Copycat Capers
It isn't just juvenile delinquents who copy the activities and actions of others that bring suffering in their wake to others.Acting out can look very appealing to the young and the bored who are motivated by socially-unacceptable and often harmful events. And of course there are events that are truly despicable, frightening and atrocious that draw the attention of people who are susceptible to emulating them for revenge, like the phenomenon of disaffected students entering a school with the intent to kill those who they imagine have done them ill.
Obviously the urge to do the kinds of socially blighted and immoral actions that are done by others are not restricted to the young and the restless. Although we hear far less about them, it would appear that the socially, politically and economically advantaged, also engage in practices that shine a dim light on their intelligence and morals.
The fall-out from the assault on a hotel maid in a New York hotel by IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn has just faded from the news. A new head of the International Monetary Fund has yet to be selected, as a result of Mr. Strauss-Kahn's fall from grace. Yet here we are again.
A former chairman of the Bank of Alexandria and Egyptian American Bank, 72-year-old Mahmoud Abdel-Salam Omar, has been arrested on criminal charges brought against him by yet another hotel maid. And this time, the hotel maid, Doris Offel, is taking the initiative. She has filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court, asking for $1 million for each of the three counts Mr. Omar has been charged with, along with $2-million in punitive damages.
In the wake of the scandal that erupted with the charges brought against Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a number of articles have been written about the risk-fraught lives of hotel maids whom registered guests of the hotels they work at attempt to prey upon. This would seem to be a too-common occurrence.
Doubtless, when it is high-powered, wealthy clients of hotels, the maids are requested - or have been in the past - to mention nothing of the attempted assaults. Some clients, in fact, are known for their propensity to attempt assaults on women working alone in hotel suites in the presence of hotel guests. Those who are notorious for these types of assaults should be publicly named.
But they won't be, of course. Women are accustomed to absorbing the shame, men are excused simply because this is what so many men do, and this is what so many women have to put up with. And the balance of power is never in the woman's favour.
Ms. Offel's decision to launch a lawsuit, and the fact that Mr. Omar has been charged and arrested with the public ignominy that follows, may begin a reversal of this acceptance of 'men will be boys'.
And while Mr. Omar's lawyer commented that the lawsuit "speaks volumes to [the maid's] true motives" perhaps that lawyer could enlighten the world with respect to her client's true motives.
Labels: Human Rights, Security, Sexism, Social-Cultural Deviations, United States
posted by Pieface @ Monday, June 27, 2011
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