'New York Post' Outdoes Itself On Dominique Strauss-Kahn Story

Thank God Tom McGeveran has found the words to explain how absolutely disgusting today’s New York Post story about the accuser in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case really is, because I am filled with ineffable rage over the whole thing:

The Post touts its cooperation with authorities in not releasing the name of the accuser, and goes to some lengths in its main article on the D.S.K. case today to detail efforts being made by the New York Police Department to “protect” her from offers from influential friends of D.S.K. to drop the case in exchange for favors. But it reveals that she was living in an apartment organized for her by the charity Harlem United, which places people with H.I.V. and AIDS in rent-assisted housing. The sum of the importance of this fact, which does not establish that the alleged victim is H.I.V.-positive, is the suggestion that the accused sex criminal “may have more to worry about than a possible prison sentence” because, “[according] to the federal Centers for Disease Control: ‘It is possible for either partner to become infected with HIV through performing or receiving oral sex.’” This, in the mind of the Post, qualifies as a “shock.”

It is indeed a shock, but probably not in the way the paper intended. “Ugh” and “gah” all around.