We Americans can't help getting a jolt of tabloidy satisfaction every time the wealthy and well-connected French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn makes another humiliating court appearance in conjunction with charges that he tried to rape a New York City hotel housekeeper. After all, we love nothing better than seeing the powerful and formerly smug dragged across the front pages in ignominy. Especially when he has to make his way through representatives of a housekeepers' union shouting, "Shame on you!" in solidarity with the plaintiff, a 32-year-old single mother. Even the French admit that this particular clash of gender and class would probably never have happened in France.
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