she’s home!

And she is noticeably bigger, too. That’s the best photo I can get for the moment. She doesn’t like looking into the camera today.

the real danger in Egypt now

Violent sectarian clashes. HERE.

This doesn’t seem to be going away, and it’s a major and terrible challenge for the country.

Strauss-Kahn II

From a reader:

“Yes, the news is quite shocking – but it’s still a police charge – not a ‘found guilty – beyond all reasonable doubt’. I think the murderer Idi Amin going to the Vatican for the santification is pretty shocking…he was given special flight clearance across Europe.”

I’m afraid this misses the point.

1. Idi Amin never had any reputation to destroy. The world public always thought he was a psychopath, and one shocking incident more or less was not going to make a material difference to that assessment. Nor do I see any evidence that the public reputation of the Vatican was decisively shifted by this incident. When people point fingers at the Vatican, it’s generally over other scandals than this one.

2. The point about Strauss-Kahn isn’t whether or not he’s been proven guilty yet, it’s that his reputation has been destroyed in a flash and can’t possibly be restored even by a “not guilty” verdict– unless it turns out that he was either framed or the victim of a horrible case of mistaken identity.

So, my earlier question still stands… Have there been other recent cases where a hard-earned public reputation vanished in a flash with a single news story?

Again, O.J. Simpson is one parallel that comes to mind. And Simpson did receive a “not guilty” verdict on the murder charges, yet it did nothing to restore his previous public stature. There were simply too many people who still thought he was a murderer who got away with it.

Former New York Governor Elliott Spitzer would be another possible parallel. But the criminal and even reputational dimension of getting caught using high-priced call girls obviously isn’t as serious as sexual assault or murder. Note that Spitzer already has his own TV show just three years later, and no one is picketing the TV network as far as I know. The public views it as an embarrassing scandal but ultimately a personal issue rather than a truly criminal one.

Nonetheless, you’re very unlikely to see Spitzer in public office again, and all the more so for Strauss-Kahn unless he is exonerated in stunning fashion pretty quickly. A mere “not guilty” verdict would keep him out of jail, but would do nothing to salvage his reputation or his political career.

More generally, there is often a misapplication of the “innocent until proven guilty” principle. Even in the context of criminal law it is not absolute: some suspects are held without bail, for instance, if there’s good enough reason to do so. And it certainly doesn’t hold beyond the criminal sphere. For example, if someone is charged with child molestation and found not guilty, you’re probably going to think at least twice before using them as a babysitter. You’re not going to say: “The jury didn’t think he was proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, so let’s give him a chance and see how the kids like him over the weekend.” In personal life we frequently distance ourselves from people over things that can’t be “proven,” and so forth. Reputation and personal association are not governed by the standards of evidence used in criminal law.

SCTV’s NASA playhouse

I love SCTV, but somehow never knew this existed. Astronauts performing T.S. Eliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral.” One of the most bizarre skits SCTV ever did, surely.

Strauss-Kahn

Wow. Has there been a personal story quite THIS SORDID involving a world politician in recent years? The I.M.F. will need a new director and France will need a new opposition candidate. Can hardly believe what I’m reading.

All right, there have been quite a few sordid stories about people at that level, but most of them were either personal scandals lacking a serious criminal dimension, or rumors about dictators who were already held in poor regard. But at the moment I can’t remember any public criminal self-destruction of this magnitude by a significant politician. Outside politics O.J. Simpson is actually the first case that comes to mind re: the instant evaporation of someone’s hard-earned public profile.

Some French coverage HERE, including some extra details.

June 28

Along with the Ennis paper mentioned just below, there is THIS abstract for June 28 at Nottingham Trent University, which is citing Jane Bennett as well.