The French have made a bid to replace their fallen countryman at the IMF with another of their own. Nothing to see here, according to the French, just move right along.

While many in the EU (particularly France) reflect on this international incident as merely an opportunity to criticize the American justice system, some American writers are contemplating the event as a social commentary on the state of modern Europe. According to Ross Douthat at the NY Times:

In the hands of the right screenwriter, Strauss-Kahn's arrest could be the central thread in one of those sprawling, complex, kaleidoscope-of-globalization movies that aspire to Oscar glory. Think "Traffic" or "Syriana," "Crash" or "Babel": the kind of movie that leapfrogs around the planet, shifting from place to place and perspective to perspective in an effort to bring an entire Big Issue into focus.

Instead of the war on drugs or race relations in Los Angeles, though, the subject of this movie would be the potential collapse of the European Union.

And,

no creative mind could have dreamed up an allegation better calculated to vindicate the perception that today's Eurocrats are just a version of the old European aristocracy -- exercising droit du seigneur in high-priced hotel rooms while they wait to catch a first-class flight to Paris.