DSK Affair: Depressing Saga for France

It goes without saying that the news that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, or D.S.K., as he is called everywhere, the head of the I.M.F., long time French socialist politician and the leading candidate to oppose President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year’s election, has been arrested for attempted rape here in New York—and taken off a plane at J.F.K., at that—has shocked, overwhelmed, and generally bouleverséd all of Paris. (His lawyer has said that he plans to plead not guilty.) “A thunderbolt” and “a political bomb” are among the milder descriptions. It is no secret—or, closer to the truth , an open secret—that D.S.K. had a, well, J.F.K.-like reputation with women; French habits and French libel laws kept the nature and extent of this reputation circumscribed, but much of it came out, and a little more so is now. Jacques Savary, a deputy for the Socialist party in the European parliament, wrote on his blog,