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Audacity of Truth
Big Government- Hot Air
- Michelle Malkin
- Wheeling & dealing: Snowe pow-wows with Obama; Landrieu, Schumer, Daschle behind the scenes
- Saturday in the Senate: Cash for Cloture; Reid gets 60; Update: 8:15pm Eastern cloture vote – 60-39; Voinovich absent; Dems invoke Teddy Kennedy; Reid: “Ted would be happy.”
- Another day, another Berkeley tantrum
- Jake Tapper
- Lynn Sweet
In which I agree for quite possibly the first time ever with Salon.com
Kate Harding at Salon.com has probably the best opinion piece I’ve seen on the arrest (in Switzerland) of famous/imfamous director Roman Polanski. In it, she reminds the apologists for Polanski, who are crawling out of the woodwork in condemnation of the arrest, of one simple fact: Roman Polanski raped a child (via Tom Maguire):
Roman Polanski raped a child. Let’s just start right there, because that’s the detail that tends to get neglected when we start discussing whether it was fair for the bail-jumping director to be arrested at age 76, after 32 years in “exile” (which in this case means owning multiple homes in Europe, continuing to work as a director, marrying and fathering two children, even winning an Oscar, but never — poor baby — being able to return to the U.S.). Let’s keep in mind that Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her, before we start discussing whether the victim looked older than her 13 years, or that she now says she’d rather not see him prosecuted because she can’t stand the media attention. Before we discuss how awesome his movies are or what the now-deceased judge did wrong at his trial, let’s take a moment to recall that according to the victim’s grand jury testimony, Roman Polanski instructed her to get into a jacuzzi naked, refused to take her home when she begged to go, ….
I’d rather not reprint the rest here; make sure to visit the link for more on the victim’s testimony, and for a sampling of some of what the Polanski apologists are saying today. Especially interesting was this reprehensible piece of pure nuttery by WaPo columnist Anne Applebaum. Calling his arrest “outrageous,” she wrote:
Here are some of the facts: Polanski’s crime — statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl — was committed in 1977. The girl, now 45, has said more than once that she forgives him, that she can live with the memory, that she does not want him to be put back in court or in jail, and that a new trial will hurt her husband and children. There is evidence of judicial misconduct in the original trial. There is evidence that Polanski did not know her real age. Polanski, who panicked and fled the U.S. during that trial, has been pursued by this case for 30 years, during which time he has never returned to America, has never returned to the United Kingdom., has avoided many other countries, and has never been convicted of anything else. He did commit a crime, but he has paid for the crime in many, many ways: In notoriety, in lawyers’ fees, in professional stigma. He could not return to Los Angeles to receive his recent Oscar. He cannot visit Hollywood to direct or cast a film.
Poor guy!
Regarding Applebaum’s questionable “facts,” however, one point she neglected to mention was the fact that she has an undisclosed conflict of interest regarding Roman Polanski: she’s married to Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who just happens to be lobbying the US for Polanski’s (who is a native of Poland) release.
In response to Applebaum’s apologist rant for Polanksi, Ann Althouse unloads:
But is that any more absurd than saying he’s suffered enough because of all the burdens on his career? Think what this means, generalizing the opinion into an abstract rule. It means that those with high professional standing do not need the usual criminal punishments given to individuals who have very little in this world. Ordinary people must be punished in prison, but big shots are already punished heavily by the mere revelation of their crimes and therefore should be relieved of much or all of the usual prison sentence. Care to sign on to that rule?
In any event, surely it’s a sign of the times – and not a good one – that there is even a “debate” as to whether or not a child rapist should be prosecuted, aged or not.
I weep.
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14 Responses to “In which I agree for quite possibly the first time ever with Salon.com”
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One thing to remember – this was forcible intercourse of a sort that would have gotten him a nice long prison sentence if she had been 36 instead of thirteen. There’s no way I can describe it on this family-friendly blog, but suffice it to say it was sexual assault regardless of age. Polanski needs to die in prison. And, evidently, outside of Hollywood, a lot of Americans agree.
Dominic Lawson at the Independent (UK) agrees and pulls no punches in describing the details.
LINK
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Another blogger (forgot who) punctures the claim that the victim “looked older” by pointing out that Polanski had to get her mother’s permission to photograph her. He obviously knew she was underage.
No one has mentioned either here or on other blogs the inherent sexism in all this: oh, let’s let the great man off the hook and disregard the crime against a girl. (CLinton, Kennedy, Polanski, the list grows.)
What he is accused of is not just a crime against the victim, but it is also a crime against all of society. She may forgive him as she says she has, but she cannot grant the forgiveness of society. If he guilty, he must pay what he owes to society at large, and that has not been done. It is very foolish to think that this is a crime against the victim only. This sort of thing degrades our civil society if it is allowed to happen, and all are made less safe in the process.
1. Prison is the place for the rapist – Prisoners have a special place in their hearts for child rapists
2. Why are liberals compaining the rapist could not come to America after he ran? I thought liberals blamed America for all problems. Why would the rapist want to come to a racist country like America?
Well, what do you expect from the liberals? I mean, if they can rationalize Tookie Williams killing cops because he wrote a children’s book in prison, why, just a mere case of rape and sodomy against a minor is insignificant against the career accomplishments of a Big Hollywood Director!
This is all part and parcel of the Left’s typical hero worship complex. Their leaders, their heroes, are all better than us, and the rules shouldn’t apply. Obama go back on promises, well, no worry there. Polanski, why he’s a hero not a degenerate. Rangel pay taxes, nah. They idolize and get moonie eyed over their “elites” and feel that by doing so some of it rubs off on them and makes them special too, it’s childish and morally reprehensible. Conservatives want their leaders and idols taken down if they do something actually bad and illegal (and no, for the numbnuts out there, getting bad intel is not lying or a crime, it’s bad intel), we want them taken down, because we don’t idolize and lionize our “heroes” that way.
But hey, Kennedy killed a young woman, and look at how much they looked up to him!
I can assure you that if in fact Polanski goes to prison and he’s not in isolation it will be a death sentence. Period, end of discussion. Pedophiles and pedophiles who do to children what Polanski did to this child(at the time)are simply killed.
While it is more repulsive that he raped a child, raping a grown woman or man is also the act of a sadistic coward and should be punished no matter long ago the crime was committed.
So there is no reason to consider how old the girl “looked.” Drugging and raping her was a terrible act.
Applebaum must be lobbying for a job with Acorn.
If Polanski had wanted to come to the United States so badly, he could have grown a couple of days stubble on his face, put on a straw hat and walked across the Mexican border and no one would have been the wiser. He could have gotten an illegal social security card for a few bucks, gone to BoA and gotten a home loan with his false I.D., and done everything all other criminal aliens do without fear of reprisal except make movies (which most criminal aliens can’t do, anyway.)
If that wasn’t good enough for him, he shouldn’t have run. And if all those beautiful people had wanted to be close to him and his “star allure”, they certainly could have moved to wherever it was he was. Matter of fact, since the U.S. is such a sewer for human rights in their opinion, that probably would have been a step up in their lives.
But now that we have a savior that has made the Constitution a moot point, he’ll probably end up with a judge who thinks living in a series of outlandish villas outside the country for 30 years is punishment enough for baby rape.
Dr.D is correct. The crime is against society as much as against the actual victim, and even though she forgave him, that doesn’t exonerate him of the debt he owes to society. The killers of Medgar Evers were tried 4 decades after they killed him, Demjanjuk was expelled 50 years after his crimes … but Senator Driver’s Ed Kennedy became a lion and Robert Byrd’s Klan work was forgotten, Sharpton was convicted of lying about race but escaped prosecution for instigating two, not one, riots in which people died because of their racial identities.
It’s bad enough that he got to live out the prime of his life in freedom and prosperity. But for others to rally to his side, regarding the victim as nothing more than a rag doll toy worthy of being tossed onto the trash is disgusting. Considering that over seventy percent of rapes go unreported, his trash bin is probably quite full of little rag dolls.
“What’s the life of one unknown soul in relation to a great master artist? He has given so much to us, surly we can offer him this small sacrifice?” Hollywood.
Maybe operatives at the CIA could claim that they raped their al Qaeda prisoners .. oh .. didn’t they sort of rape the prisoners at abu Ghraib prison … and they took pictures, just like Roman Polanski did with the 13 year old.
Now we have the proof that abu Ghraib prison really wasn’t that bad .. they were just trying to do their “Roman Polanski” thing.
Yeah .. sure.
Nah, Neo, doesn’t work. After all, the prisoners in abu Ghraib were MUSLIMS, don’tcha know, and therefore respectable humans worthy of all honor, while Polanski’s “victim” was simply a young child (you know, the ones the left is always screaming they need to protect), doped up illegally, raped and sodomized (by his own admission) then tossed aside. Obviously, she wasn’t a victim because she couldn’t help the left’s cause. The abu Ghraib prisoners were, could and did.
From what I can find out, the average rape sentences (plain rape not the “rape-rape” as recently described on the View) are about 10 yrs with about 5 yrs actually served. I’m sure rape of a child would get a longer sentence.
Consensual sex with a minor is a crime and still considered rape. Sex without consent is rape pure and simple.
Has a major change in our morals passed me by when I wasn’t looking? Polanski deserves everything the law can exact, cost be damned (I’m from LA and there is worry about cost).