So French Eurocrat Dominique Strauss-Kahn, key official of the International Monetary Fund, stands accused of attempting to rape an African-immigrant housemaid at a luxury hotel in New York. And the left-wing in France is outraged according to this report on National Review Online: "In French press accounts, one distills a veritable caricature: 'How dare those backward Americans do this? Do they have any idea of who Strauss-Kahn is and what he represents, or how we civilized and sophisticated Europeans deal with these dime-a-dozen sort of low-rent sexual accusations against men of culture from mere chambermaids?'”
According to an international report in the Record Searchlight, Strauss-Kahn was widely expected to run for the presidency of the French Republic despite reports of his affair with a subordinate. Indeed, his reputation as a womanizer had given him the nickname, "the great seducer."
But what I find interesting about Dominique Strauss-Kahn's alleged sexual assault on the African housemaid in New York is its parallel with a key incident in Dickens's Tale of Two Cities. The sin that motivates the unjust accusation against Charles Darnay (Evremonde) in Dickens's story was the rape of a young peasant woman by his long-dead father, the French noble, Count Evremonde. It seems that the French elite have yet to learn the lesson that Dickens took from the French Revolution, that if you oppress the masses of ordinary people without limit and/or treat them with utter contempt, sooner or later your class (or you) will pay the price.
La plus ca change, la plus c'est la meme chose. N'est ce pas?
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