The media are now descending upon Crown Princess Mette-Marit following the latest revelations about her holiday stay in Palm Beach.

The leaked emails from Jeffrey Epstein’s dark archives show with complete clarity that the explanation about a «mutual friend» who allegedly had lent the house collapses entirely. It emerges that the Crown Princess herself managed the details and had a direct line to the convicted sex offender.

But while this is now being rubbed in before the Royal Palace, there is a striking silence about the truly heavyweight actors in the Norwegian power apparatus who have cultivated contact with the same milieu.

It is a well-known pattern, whereby the press chooses the easy target rather than drilling into the deep power. Neither Terje Rød-Larsen nor Thorbjørn Jagland has been held to account with the same aggressiveness, despite the fact that their connections to the Epstein network were far more institutionalised and politically sensitive. Rød-Larsen did indeed have to step down from IPI after his financial disorder came to light, but the principled debate about how Norwegian top politicians allowed themselves to be lubricated by such global networks has largely been absent. There have been few attempts to get him to speak about his contact with Epstein, of course because he does not wish to speak about it.

Jagland became ill, and has therefore escaped.

Many have grown weary of the critical questions that are never asked of Børge Brende and his role in the international fora where Epstein circled like a vulture around the pinnacles of power. It appears that the Norwegian public sphere has an endless patience with men in dark suits who represent international organisations, while a clumsy Crown Princess who borrows a holiday house is made into the very symbol of moral decline.

It is a cheap form of criticism, which obscures the fact that parts of the Norwegian political elite have been entangled with global power structures that most Norwegians neither understand nor wish to have anything to do with.

That the Crown Princess does not tell the truth via NRK is, of course, serious, and it weakens the reputation of the monarchy, but it is nothing compared to the systemic silence that surrounds the power figures in both Arbeiderpartiet and Høyre when their own networks become the subject of shadowy investigations. It is high time that we stop pretending that this is merely about a naive woman who allowed herself to be charmed by a dangerous man, and instead begin to speak about why Norwegian top politicians repeatedly end up in the same room as figures like Epstein.

The real scandal is not Mette-Marit, but power figures who protect one another until the truth comes too close and they find themselves compelled to sacrifice their own in order to save their own skin.

Mette-Marit should perhaps have laid herself flat and apologised for having been so naive in this interview with NRK, but what have the others done? As slippery as they are, they glide slowly but surely away from the unpleasantness, somewhat in the manner that Hadia Tajik did during the commuter housing case. We shall no doubt soon see her again in central positions in Arbeiderpartiet.

Short-term memory is a true blessing for the rogues in the Storting.