Let me open by saying, what the HELL is wrong with you people?!?! How in the WORLD can you possibly be standing up in defense of Roman Polanski? I don’t care how great a director he is or how many awards he has won, the man is a monster who deserves to be put in jail for his crimes. You are offended that he was arrested on his way to a film festival? Well I am offended that you are standing in defense of a man who drugged and raped a thirteen year old girl. As if that wasn’t bad enough (and frankly, I can think of no crime more despicable, more heinous, more vile or repugnant, than the rape of a child), the coward fled the country rather than face the consequences of his actions.
If he hadn’t directed “The Pianist” but instead made his living moving pianos, would you be jumping to the defense of someone guilty of such a crime? I doubt it.
Too often those on the right attack Hollywood and use them as a scapegoat for the many ills of American society, but in this case they are dead on about how out of touch and morally depraved you are being.
Let me spell it out for you again, one more time.
He druged and raped a thirteen year old girl.
He shouldn’t be getting an award, he should be rotting in jail, and frankly those of you defending him probably deserve to do the same.
Indeed.
The person I can’t stand in this mess is Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post, who’s argument has boiled down to:
1. “What purpose does this serve?” (Ummmmmm, to see justice done? Is that too SQUARE for you?)
2. “It isn’t clear she wasn’t consenting” (YES. IT. IS. If you read the transcript, it is clear she said no repeatedly. It is also clear that she was drugged and raped. The ‘permission’ part where she calls her mother never mentioned pictures, much less sex. This is the “she was asking for it” defense, which is a reprehensible argument that I thought feminist writers like I think Applebaum is abandoned looooong ago.)
All in all, there are several people not covering themselves in grace here. The one saving grace for me is reading the comment section at WaPo. Never have I seen a section so united. There were NO Polanski defenders in the comment section. Everyone was calling out Applebaum. Amazing. Made me proud of the internet for once.
According to the CNN article, Polanski fled an impending 48 day sentence, with some sort of amorphous plea deal in the works that would subsequently set him free. Is 32 years in exile tantamount to time served?
Don’t get me wrong, as a father of small daughters even the 90-day sentence planned for Polanski would have fallen far short of justice. What troubles me is that a bunch of Hollywood sickos – including a guy who, you know, married his 17-year-old daughter are advancing the “time served” argument.
The argument itself is arguably a legal one and not intrinsically depraved…as long as you see the world in a certain way. Its the underlying world view that disturbs us simpletons here in flyover country.
Powerline: “Sure, he was a great film director, but then O.J. Simpson was a great running back.”
Well, it seems like people are conflating a lot of different issues. And as a legal matter they probably should not be conflated.
The actual case from 1977 which even the CNN article was pretty low on facts on, other than saying there were oddities. Which basically tells us nothing, is the first issue.
The arrest and how that was carried out last week is another issue.
Extradition and international law, treaties &c. related to that is another separate issue.
That, of course, leaving aside all the moral and ethical considerations which is yet another issue.
My head already hurts thinking about this. But at least from what I can see of the victims wishes in the article I would say: what he did was reprehensible. Permanent exile from the country for the rest of his life seems reasonable and in keeping with how she feels about the case at this point. If the French want him they can have him.
At least OJ stood trial.
As for “exile”, it hardly sounds like his life has been a challenge, and is it really exile when he’s not even an American citizen? Living in a French villa, regardless of whether he’d like to come back to the U.S. or not does not even remotely seem like adequate punishment to me.
Of course I think we have laws that would protect even him from getting the punishment I think he ACTUALLY deserves.
David, nothing in exile / ostracism specifically means hardship. It just means not here / go away we don’t want you. Now the greeks (where the word and the connotation you are focusing on comes from.) felt that living anywhere else but Greece was pretty much the end of the world due to the total lack of civilization but it’s not inherent in the punishment.
Had you read the article you would know that he also stood trial and plead guilty to his crimes which was the nature of the international arrest warrant for him.
Also, and lastly, the only laws that are actually applicable to this case in terms of what he did are those that were on the books in 1977 when he committed the crime.
Then again, I suppose the other question is, are we going to talk about this a legal matter or a philosophical gut matter?
If the French want him they can keep him. It will save the state of California a crap load of money.
He fled before he faced his punishment, that is pretty much a legal matter, and nothing short of him facing his punishment is good enough. Out of sight, out of mind is not acceptable for this cowardly monster. Some crimes are just too awful to ever be forgotten.
You say it is a legal matter and then run off on the philosophical issues again.
There are multiple very different legal issues present in this case. Only one of which is that he fled before sentencing. And beyond there being a US arrest warrant for him, it is totally irrelevant to the issues of international law, extradition, and treaties present between the US and Switzerland. As well as the diplomatic situation between France and Switzerland should Switzerland choose to extradite a French citizen to the United States.
Or, let us rephrase the situation a little bit. Germany has placed an arrest warrant out on multiple members of the Bush administration. So lets say Rumsfeld travels to Canada and on his way into Canada is arrested by the RCMP based on the German arrest warrant. Then there will be an extradition hearing to decide if he is either sent to Germany to stand trial or deported back to the United States (or permitted to roam free on Canadian soil). The US state department would complain loudly that he cannot be extradited to Germany. Germany would demand that Canada abide by the extradition treaty that they have with Germany. None of this has anything to do with the actual charges Germany is bringing. Which might play into Canada’s decision making at some point. But only in so much as to make sure they are valid charges. Extradition is a wonderfully complex and fraught area.
Now this would all be even more fun if Switzerland didn’t have an extradition treaty with the US, which they didn’t until the early 90’s but alas, they do now…
Yes, because clearly we can’t talk about the legal aspect without also being outraged by the moral aspect.
None of this is about whether or not there is a legal ability for him to be extradited to the U.S. and note I have not called out the French government for there defense of him against extradition (which they later dropped).
This is aimed SOLELY at those members of the Hollywood elite who have decided that it is a travesty that this man be arrested for the heinous crime he commited, simply because he also happens to have been one of them.
Feel free to keep rambling on about international law and extradition treaties, your missing the whole damn point of my post, but hey knock yourself out with your one sided arguments.
That’s because legal babbling is far ore entertaining than moral outrage. Moral out rage is simple and straightforward what’s the fun in that?
The guy is both a despicable person and a brilliant artist. A combination that is not particularly unusual…
And yes, they are wrong to say the law should be ignored. But the merits of the case, that’s far more interesting.