Dominique Strauss-Kahn was head of the International Monetary Fund.

Then, on 14 May, a New York chambermaid accused him of raping her, he was arrested and subject to trial by media in the USA, and he had to resign from the IMF. In his native France, the media were more circumspect. This led the Guardian newspaper in Britain to fume about the "French media's deference to power", contrasting this with the US, as if presumption of innocence and presumption of guilt are two sides of the same story.

• Amanda Marcotte: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and how power corrupts
• Strauss-Kahn case sparks debate about French media's deference to power
• France forced to face sex's link with power
• Men in power inhabit a culture of male entitlement that enables caddishness, but that is no excuse for violent sexual depradation
• etc. etc.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/17/arnold-schwarzenegger-dominique-strauss-kahn

Others drew a direct comparison with Roman Polanski.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/michaelweiss/100088341/dominique-strauss-kahn-roman-polanski-and-the-lefts-trouble-with-rape-allegations

But:

• Polanski was convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl
• Schwarzenegger has admitted to fathering a child with a consenting housemaid
• Strauss-Kahn is accused of raping a chambermaid

See the difference? Rape - adultery - presumption of innocence? Much of the media doesn't.

The Telegraph blog post is entitled "Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Roman Polanski and the Left's trouble with rape allegations".

Since the Telegraph is conservative, I thought it would say that the left's trouble with rape allegations is it tends to assume guilt. But in the above blog, the author claims that the left wrongly gives the accused the presumption of innocence. He couldn't be more wrong. 

In the left's view of the world, the legal system and the media are biased against members of oppressed groups. This case has everything to test this theory. He's the world's top bank executive. She is poor, female, and comes from an African country which really is a victim of the IMF. But that doesn't mean her allegation is true.

Fifty years ago, the left was right. Bob Dylan penned a protest song about how a wealthy New Yorker was able to get away with murdering his black maid, Hattie Carroll. That was then. This is now.

One shouldn't take this argument too far. Reading far-right writers like Kevin MacDonald, you'd think the world had turned upside down. But black millionaires aren't murdering white servants, and women don't commit sex crimes against men.

However, thanks to the Bob Dylan generation, the times have changed enough to completely invalidate the assumptions of the left, and major media outlets like the Guardian and the New York Times: "listen to the victim's story" is the refrain.

This isn't the first time a 'privileged' man has been accused by a black woman, and most of the media have assumed the truth of the allegations. It happened in New York in 1987, when a black teenager accused six white men of raping her and doing all kinds of other horrible things. The left believed her. It turned out she was lying. In 2006, another black woman accused a group of frat-boys at Duke University of raping her. The media, with few exceptions, assumed she was telling the truth. She wasn't.

The next year, at the same university, a white woman alleged that she was raped by a black man at a frat party. The media handled the case with admirable commitment to fairness, justice and the presumption of innocence.

I share many of the left's views. But I don't believe in combatting international bankers by assuming they are guilty of crimes other than banking. Presumption of innocence. Color-blindness in the law and the media.

In case, dear reader, you don't believe me about the left, the picture at the top of this message is of a group of activists, encouraged by their professors, demonstrating outside the residence of the wrongly accused Duke students. You can't parody American leftism. White guilt and the encouragement of resentment in historically disadvantaged groups of people. Academics who teach that all sex is rape, and gender is 'constructed'. And "race, whiteness and ethnicity produce, and are produced by, nationalist discourses" (actual quote).

http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2009/03/from-burch-to-lubiano-via-bohemia.html