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Geopolitics

Dominique Strauss-Kahn: A Scandal Waiting To Happen

With the IMF chief facing allegations of attempted rape of a hotel maid, the French left’s paper of record profiles Strauss-Kahn’s “women problem,” described as hedonistic and on the verge of harassment.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn: A Scandal Waiting To Happen
Rapahelle Bacqué

PARIS - He has always had a double reputation. For some time now, he has been recognized for his genuine economic capabilities and his careless behavior, his sparkling intelligence coupled with an apparent dilettantism, a mind as brilliantly clear as his relationship toward women is troublesome.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn has long been seen as a figure whose promising talent has lived side-by-side with what his friends – before his May 16 charge of sexual assault for allegedly attacking a hotel maid in New York – would discreetly refer to as an "unbearable lightness of being."

For years, Strauss-Kahn, known throughout France as "DSK," was saddled with a troubling reputation that worried even his top collaborators. "Too hedonistic," insiders of France's political left would say, ever fearful of potential attacks against him. In this word "hedonistic," so incompatible with the dreams of a righteous progressivism, those closest to him would see the risks of overconfidence in his own intelligence, alongside a certain free spirit, a taste for material wealth and a frenzied desire to seduce women.

This "lightness of being," a reference to Milan Kundera's 1984 novel, has caused him several significant stumbles just as he was appearing to reach the top. After being named French Finance Minister in the late 1990s, he was forced out of office in 2000 after corruption accusations, of which he was eventually cleared.

People gossiped about his private life as well, even as he married his third wife in 1991, the television star Anne Sinclair. In Paris, at the bar of the Lutetia Hotel, a favorite haunt of many a Socialist Party head, one could spot him being too pushy with young women. His advisor, Gilles Finchelstein, his most trusted friend, once drew up a list of the faults that lined up across his political path: flaunted frivolity, and an attachment to a bourgeois lifestyle. But despite criticism, DSK remained a major political player thanks in part to the networks that he established within his own party.

At a dinner in 2006, just before the Socialist party primaries in which he ran against Ségolène Royal, his friend Alain Minc, a prominent French businessman and political advisor, told him exactly what he thought of his presidential ambitions. "You'll never be capable of such asceticism," Minc said, to which DSK responded, "Maybe not for my whole life…but for two or three years, sure!"

In the press however, his taste for women had become a subject, broached in veiled terms. While campaigning with his wife, he had to respond to a question in a June 2006 interview with L'Express magazine: "You have the reputation of being a seducer. Do you fear the power of rumor in public life?" His return-to-sender response was: "This is not a weapon I would use." The same weekly asked Anne Sinclair if she suffered because of his reputation as a seducer. "On the contrary, I'm rather proud of it! It's important for a political man to be able to seduce."

No charges filed

At that time, the journalists Christophe Deloire and Christophe Dubois published a best-selling book, Sexus Politicus (Albin Michel, 2006), dedicating a chapter to the private life of DSK. The testimonies were anonymous and no complaints were ever brought forth. His loss to Ségolène Royal in the primary for the right to take on Nicolas Sarkozy was chalked up solely to his political positions, rather than his private behavior.

In 2007, he was given the opportunity to make a quick comeback, as the head of the International Monetary Fund. At the time of his nomination, Jean Quatremer of Libération pointed out in his blog: "Strauss-Kahn's only real problem is his behavior with women. Too pushy, he often narrowly excapes charges of harassment. This fault of his is well-known by the media, but no one speaks about it…" Several months earlier, on February 5, 2007, during an interview on the Paris Première program, a young woman, Tristane Banon, daughter of a Socialist party regional council member, said Strauss-Kahn had attempted to rape her in 2002. But the television network, fearing defamation charges, covered the name of the former minister with a bleep. Her failure to press charges casted doubt on her testimony.

In 2009, the book written by Antonin André and Karim Rissouli, Hold-Ups, Arnaques et Trahisons (Scams and Betrayals), reported the comments – half-heartedly denied – of Sarkozy supporter Frédéric Lefebvre to some journalists that: "DSK wouldn't last a week. We have photos, they exist! We will circulate them, and the French will not be pleased." A threat to which the head of the IMF responded by asking Nicolas Sarkozy "to stop the rumors."

In these last months, DSK has shown an awareness of the criticisms that he could face. At the editorial offices of the Libération daily, where he was having an off-the-record lunch meeting on April 28, he enumerated three: "Cash, women, and my being Jewish." As far as his religion is concerned, he was expecting someone to take advantage of a declaration he made years before to the Tribune Juive that he "woke up each morning asking himself how he could be useful to Israel." As for money, he was able to notice its immediate consequences with the circulation of a recent photograph showing him next to one of his advisor's Porsche sports car.

But in front of the staff of Libération, he had begun with the subject of women: "Yes, I love women…So what?" Then he imagined a scenario in which his reputation could be ruined by a false claim by "a woman…raped in a parking lot and to whom someone promised 500,000 or a million euros in exchange for her story…"

Read the original article in French.

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Society

Influencer Union? The Next Labor Rights Battle May Be For Social Media Creators

With the end of the Hollywood writers and actors strikes, the creator economy is the next frontier for organized labor.

​photograph of a smartphone on a selfie stick

Smartphone on a selfie stick

Steve Gale/Unsplash
David Craig and Stuart Cunningham

Hollywood writers and actors recently proved that they could go toe-to-toe with powerful media conglomerates. After going on strike in the summer of 2023, they secured better pay, more transparency from streaming services and safeguards from having their work exploited or replaced by artificial intelligence.

But the future of entertainment extends well beyond Hollywood. Social media creators – otherwise known as influencers, YouTubers, TikTokers, vloggers and live streamers – entertain and inform a vast portion of the planet.

✉️ You can receive our Bon Vivant selection of fresh reads on international culture, food & travel directly in your inbox. Subscribe here.

For the past decade, we’ve mapped the contours and dimensions of the global social media entertainment industry. Unlike their Hollywood counterparts, these creators struggle to be seen as entertainers worthy of basic labor protections.

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