"You know, John, we're next," he said. They were indeed, and in the end, no amount of sacrifice managed to save the man at the top.

Mayor Bing might want to think about that.

Radical idea: Bad as the Detroit media may have been, nothing matches the national feeding frenzy based on the hotel maid's accusation that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, raped her in his expensive hotel suite.

Strauss-Kahn was arrested, thrown in jail and later house arrest, forced out of his job, and essentially convicted in not just the tabloid media, but every respectable journal in America. What was the evidence? Well, he was apparently known to have had affairs.

Now it has been revealed that his accuser has lied about virtually everything in her life, including earlier allegations of rape. The prosecutor's case has collapsed. And still, the media aren't printing the name of the woman whose allegations ended his career.

Why? Because of the medieval notion that "we do not name rape victims." This stems not, by the way, from feminism, but the theory that women were property whose value could be damaged if their reproductive systems had been compromised.

Well, guess what. We are supposed to be living in an egalitarian democracy. People should have the right to confront their accuser, and those who accuse people should have the courage of their convictions and come forward. We need to drop our prudish hypocrisy about sex, and treat crime simply as crime.

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