Naming the maid

Edward L. writes:

I had been wondering why you (and apparently readers too) were refraining from referring to DSK’s accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, by name, but then I searched and found your earlier discussion of the matter. You indicated that there were contradictory reports about the maid’s identity.

One would think that with the maid having been determined to be an outright liar and huckster, at least a few domestic news outlets (non-MSM as well as MSM) would now drop the usual scrupulous pretense and start referring to her by name. Is it that they could get into legal trouble if they named her (given that the sexual assault charges against Strauss-Kahn still officially stand), or is it more of a lazy herd mentality within industry that results in such uniformity of behavior? What do you think?

LA replies:

I’ve considered that, but I think that until the mainstream news media refer to her by name, I will also continue as a general matter not referring to her by name. I will however note for the record that according to various reports her name is Nafissatou Diallo.

- end of initial entry -

July 5

Stephen T. writes:

It’s not the foreignness per se of the maid’s name that keeps it out of the media. The mainstream media doesn’t want to print the melodious moniker Nafissatou Diallo because it fairly screams nonwhite, Third World, African. All those things the MSM lauds and constantly assures us are a great tonic for dying America, if we are to avoid the terrible fate of other developed countries which have fallen into Stone Age ruin because they failed to attract millions of uneducated migrants from the primitive backwaters of the world. If this foreign fraudster had been an au pair from Goteborg with a name that sounded like one of the original members of ABBA [LA adds: a very popular pop music group from Sweden in the ’70s, which I didn’t know before I Googled it], believe me, we’d be hearing it from the rooftops in the liberal media (along with grim-faced calls for stricter immigration enforcement).

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 04, 2011 01:16 PM | Send