Once it was easy to know how to stay in high society. The first commandment of American politics spelt it out: "Never get found in bed with a live man or dead woman." A man discovered bedding another man is not now the scandal it once was – and for that advance much thanks. A man who kills a woman may be pushing it a bit – even in these non-judgmental times. But a man grabbing the throat of his wife, as if he is beginning to strangle the life out of her, in public view at a Mayfair restaurant – well, my dear fellow, who will damn you for such a trifle?

Certainly not the London Evening Standard, where Charles Saatchi produces a column, which he fills with whatever curious or rib-tickling historical facts have caught his wandering eye. (An Old Charles's Almanack, if you will, which the Standard wisely keeps offline.) Senior Standard journalists want him out.

But the editor, Sarah Sands, and the proprietor – and I swear I am not making this up – one Alexander Yevgenievich Lebedev, a Russian oligarch and former officer of the foreign intelligence directorate of the KGB, won't listen. "While this newspaper abhors violence against women," Sands intoned, "we do not see condemnation of an assault as a reason to intrude into the complexities of a couple's marriage."

Just a domestic, then, as the cops used to say.

In the art world, there was a heartening and unreported show of support for Nigella Lawson. Within days of the Mail publishing pictures of her with Saatchi's hand round her throat , her eyes screwed in pain, her mouth forming into a scream, Saatchi invited young artists to the an opening at his gallery. Some boycotted the show of their own work in protest at his behaviour, and risked their careers as they did it.

But the solidarity did not last. Waldemar Januszczak, the art critic of the Sunday Times, ensured that the corks would keep popping for him in Cork Street by lurching from moral equivalence to outright denial. "Paparazzi photos are exploitative and unreliable," he tweeted. "Their work is also a form of violence. All that had happened was that some invasive photographers lurking about saw something they could make money out of. Full stop."

Not so much a domestic then but a shameful invasion of Saatchi's privacy Lord Leveson should investigate.

On condition of anonymity, one leading figure in the art world said:"Sadly, no one gives tuppence." They would not go public because Saatchi dominates the small domestic market for contemporary art. He is not as powerful as he was in the 1990s, when he virtually was the market, but he remains the most successful art futures' dealer in London: buying young artists cheap, selling them dear, and able to ruin their careers by dumping them if their prices don't meet his expectations. In her evidence to Isleworth crown court, in the case against two personal assistants accused of fraud, Nigella Lawson alleged that Saatchi's desire to control extended beyond the art market.

When she was with him in Mayfair, she said: "Somebody walked by with a very cute baby in a stroller and I said, 'I am so looking forward to having grandchildren.' And he grabbed me by the throat and said, 'I am the only person you should be concerned with. I am the only person who should be giving you pleasure.'

The court has not heard whether those details are disputed by Saatchi, although he had earlier told the court he was not strangling or throttling her but holding her to make her focus on their conversation.

A beautiful woman such as Lawson is hated. Other women envy her and men loathe the idea that she will never be theirs. "I am the only person who should be giving you pleasure," they scream to themselves. And they know they will never have her adoring, undivided attention.

Beyond jealousy lies the subjugation of women in modern Britain regardless of their looks, near perfectly illustrated by the willingness of Universities UK to tolerate the segregation of women when it would never tolerate the segregation of blacks or homosexuals.

Racism, at least when it is overt, can compel high society to turn its back on you. But the fatal charge is "elitism": of treating the masses as fools, disdaining their views, and thinking you are better than they are.

The Police Federation's accusation that Andrew Mitchell called its officers "plebs" – one he disputes with genuine fury – killed his career because it made him seem a snob. And not even a Tory grandee can be a snob in the 21st century.

Despite being worth over £100m, despite his Mayfair life, despite representing a society where inequalities of wealth and power grow ever larger, Saatchi is indulged because no one accuses him of snobbery.

Julian Stallabrass, a leftwing art critic you should read if you can, got Saatchi's measure a decade ago when he described the Britart Saatchi promoted as the equivalent of tabloid headlines or a standup's one-liners: cheap and sensational; glib and ignorant – "high art lite" to use Stallabrass's wonderfully dismissive put-down.

For all that he represents the double-standards of a fantastically divided country, no one can deny that tabloid populism has worked for Saatchi. In the adverts he once made and the art he now promotes, Saatchi has given the public what it wants – or what it thinks it wants. No one is going to let the small matter of a woman grabbed by the throat bring this man of the people down.