts on earth”:

The most annoying thing about the SlutWalk phenomenon, which arrived in Britain at the weekend, is not its knowingly provocative name or even its attempt to make a serious political project of the frazzled Nineties pop trend of Girl Power (“I wear sexy stuff, therefore I am powerful!”). No, it is its inherently anti-social nature. These are the most anti-social sluts on earth. Where I grew up, the catty phrase “she enjoys the company of men” was often used as a euphemism for “slut”, but you could never say that of those taking part in SlutWalk. On the contrary, many of the SlutWalkers seem to see interaction with men — especially cocky, swaggering men — as a dangerous and risky thing, best avoided.

Of course, no one — except maybe Peter Sutcliffe — disagrees with SlutWalk’s spectacularly uncontroversial message that women should be free to dress as they please without getting raped. But it is quite different to expect to be able to dress as you please without attracting *any* attention from blokes. Yet that is what some SlutWalkers seem to be demanding: effectively the right to dress provocatively without ever being looked at, commented on, whistled at or spoken to by a member of the opposite sex. Unless such interaction is clearly solicited, of course.

[. . .]

The high-minded feminists who make up SlutWalk’s supporters and cheerleaders seem to want to opt out of this everyday social interaction, to dress as sluttishly as they like while also being surrounded by some magic forcefield, legally enforced perhaps, which protects them from any unwanted male gaze or whistle. They are prudes disguised as sluts, self-styled victims pretending to be vixens, astonishingly anti-social creatures who imagine it is possible to parade through society dressed outrageously without any member of that society ever making a comment about or to them. This is the highly individuated politics of fear — fear of men, fear of unplanned-for banter, fear of sexual licence — dressed up as radical feminism. But to update an old saying: no slut is an island.

June 2, 2011

When shipyards produce pork instead of effective ships for the Navy

Filed under: Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:07

Shipbuilding for the navy has traditionally been a good source of pork for politicians to dole out as their political fortunes require. The US Navy is having monumental problems with the quality of ships, but the problem isn’t easy to fix:

The U.S. Navy continues to have serious problems with shoddy shipbuilders. The latest incident involved a support ship, the 12,000 ton, 172 meter (534 foot) long radar ship, the Howard O. Lorenzen. The ship recently failed its acceptance tests. The Lorenzen was built to carry a special, billion dollar, radar used to track ICBM tests. This tracking activity also supports verification of missile and nuclear weapons treaty compliance. The Lorenzen replaces a similar ship that is over 30 years old. The acceptance tests found serious problems with the steering, electrical system, damage control, anchor control, and aviation (helicopter) facilities. The yard that built the Lorenzen, VT Halter Marine, builds military and civilian ships, and has had problems with some of the other military ships it has built recently. Like the Lorenzen, the other ships were late, over budget and suffered quality control problems.

[. . .]

While the admirals are correct in blaming the shipyards for many of the problems, the navy shares a lot of the blame as well. It is, after all, the navy that draws up the contracts, and supplies inspectors during construction. However, inspectors are regularly deceived and lied to (about the quality of work and supervision and known defects being fixed). While Congressional interference can be blamed as well, in the end, it’s the navy that has the most to say, and do, about how the ships are built. The problem is, admirals who stand up and take on the contractors and politicians put their careers on the line. The ship builder deploys a large number of lobbyists and has many key politicians as allies.

[. . .]

The problems with nuclear subs and carriers were minor compared to the LPD 17 travails. Still, the sheer extent of the problems, across so many ships, is very disturbing. This may be why a growing number of admirals are willing to take career risks, and try for some fundamental reform, and finally fix the “system” that turns out more problems than warships. Victory is not assured. The shipyards and their suppliers have powerful allies in Congress. All that money translates into votes that gets incumbent politicians reelected. Congress is not inclined to attack this kind of patronage and pork, since nearly all members of Congress depend on it. The admirals can openly complain, but offended legislators can quietly cripple the careers of those critics. The smart money is betting against the good guys here. So far, the smart money is right. But the bad builder mess is so vast, expensive and messy that even many politicians are calling for some fundamental changes.

The poster children for defective ships is the San Antonio LPD 17 class of amphibious ships.

May 30, 2011

Yet another politician has Twitter exposure issues

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:47

First, it was the turn of congressman Anthony Weiner to have his Twitter account hacked. Now it’s an Ontario Tory candidate whose Blackberry was stolen, and a picture of his genitals posted on his Twitter account:

Rookie PC candidate George Lepp says he’s embarrassed that a photo of his family jewels was posted on his campaign Twitter account for about 20 minutes before it was quickly unzipped.
Alan Sakach, communications director for the Ontario Conservatives, said the photo was inadvertently taken by Lepp’s BlackBerry when it was in his front pocket. The photo was posted after someone took it from the candidate for the riding of Niagara Falls, according to Sakach.

“He is pretty upset and embarrassed,” Sakach said of a photo that was posted on Lepp’s account Sunday. “It was removed as soon as it came to his attention.”

The Toronto Sun obtained grainy copies of the Twitter page images before they were removed.

The pictures — too graphic to reproduce in the newspaper — are of a man naked from the waist down, showing a close up of his penis and his crossed legs.

As commenters on that article point out, it’s hard to believe the “official” story in this case:

Antinephalist:
George Lepp’s pockets are transparent, are they? And the photo was taken while he wasn’t wearing pants, that apparently have transparent pockets?

jaysfan33:
so wait…this guy’s phone took a picture of his twig and berries from his pocket??!?! Then his phone happened to be stolen…then the thief looked through all the guys pictures on the phone found the shot in question and then uploaded it to twitter…yeah that sounds pretty likely.

what probably happened: this prev took a shot of his junk when boozed up and then thought it would be funny to post it online, some time passed and he remember oh wait, im running for office, this might not look good, so he took it down…unfortunately for him the snake was out of the bag

H/T to “Lickmuffin”, who posted this link in a comment on the original article about Congressman Weiner.

NASA’s changing goals for Orion

Filed under: Politics, Space, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:56

The ever-sarcastic Lewis Page looks at how NASA has been trying to reposition their planned Orion spaceship:

NASA has declared that its pork-tastic Orion moonship — whose primary mission disappeared with President Obama’s decision that there will be no manned US return to the Moon — is now to be a “deep space transportation system”, suggesting that the agency plans to send it on missions beyond Earth orbit.

It remains unclear how the newly-renamed Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) will travel into space, when it will do so and what its destination might be — though a near-Earth asteroid is a likely possibility. A major reason for Orion’s continued survival appears to be ignoble porkbarrel politics — but there is a tantalising possibility that it might fly beyond Earth orbit in the relatively near future.

What Page calls NASA’s “pork map” shows why the MPCV has strong, bi-partisan political support regardless of its actual utility for the space program:

Regardless of the political support, however, the most likely view of US federal government finances indicates that Orion/MPCV won’t be viable in the proposed timeframe. There’s a non-governmental choice, however:

Famous geekbiz-kingpin Elon Musk and his upstart rocket company SpaceX have come from nowhere in just eight years to successfully test-fly their brand new and very cheap Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule, already apparently quite capable of performing the ISS supply mission. Only a few years ago, many in NASA and the established industry were arguing that this would never happen.

It’s also no secret that Musk and SpaceX are working on a new Merlin 2 rocket engine, much bigger than the current Merlin 1 which propels the Falcon 9. A multicore heavy lifter based on Merlin 2 would be in the 100-tonne-plus realm required to mount a Mars mission, and will surely be the cheapest offering competing at the 2015 heavy lift Mars-rocket decision.

May 29, 2011

Are we facing a crash in the value of the US dollar?

Filed under: Economics, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:25

Conrad Black certainly makes a strong case to expect it sooner, rather than later:

When Barack Obama took office, the official normal money supply of the United States was about $1.1-trillion. The $3-trillion in federal budget deficits that have been run up since then have largely, technically, escaped the money supply, though accretions have almost doubled the official total, an unheard of rate of growth (about 40% annualized) in a hard-currency country. About 70% of this debt has been paid by the issuance of bonds to the central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve, a subsidiary of the United States government. Whatever the balance sheets say, this has produced the effect of a money-supply increase, which has brought pump-priming to a level of over-achievement not seen since Noah felt the compulsion to build an ark. And the annual trillion-dollar deluge is forecast to continue for a decade.

The world’s reserve currency, the fabled vehicle of the “faith and credit of the United States,” is now virtual money — a symbol for all the other massive problems afflicting the U.S. economy. The imported share of America’s oil consumption, for instance, has gone from 20% to 60%. Large suppliers like Iran and Venezuela have become hostile countries. Yet Americans remain neurotic about paying half the gas price of other oil-importing countries.

But he says that we shouldn’t look to Europe to save the day:

Meanwhile, the European Union is a water-logged vessel in a tempest, frantically bailing. In the six weeks since French finance minister Christine Lagarde last bravely proclaimed her personal fantasy that Greece would not default, the interest on Greek government notes has risen from 20% to 26%. Germany will not indefinitely remain so encumbered with guilt for the Third Reich that it will go on eating the costs of the false prospectus Goldman Sachs assisted Greece and others to file when they joined the Euro. The Germans have only tolerated it up to now because the strain Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and eventually others put on the European banking system and the Euro,keep the Euro in fairly close downward mode with the U.S. dollar, which assists German exports. What a splendid irony that Germany, reviled as the rampaging hun in olden time, is now being entreated by genuflecting masses of its former ungrateful subjects to occupy and dominate them again, at least economically. (The Bundesbank’s uniforms are less stylish than those of the Wehrmacht.)

The EU is in hot contention with the United States as the Sick Man of the Great World Economic Powers, because less than 40% of Eurozone citizens work and over 60% are on benefits of some sort. But not to be discounted in this gripping Olympic contest for total fiscal immolation is geriatric, debt-ridden, stagnating Japan, a great but terribly beleaguered and demoralized country.

How’s that for your daily dose of DOOM? Pretty DOOM-ish, isn’t it?

Jim Treacher calls for investigation into hacking of Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Twitter and Facebook accounts

Filed under: Law, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:13

He’s quite right: this sort of thing must be stopped:

I don’t agree much with Rep. Weiner politically, but he’s a congressman and this is a serious crime he’s alleging. Not to mention that identity theft can happen to any of us at any time. Therefore, Rep. Weiner must call for an official investigation. He owes it to himself, to all other victims of cybercrime, and to his fellow members of Congress who might also be at risk. Defrauding someone’s online accounts in order to embarrass and defame them is unconscionable. The culprit must be brought to justice.

And if Rep. Weiner doesn’t want an investigation, somebody should ask him why not.

If you haven’t been following this, the smart money is betting that he won’t want any such investigation to be launched.

May 28, 2011

Jack Layton: “I’m proud to call myself a socialist … But I don’t go around shouting it out.”

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:29

Chris Selley takes a longer look at Jack Layton, the man who would be king prime minister:

Ask a socialist with revolutionary tendencies if Mr. Layton is a socialist, however, and the answer will probably be a resounding “no.” Mr. Layton, writer Stan Hister complained on Rabble.ca in 2004, “is a political doughnut. All sugar icing on the outside (or make that maple glaze) and a big hole in the middle.” The doughnut hole ought to be filled with “an alternative to capitalism,” he argued. “But it’s been a very long time since the NDP even pretended this was on its agenda.”

He’s right about that. And good heavens, just look at where it’s gotten them. Nobody inside or outside the New Democrats saw 103 seats coming on May 2, of course — 44 of them purloined from the Bloc Québécois, 17 from the Liberals and seven from the Conservatives. But if you ask those who have followed Mr. Layton’s political career since his days as a left-wing standard-bearer in Toronto municipal politics, be they friend or foe, you’ll find they don’t put much past Mr. Layton’s political abilities.

“There’s no question that Jack became leader of the NDP not because he wanted to forever lead a band in the wilderness. He took on the leadership of the NDP because he optimistically believed the NDP could be a major, if not the major force in government,” says Myer Siemiatycki, a professor of politics at Ryerson University and long-time friend of Mr. Layton.

Circumstances had to conspire in Mr. Layton’s favour, of course. Even he won’t admit to doing anything much differently on the campaign trail this time around. (Was his smile bigger, perhaps? “My mouth is the same size,” he laughs.) Reasonably centrist people had to be fed up enough to vote for a party that had once been to the left as Reform was to the right, and that had never governed federally. And it was nice of the Liberals to release a platform calculated to woo NDP-leaning voters, inadvertently making Mr. Layton’s party seem even more anodyne.

May 27, 2011

Colby Cosh: It wasn’t a market failure that caused the sub-prime fiasco

Filed under: Economics, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:52

He’s quite right, not that the powers-that-be will take away the correct lesson from the experience:

What I see when I look at the origins of the financial pandemic is the story “government-sponsored enterprises that subsidize crazy lending practices and puppetize legislators fail.” Mortgage-writing institutions did things throughout the late 1990s and early oh-ohs that weren’t just likely to turn out badly; they made enormous amounts of loans that were practically certain to go bust in the short-to-medium term, loans that your mother could have told you would go sour. It wasn’t a “free” market that relaxed mortgage underwriting standards to the point of annihilation; it wasn’t a “free” market that put unskilled workers in million-dollar homes in the Sand States, or that spent too long ignoring the rising default rates that resulted.

We know this, in part, because we know how slightly freer mortgage markets traditionally behaved; they “redlined” the living heck out of low-income neighbourhoods. Because redlining resulted in racial discrimination — critics would just say it is racial discrimination — there has been a concerted attempt among economists to absolve the major U.S. anti-redlining statute, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, from any role in creating the housing bubble. Obviously it won’t do to pin the crisis on a 1977 law, but there is such a thing as the straw that broke the camel’s back; the CRA was followed by an even more intense fusillade of statutory and regulatory measures consciously designed to increase home ownership in America without making homes less expensive and valuable per se.

May 23, 2011

The heterosexual wedding boycott

Filed under: Law, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:13

Rich Benjamin is engaged in a boycott of his friends’ heterosexual weddings because most states do not allow homosexual weddings. He thinks he’s being ideologically pure and striking a blow for equality. What he’s really doing is being an ass and alienating his friends without cause:

I picked up my jangling cellphone one recent Saturday to hear the elated voice of Zachary, my longtime buddy and college classmate. “I just proposed to Caroline,” Zach announced, inviting me to the wedding and angling to plot logistics. “So when are you flying in?”

“Oh, I’m not coming to your wedding,” I said.

It’s true. I’m boycotting all heterosexual weddings.

How utterly absurd to celebrate an institution that I am banned from in most of the country. It puzzles me, truth be told, that wedding invitations deluge me. Does a vegan frequent summer pig roasts? Do devout evangelicals crash couple-swapping parties? Do undocumented immigrants march in Minuteman rallies?

I know what he’s trying to do, but it’s hard to think of a more hurtful way of pointing out the inequality of gay and straight couples to people — one assumes because they’re close enough to him to invite him to their wedding — who are already on his side.

A poll last month showed Americans are split on same-sex marriage. A narrow majority, 51 percent, supports it, while 47 percent do not. Though Zach falls into that slim majority, he scolds me for being “peevish.” He says he resents me for blowing off his special day, for putting political beliefs ahead of our friendship and for punishing him for others’ deeds. But screaming zealots aren’t the only obstacles to equal marriage rights; the passivity of good people like Zach who tacitly fortify the inequality of this institution are also to blame.

They’re proof of a double standard: Even well-meaning heterosexuals often describe their own nuptials in deeply personal terms, above and beyond politics, but tend to dismiss same-sex marriage as a political cause, and gay people’s desire to marry as political maneuvering.

What many straight people consistently forget is that same-sex couples aren’t demanding marriage to make a political statement or to accrue “special rights.”

But you are using their marriage to make a political statement. Consistency? You make a point of explaining that you’re not an activist yet you scold Zach for his “passivity”?

May 22, 2011

QotD: The rise of the “new aristocracy”

Filed under: Europe, France, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:39

A man is innocent until proven guilty, and it will be for a New York court to determine what happened in M Strauss-Kahn’s suite at the Sofitel. It may well be that’s he the hapless victim of a black Muslim widowed penniless refugee maid — although, if that’s the defense my lawyer were proposing to put before a Manhattan jury, I’d be inclined to suggest he’s the one who needs to plead insanity. Whatever the head of the IMF did or didn’t do, the reaction of the French elites is most instructive. “We and the Americans do not belong to the same civilization,” sniffed Jean Daniel, editor of Le Nouvel Observateur, insisting that the police should have known that Strauss-Kahn was “not like other men” and wondering why “this chambermaid was regarded as worthy and beyond any suspicion.” Bernard-Henri Lévy, the open-shirted, hairy-chested Gallic intellectual who talked Sarkozy into talking Obama into launching the Libyan war, is furious at the lèse-majesté of this impertinent serving girl and the jackanapes of America’s “absurd” justice system, not to mention this ghastly “American judge who, by delivering him to the crowd of photo hounds, pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other.”

Well, OK. Why shouldn’t DSK (as he’s known in France) be treated as “a subject of justice like any other”? Because, says BHL (as he’s known in France), of everything that Strauss-Kahn has done at the IMF to help the world “avoid the worst.” In particular, he has made the IMF “more favorable to proletarian nations and, among the latter, to the most fragile and vulnerable.” What is one fragile and vulnerable West African maid when weighed in the scales of history against entire fragile and vulnerable proletarian nations? Yes, he Kahn!

Before you scoff at Euro-lefties willing to argue for 21st century droit de seigneur, recall the grisly eulogies for the late Edward Kennedy. “At the end of the day,” said Sen. Evan Bayh, “he cared most about the things that matter to ordinary people.” The standard line of his obituarists was that this was Ted’s penance for Chappaquiddick and Mary Jo Kopechne — or, as the Aussie columnist Tim Blair put it, “She died so that the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act might live.” Great men who are prone to Big Government invariably have Big Appetites, and you comely serving wenches who catch the benign sovereign’s eye or anything else he’s shooting your way should keep in mind the Big Picture. Yes, Ted Ken!

Nor are such dispensations confined to Great Men’s trousers. Timothy Geithner failed to pay the taxes he owed the United States Treasury but that’s no reason not to make him head of the United States Treasury. His official explanation for this lapse was that, unlike losers like you, he was unable to follow the simple yes/no prompts of Turbo Tax: In that sense, unlike the Frenchman and the maid, Geithner’s defense is that she wasn’t asking for it — or, if she was, he couldn’t understand the question. Nevertheless, just as only Dominique could save the European economy, so only Timmy could save the U.S. economy. Yes, they Kahn!

Mark Steyn, “The unzippered princelingand the serving wench”, Orange County Register, 2011-05-20

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