Manacled, unshaven, and dazzled by media lights, a grim and shaken Dominique Strauss-Kahn did the "perp walk" toward a Rikers Island jail cell. French observers called the stunning fall of the managing director of the International Monetary Fund a Greek tragedy. Most rushed to defend him as a respected national figure who had likely been headed to the French presidency.
Americans tended to judge "DSK" (as Strauss-Kahn is known in France) as a disgusting, violent sex criminal -already showcased as a "perpetrator" by New York police. These sharply differing views highlight again how wide the Atlantic really is in perceptions of justice, culture, rationality, media and class.
The scandal, most French feel, is about a U.S. justice system visually sabotaging the presumption of innocence. Sober top jurist Robert Badinter (a close friend of DSK) called the perp walk "a lynching, murder by media." In France, it's illegal to insinuate guilt by parading a handcuffed accused before news cameras.
French intellectuals, also pals of DSK, spluttered their fury at U.S. justice. All-purpose philosopher-opinionator Bernard-Henri Levy (as BHL, an acronym guy like DSK) assured that his renowned skirt-chasing friend was "not a Neanderthal." On the perp walk, BHL said: "Nothing in the world justifies throwing a man to the dogs like that."
English-speaking opinion-makers, however, saw DSK's humiliation as noble evidence that U.S. justice treats everybody - rich or poor, famous or obscure - exactly the same. Mistreats everybody the same might seem more apt. But in American minds, sticking to strict police procedures designed partly to prevent escapes is a normal precaution.
Why else do U.S. police routinely, and rather gleefully, choreograph the shaming of suspects? Because spiriting them in and out in blacked-out vans doesn't delight the police's key publics: picture-hungry media and crowd-pandering elected district attorneys. » | Keith Spicer | OTTAWA CITIZEN | Saturday, May 21, 2011
