Ian Buruma on DSK and the clash of cultures

Dominique Strauss-Kahn returned to Paris a free man on Sunday. France is too fond of DSK and justifies his behaviour, complains the writer Ian Burama in the liberal-conservative daily Corriere della Sera, seeing this as another form of clash of cultures, that of a prudish America against the seductive French: "The answers to September 11 and reactions to the DSK case have little in common, with one exception: once again the clash of cultures was thrashed out in a misleading way. France interprets the arrest of DSK as a retaliation for the protection it gives to another man accused of sexual abuse: Roman Polanski. And as retribution for introducing the Burqa ban. In other words, the case of Strauss-Kahn has been cast as a clash of cultures which is in turn related to battle of the sexes and, if only peripherally, of religions. The problem with this cultural approach is that it is often used to defend or justify the attitude of the powerful vis-à-vis the weak. ... Both Polanski and DSK were caught up in sex offences with women from a social class and age group different to their own. The sympathy for their 'male weakness' basically tends to justify their attitude as powerful men in relation to powerless women."

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