Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Win Ben Stein's Misogyny

I suppose the choice was obvious, but if you have an international economist like Dominique Strauss-Kahn who has been accused of rape (and there's the preponderance of evidence against DSK) and you were taking bets on who would write the inevitable "It's the victim's fault!" article, of course the answer would be Ben Stein in the American Spectator.

It's filled with sheer genius like this:

In life, events tend to follow patterns. People who commit crimes tend to be criminals, for example. Can anyone tell me any economists who have been convicted of violent sex crimes?

Oh and it gets better. 

People accuse other people of crimes all of the time. What do we know about the complainant besides that she is a hotel maid? I love and admire hotel maids. They have incredibly hard jobs and they do them uncomplainingly. I am sure she is a fine woman. On the other hand, I have had hotel maids that were complete lunatics, stealing airline tickets from me, stealing money from me, throwing away important papers, stealing medications from me. How do we know that this woman's word was good enough to put Mr. Strauss-Kahn straight into a horrific jail? Putting a man in Riker's is serious business. Maybe more than a few minutes of investigation is merited before it's done.

And better.

I don't know Mr. Strauss-Kahn. I have never laid eyes on him in person. He may well, in the future, be found guilty of atrocious conduct towards the complainant and maybe towards others. But, so far, he's innocent, and he's being treated shamefully. If he's found guilty, there will be plenty of time to criticize him and imprison him. But nothing has been proved yet except that the way this case has been handled so far is an embarrassment to this country.

You know what DSK is being treated like?  Like a person who has been accused of committing a heinous crime.   What does he want, an achievement badge?  If anything we should be proud that regardless of your status that if you are accused of a crime and there's enough evidence to back the accusation (and according to the NYPD there is) that the police act.

The best part here is that Stein admits he doesn't know DSK from Adam, so why is he singling the economist out for being treated too harshly?  Just because he's an economist doesn't mean he's incapable of being a criminal. 

What's an embarrassment to this country is all the folks we let get away with things because they have power and status...see Wall Street.  DSK deserves and will get his day in court, and so will his accuser.  That's more than I can say for the millions of Americans who got screwed in the financial crisis.

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