Let's See If We Got This Right

[NOTE: This entry has been updated (1) as of 3:06 PM Eastern on 4 Jul. See below.]

Let's see if we got this right.

A hotel chambermaid says she was sexually assaulted by a man in his NYC hotel room when she went in to clean. The man turns out to be none other than Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the I.M.F. and one of France's most prominent citizens, a strong contender for the presidency of France at the next election, and one of the most influential and well-connected men in the world. On the word of the chambermaid and on her word alone, Mr. Strauss-Kahn is arrested and dragged off an Air France jet at Kennedy International Airport, handed over to NYC detectives, promptly arraigned in a Manhattan courtroom and remanded with no bail to Rikers Island prison to await a Grand Jury hearing.

Did we get that right? What's that, we did?

Well, it sounds perfectly reasonable to us. After all, in America all persons are equal under the law, are they not? Why shouldn't the uncorroborated complaint of a mere chambermaid charging criminal sexual behavior on the part of the offender be acted upon in that way no matter how prominent, influential, and well-connected the man against whom the complaint was lodged. It's merely a routine exercise of American jurisprudence, right?

When pigs fly, maybe. If this entire squalid business doesn't in the end turn out to be an engineered setup of Mr. Strauss-Kahn we'll eat the proverbial crow — raw, literally.

---

Update (3:06 PM Eastern on 4 Jul): Just to bring this entry up to date in the light of recent events, a reader remarked after reading the above:

Yeah, I thought it smacked of set-up from the get-go, and the list of suspects is pretty extensive. [...] So the set-up scenario seems to be ever more likely, with the only question, who engineered it? What a roster of suspects!

But, no doubt, it'll play out that the woman acted alone. Fall guy, er, girl...

to which we responded:

Unless, of course, it's the woman herself who under pressure spills the beans; precisely what I expect to happen — if she's not murdered first, that is.

Stay tuned.