So now we know the real story: Nafissatou Diallo is a hooker and scam artist, and she has been trying to shake down Strauss-Kahn after a consensual blowjob. She has been implicated in a pyramid scheme that rips off new immigrants; she made up a gang rape story to get asylum in the U.S.; she lied about her income to qualify for subsidized housing; she claimed a friend’s child as her own for extra benefits; and she has been working as a hooker in the Sofitel and elsewhere for years (even in the quarters where the DA is putting her up right now).

So this case is just another reminder of how awful prosecutors and the press are when it comes to the presumption of innocence, especially in rape cases, worst of all in cases with black accusers and rich white defendants like the Duke lacrosse affair.

I wrote about this phenomenon (the brilliant novelist Tom Wolfe calls it the Great White Defendant) and my skepticism of the allegations when DSK was first arrested.

The Great White Defendant refers to these rare cases where prosecutors get to target a member of the privileged class, and as a consequence of their guilt from having put away so many poor people, they pursue him like Ahab after the white whale. Of course, journalists love these cases because they fit their own preconceptions of oppressors and oppressed, and the media attention makes prosecutors stars and helps their political careers. The last such major case was the prosecution of several white Duke lacrosse players on the word of a black stripper who turned out to have made the whole thing up. The lead prosecutor in that case ended up being convicted of contempt and disbarred for his criminal disregard of the truth. Nifong served one day in jail, and neither the accuser nor the currupt police have been prosecuted for their actions. BTW, the accuser, Crystal Mangum, is facing a first degree murder charge for the stabbing of her boyfriend last month

As much as I dislike his politics and person, I hope for the pure theater of it that DSK wins the French presidency next year.