Crime As Spectacle

by Patrick Appel

William Saletan thinks the unraveling DSK case is a vindication of our justice system:

Already, there are cries of concern that if the case disintegrates, it will destroy the credibility of rape victims or immigrants, while powerful abusers will go free. That's the wrong conclusion. The unraveling of the Strauss-Kahn prosecution is a victory for justice, because investigators found ways to check the accuser's credibility. Other accusers will pass such tests. This one didn't. What the collapse of this case proves is that it's possible to distinguish true rape accusations from false ones—and that the government, having staked its reputation on an accuser's credibility, diligently investigated her and disclosed her lies. The system worked.

But, as noted last week, the system has not proven that this was a "false rape," only that this woman is not a credible witness. Longtime DSK defender Bernard-Henri Lévy sees only injustice:

[DSK] was the symbol of arrogant France. He was the emblem of the world of the privileged, odiously sure of their own impunity. He was the mirror of this world of white global bankers that constitutes Wall Street—one that the other America, the Main Street of every city in the country, sees as the quintessential enemy.

And, similarly, this woman was the allegory of all women who are not only battered and humiliated but also poor and immigrant—their words, silenced too long, finally expressed through hers.

The sad thing is, that’s not what justice is. Justice doesn’t oppose symbols, but human beings.

Major criminal cases are often given imagined symbolism. But BHL claiming some sort of reverse-classism remains risible regardless of DSK's guilt or innocence. BHL is right that justice should be concerned with individuals rather than symbols. But BHL is committing the sin he rails against when he turns DSK into a totem for oppressed aristocrats everywhere; BHL goes so far as to call the DSK arrest "lynching, in sympathy with minorities."

The DSK case was a news peg for discussions about equality under the law. But society-wide ideals shouldn't change based on the guilt or innocence of an individual. Equality under the law isn't any less valid if DSK is innocent.