Tel-Chai Nation

Okay, so in the past few days, filmmaker Roman Polanski was finally collared after more than 3 decades on the loose for his rape of a 13-year old in 1977. Here's the victim's testimony (via Patterico).

I think it's good that he might finally get his dues coming to him for violating an underage girl. But it's disgusting that many in Hollywood have come out to defend him, which is taking a serious risk of alienating many moviegoers. As Debbie Schlussel makes clear, the tragedies in his background do not give him a free pass to commit sick crimes. Maybe he doesn't realize it, and I don't ever expect him to, but he has insulted his own late wife Sharon Tate by committing something that those who murdered her would doubtless do too.

(On a side note, I want to note that, while the violent Muslim reaction to the Danish Mohammed cartoons was repulsive, it does not excuse any acts of anti-semitism that Denmark's press and government committed, and if Polanski's background tragedies do not give him a free pass to violate underage girls, then Denmark's being attacked by Islamofascism for publishing the Mohammed cartoons does not give it a free pass to commit anti-semitism either. That's not saying I don't wish to defend Denmark, but at the same time, I am not going to ignore if they've committed an atrocity either.)

I found out that Polanski, after fleeing the US, had quite a bit to say in an interview he gave featured in Visiting Mrs. Nabokov, and here it is on the UK Telegraph (via Michelle Malkin):

“If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!”

Tsk tsk. That's 3 mistakes he made there. One, that he used the F-bomb. Two, that when he speak of "young girls", he sadly means underaged, not 18-plus. And three, that he insults everyone else who disagrees with him. Yuck. And Jonathan Demme, John Landis, Michael Mann, Martin Scorsese, Whoopi Goldberg, Woody Allen, Debra Winger, among others, have the sheer gall to support him?

Reading this older op-ed by Michelle, I think it's a shame that the victim later, stupidly too, said that Polanski "should be honored according to the quality of [his] work�I don't think it would be fair to take past events into consideration. What he does for a living and how good he is at it having nothing to do with me, or what he did to me." Even if she hasn't let him off the hook for raping her, it's a bad idea to bring his cinematic work into the mix, because it'll likely be exploited as defense for him.

Some good news is that the French government is backing off defending him (also via Hot Air):

After French politicians across the spectrum initially voiced strong unease over the arrest, a government spokesman modified the official line on Wednesday, saying that Polanski was “neither above nor below the law.”

“A judicial procedure is under way concerning a serious case, the rape of a minor, and the U.S. and Swiss justice systems are doing their work,” spokesman Luc Chatel told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

“On the other hand, there’s emotion, and we can understand the emotion stirred up by this belated arrest, more than 30 years after the events, and the method of the arrest,” he said. [...]

Several French politicians, including members of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s own UMP party, have accused the government of elitism and acting in haste. Green Member of the European Parliament Daniel Cohn-Bendit said Mitterrand should have waited before more details of the case were known. [...]

“Charges of raping a 13-year-old child, that’s not something trivial,” UMP parliamentarian Marc Laffineur said.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were more than a few parents in France who wouldn't let someone so repugnant anywhere near their children, if he could endanger them as well. But maybe that's why now, parental groups in Europe are going to have to make it known that such acts cannot be approved of even within their own borders, and even "celebrities" who commit foul acts should be shunned even there. The filmmaker Luc Besson refused to sign the Hollyweird petition on the grounds that nobody should be above the law. Back in the US, even Kirstie Alley, who was a co-star on the Cheers sitcom after Shelley Long left, made it clear that rape is rape.

So I hope then that Polanski will get what's coming to him, but only time will tell.

By the way, did Polanski really drive a Mercedes? Figures that a creep like him would own a piece of German-made junk like that.

Update: Brent Bozell has his say.

Labels: Europe, France, misogyny, Moonbattery, showbiz, United States