The battle cry of the Elite

"Do You Know Who I Am?"

by  John Hayward

Fox News is running an exclusive with new details about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case, gleaned from “law enforcement sources close to the investigation.”  The former IMF chief is charged with perpetrating a violent sexual assault against a maid.

One interesting detail is that Strauss-Kahn was apparently lurking in his hotel suite long after checkout time, and evaded detection by at least one room service employee, suggesting he might have been lying in wait for the maid.  Even $3000 suites have check-out times.  You’ve got to make room for the next high-rolling socialist overlord who needs the junior presidential suite.

The most striking bit of information contained in the Fox report is the one I just knew would surface eventually.  According to the maid, when she begged DSK to let her go and wailed that she could lose her job, he replied, “Don’t worry, you’re not going to lose your job.  Please, baby, don’t worry.  Don’t you know who I am?”

Ah, the battle cry of the privileged elitist.  It translates readily into every language.  They belt it out whenever their desires are thwarted by law, custom, or the rights of an insignificant citizen.  To name one example that comes readily to mind, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Junior angrily bellowed the question at the cop who arrested him for acting suspiciously outside his own home. 

It’s the punch line to many a tale of ordinary people running afoul of Massachusetts senator John Kerry. In a 2004 essay, Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr said most such stories “have a common theme: our junior senator pulling rank on one of his constituents, breaking in line, demanding to pay less (or nothing), or ducking out before the bill arrives.  The tales often have one other common thread: most end with Senator Kerry inquiring of the lesser mortal, do you know who I am?”

It’s funny how so many of the elitists are loudly obsessed with the plight of the “common man.”  The irony of a top-ranking “socialist” blowing thousands of dollars on a fabulously plush hotel suite is lost on the Left… because to them, it’s not ironic. 

Of course the all-wise, all-knowing masters of destiny live elaborate lifestyles.  It’s only logical, once you accept the premise that society should be ordered and structured by a permanent elite ruling class. Such structure requires a great deal of power to create and enforce.  The powerful do not live the same way as the powerless.  Their sense of entitlement is only deepened by the moralistic language deployed against their political adversaries by fellow leftists.  If they are opposed only by monsters, then they must be gods. 

Many observers have expressed amazement that Dominique Strauss-Kahn would risk a position of fabulous wealth and power – to be almost certainly succeeded by the presidency of France – in order to assault a hotel maid.  Indeed, this is cited by some of his more arrogant defenders as evidence that the maid is lying, or serving as part of some nefarious plot by his political enemies to destroy him. 

 It’s not really hard to understand in the context of the boorish behavior displayed by DSK on numerous occasions… which, according to the New York Post, culminated in him barking “What a nice ass!” to a flight attendant on the Air France plane where he was arrested.  His career ended in that New York hotel room because he forgot who he was.  Fortunately, the NYPD was able to remind him, before the plane took off.