Sex, Lies, and Whatnot

The sexual antics of Frenchman Dominique Strauss-Kahn have thrown a monkey wrench into the politics of France, with the International Monetary Fund director and Socialist presidential prospect having been accused of criminal sexual conduct and, now, the need for the opposition Socialist party to find an alternative nominee to oppose President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's French presidential election. Strauss-Kahn, of course, is accused of forcibly trying to have sex with a chambermaid in a New York hotel, and the fact that it was not consensual makes it more than a case of yet another Frenchman having a fling. This affair may have brought out the worst in Strauss-Kahn, but it brought out the best in the American jurisprudence, as he has been treated no differently than other criminal suspects in our legal system (which we got from the British).

When I found out that rumors of a setup abounded in France, I immediately suspected that it was a belief that the Americans framed Strauss-Kahn to prevent a leftist government from taking over in Paris. In fact, the French suspected it was the dirty work of Sarkozy's conservative party; they believe a Sarkozy operative first reported on it. But people in France give that theory much less credibility than they did when this whole business started. Strauss-Kahn himself is in Rikers Island awaiting further legal action and is under a suicide watch. He knows he's blown it.

Meanwhile, on the other coast, Arnold Schwarzenegger is seeing his own credibility in tatters. Praised for being a different kind of Republican as governor of California for his strong environmental record and his tough stand against Big Oil, Schwartzie is now getting his tenure as governor re-assessed in light of the revelation that he fathered a child out of wedlock. See, it turns out that he didn't just cheat on Maria Shriver. He cheated on everyone else in California, cutting the state's vehicle license fee when he took office and trying to plug the ensuing budget deficit with a $15 billion bond that amounted to borrowing against the future. When he did cut spending, he cut programs for disabled children, the kind of children his mother-in-law Eunice Shriver devoted her life to helping. The result is a mess that Governor Jerry Brown will possibly need a second consecutive term to clean up.

Schwarzenegger's sexual history came up in the 2003 recall election in which he was elected to replace incumbent Gray Davis, and Democrats attempted to make it an issue, but Arnold's media savvy and star power prevented pesky questions about his unwanted sexual advances toward other women. The rumors were brushed aside, like Davis would be. As Martin Bashir told Ed Schultz on Schultz's MSNBC show last night, Schwarzenegger has been lying and cheating since he began his bodybuilding career, when he took steroids on a regular basis in his competition. It's that sort of corner cutting that made him an unfaithful husband and an unfaithful governor.