Africa Is a Country

Law and Disorder

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Law and Disorder

By
Sean Jacobs

"Law and Order," opened its 13th season with a very transparent plot based on the Dominique Strauss Kahn rape case. It is not very good.

A still from "Law & Order: Scorched Earth."

In case you missed it, the U.S. cop and lawyers show, “Law and Order,” opened its 13th season last week with a very transparent plot based on the Dominique Strauss Kahn rape case.  They didn’t even try hard:  Roberto DiStasio, ” the odds-on favorite to be Italy’s next prime minister” and “the head of the Global Economic Trust” (what?), is accused of raping a Sudanese hotel maid. He gets arrested before his plane takes off. There’s more: “DiStasio’s wife Sophia claims she never doubted her husband’s innocence.” It turns out the maid, Miriam, lied about a rape back in Sudan on her asylum application and told friends she would make money off the case. Etcetera, etcetera. Focus on the moral character of the accuser. What is new.

There’s also a scene where Di Stasio/Strauss Kahn is paraded in front of journalists and Ice T deadpans: “Freedom of the press, baby!”

Spoiler Alert: the whole thing ends after the jurors in the TV trial claim they can’t reach a conclusion and the fictional judge rules the case a mistrial.

A show-runner working on “Law and Order” told The New York Post the writers had a hard time coming up with the plot.  “In this case, I don’t believe we ripped from the headlines. I believe the actual story ripped us off.” Smh.

Meanwhile, back in Paris, the realDominique Strauss Kahn has been giving interviews. In one of these interviews, conducted by a close friend of his wife, Ann Sinclair,  who happens to be a TV journalist, he said was only guilty of a “moral fault.”  His accuser Nafissatou Diallo “lied about everything.” In fact, despite the fact that they had never met, they had consensual sex and as for why she would accuse him of rape: he said she is motivated by “the financial hypothesis.” And he copied Bill Clinton.

Verbatim.

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