Private life

This will probably come as no consolation to Congressman Anthony Weiner, but not everybody has reacted with the same indignation and distaste to the way he liked to get his kicks with women he hadn't even met. I spend a lot of my time in France. I have a house there. And I'm pretty sure that under normal circumstances if Mr. Weiner had been a French politician and not an American he wouldn't be in the miserable situation he now finds himself in. I say under normal circumstances for good reason and I'll come back to that. But the French attitude to sex and people in public life is generally to shrug and say 'et alors?' or 'so what?' Every French President for the past thirty years - Mitterand, Chirac and now Sarkozy - has had a decidedly colorful private life. So long as it doesn't affect their work, the public don't much care. Indeed they almost expect their leaders to have affairs and would be surprised if they didn't. Now actually the Congressman Weiner story has been quite big news in the French media. And that's because the circumstances are not normal. One of France's most highly regarded politicians, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, is of course under house arrest in Manhattan facing serious sex charges. I was astonished by the reactions I heard on a French radio talk show. Many callers were outraged by what had happened -- not the alleged assault, but the fact that a man of his stature had been paraded in front of the cameras in hand-cuffs and treated as if he'd already been found guilty. Now I don't know if he is or not, and I certainly think he should be presumed innocent until proved otherwise. But the court of public opinion knows no international standards. If Mr Strauss-Kahn has anything to be thankful for, it is that he's French. If Congressman Weiner wanted one more thing to regret, it's that he isn't. This is Lance Price for CBS News in London.