The DSK Accuser Goes Public
Posted on July 25th, 2011 in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Newsweek features an interview with Nafissatou Diallo, a.k.a “the DSK maid.”
(Did they pay for it? The article doesn’t address the question.)
Nothing in the interview makes me think that this case should go to trial; whatever may have happened, this woman is a terrible witness.
Instead, the interview suggests a PR campaign designed to force DSK to pay a hefty sum to Diallo in order to avoid the publicity of a civil suit.
3 Responses
7/28/2011 12:04 pm
Very strange-I don’t know how comments got turned off. Anyway…sorry about that, and fire away.
7/28/2011 12:04 pm
FYI, ABC reports that Diallo’s lawyer is indeed preparing a civil suit.
7/29/2011 1:00 am
The Newsweek piece was a report based on an interview, not a transcript of the interview itself (which would have been more informative).
I question the ability of Dickey and Solomon to conduct a valid cross-cultural interview with a West African woman. Do either of them have any experience with West African cultures? If they had a better understanding of West Africa and the “quasi-illegal immigrant society in the Bronx”, I think they might not have portrayed Ms. Diallo in such negative terms. Are they good enough amateur ethnographers to be able to judge when a West African woman’s tears are forced or genuine?
The article reported that her native language is a Fulani dialect. Was the interview conducted in Fulani through an interpreter? It may be that some of the reported contradictions are artifacts of a lack of fluency in English.
Dickey and Solomon have earned a solid F.