French and American perceptions are so different, that we do not belong in the same civilization, according to the prestigious leftist, Jean Daniel. In the Orange County Register, Mark Steyn recounted reactions in France:

“We and the Americans do not belong to the same civilization,” sniffed Jean Daniel, editor of Le Nouvel Observateur, insisting that the police should have known that Strauss-Kahn was “not like other men” and wondering why “this chambermaid was regarded as worthy and beyond any suspicion. […] The arrest of a mediocre international civil servant in the first-class cabin of his jet isn’t just a sex story: It’s a glimpse of the widening gulf between the government class and their subjects in a post-prosperity West.”