Here's Sofitel security camera video from the day of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest last May. It was broadcast on France's BFM-TV. Starting a little after 3:00 minutes into the video, you can see what BFM calls "The Dance of Joy:" after Sofitel management calls the NYPD to have the IMF supremo / French presidential frontrunner arrested, two burly Sofitel employees in suits who had been escorting the complainant maid step into a back room and celebrate. The big black guy wraps the big white guy in a bear hug, lifts him into the air, spins him around, and then does what looks like either an NFL touchdown dance or the Charleston.

The Daily Beast reports:

The two employees said they couldn’t recall the exact reason for their fleeting celebratory behavior but that they believed it may have involved sports, which they frequently talked about, the source said.

Okay, well that clears that up. Glad we won't have to listen to conspiracy nuts yammering on about their crazy conspiracy theories. Amy Davidson at The New Yorker in "A Dance to the Music of Conspiracy" finds the sports talk explanation more plausible than the suspicion that DSK might have been set-up:

Once you’ve accounted for the jerkiness of the video, it doesn’t seem outlandish, given the sorts of things men do in New York, particularly when talking about sports.

A commenter at The New Yorker adds that Edward Jay Epstein, who brought up the dance of joy in a New York Review of Books article, is a conspiracy theorist:

Many years ago, Mr. Epstein had written about the diamond industry. I knew a top adviser for De Beers,who couldn't believe how Mr. Epstein had invented so many details to support his claims. The adviser decided then that he would never again read anything written by this conspiracy theorist. He called Epstein a "sensationalist". I myself wonder why the NYRB would publish an article that had nothing to do with books.

If you can't trust "a top adviser for De Beers," who can you trust? Certainly not a wacko investigative journalist like Epstein who published some nutty theory in The Atlantic Monthly in 1982 that De Beers was a giant conspiracy to prop up the price of diamonds via a global diamond cartel. After all, the reason De Beers top executives never set foot in America during the second half of the 20th Century is, well, you know, just one of those things. I can'trecall the exact reason for De Beers executives' fleeting behavior of avoiding anywhere they could have been served with asubpoenafor Sherman Anti-Trust Act violations, but I believe it may have involved sports.

P.S., a commenter points out that Epstein's website has more videos that allow you to better evaluate the competing theories.