Sunny places, shady people.

Oh what a lovely October day.   Autumn is in the air and the Swiss franc continues to go through the roof. Life is getting expensive unless one has access to the Qaddafi sovereign wealth fund, which I am sure some bankers do. Still, I know worse places to be: the Hampton's during Labor Day weekend; or if you really unlucky, the Carlton Hotel terrace in Cannes, observing shady people, well, you get the drift.

For the moment I’m sitting pretty trying to make some mischief. I failed to do so yesterday by announcing Saif al-Islam’s arrival at the chalet. No one in their right mind took it seriously—not even the hacks, who twenty years ago believed me when I said that Mrs. Saddam Hussein was moving in. Back then, journalists arrived and began snooping around. The proprietor found it amusing and refused to deny it. The hacks drank copiously at the bar and everything was hunky-dory until the powers back home froze their expense accounts. 

Apropos shady people, M. Dominique Strauss Kahn has been freed. Anne Sinclair, Mme. DSK, is no babe in the woods either. So when the press writes about that tolerant French woman I have to remind myself that it is she who wants France’s top prize even more than the short fat man with his over sized ego. Let’s not forget that Kahns first wife got him connected with the right people which landed him his first good job as a lecturer. After that he used his second wife to get him in tight with the civil servants who steered him and recommended him to eventually become Minister of Finance. Now his third good job—being a billionaire—is financing his bid for France’s top spot. She resigned her popular TV chat show when her husband was appointed a minister, claiming it might be a conflict of interest. It was nothing of the sort. She had inside info that the show was about to be canceled, so she bailed and ended up looking ‘frightfully’ honest.

Friends are right in calling DSK a chauvinist sexual predator and depicting him as untrustworthy, greedy, and unscrupulous. He is all that and more. But his wife is just as tricky, as is her billion-dollar fortune, one that derives from her grandfather Rosenberg’s art dealership. Rosenberg’s deals were as shady as Wildenstein’s, but unlike the latter he never got caught.

What did the French people do wrong to deserve such low-lives? Is it punishment for collapsing so quickly against the Wehrmacht? Or for collaborating so eagerly with the conquerors? "Veni, Vidi, Vichy!" It could also be that since the French have such a beautiful country faith made sure the French people have DSK, Rosenberg, and Wildenstein to balance things out.

As I write this sitting on the balcony I see a large limousine pulling up at the chalet. A short fat man is getting out… oh dear, please, say it ain’t so.