Newsweek takes the extraordinary, makes it ordinary

After the alleged RAPE by an enormously wealthy, powerful man -- Dominique Strauss-Kahn -- Newsweek decided to conduct a poll and run an article about it.

It's called "Hotel Confidential" and in it, Newsweek claims: "It's the dirty secret about business travel. Many married men expect sex along with their room service, according to a NEWSWEEK poll."

Among the findings of their poll are these:

"... of 400 married men ... 21 percent admit to wanting to cheat on their spouse while traveling on business—and 8 percent have actually done so (the majority of them repeatedly)."

"Six percent of the respondents admitted to having paid for sex while traveling on business. Still others acknowledged that they’ve hit on the help: 3 percent of the men in NEWSWEEK’s poll said they’d made a pass at a hotel worker (more than half were rebuffed), and 2 percent had sex with them."

This hardly sounds like an epidemic. Further, it hardly justifies a full story in print and online about the dangers posed to hotel maids across the country!

After all, their own poll shows that 97% of men do NOT hit on hotel staff. And of the 3% who do, what percentage of them rape someone?

Yet, Newsweek writes: "Bo Dietl, TV personality and security consultant for the rich and famous, says he’s now advising clients to avoid any situation while traveling that might seem sexually inappropriate. 'In this day and age, you gotta just watch everybody,' he says."

Watch everybody? Nope, sorry, when I go to hotels I feel perfectly safe, as I am sure the maids do, too. The findings of Newsweek's poll convince me of that.

Finally, Newsweek links one story to many that are unrelated: "Certainly, powerful men behaving badly at hotels is hardly a novelty. NBA superstar Kobe Bryant was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a 19-year-old hotel employee in Eagle, Colo., in 2003 (the case was settled out of court). In 2006 former vice president Al Gore was accused of groping and kissing a massage therapist at a hotel in Portland, Ore. And it was at a Ritz-Carlton that sports announcer Marv Albert attacked his mistress and forced her to have oral sex after she refused to have a three-way (he pleaded guilty)."

So the problem is actually what powerful men do, no? On that, Newsweek is silent.



http://www.newsweek.com/2011/06/05/hotel-confidential.html