Posted on 10/04/2009 12:11:59 PM PDT by Steelfish
The Polanski Case: A Gallic Shrug
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Published: October 3, 2009
BERLIN — The move by prosecutors in Los Angeles and Washington to have the Swiss authorities arrest Roman Polanski in Zurich when he arrived there last weekend for a film festival surprised not only him.
OUTRAGED “A youthful error,” the French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, above, said of the director Roman Polanski’s crime.
Having fled the United States in 1978, just before his sentencing for sex with a 13-year-old girl, the Oscar-winning film director, a French citizen, lived openly in Paris and traveled around Europe for more than 30 years. His victim, who has said she’s forgiven him, repeatedly made clear she preferred the charges be dropped.
An American documentary last year suggested there was misconduct by the judge in the case, raising fresh prospects for a successful appeal.
Instead, the arrest painted the usual picture of moralistic America versus libertarian France.
At first, anyway.
Then bloggers, pollsters, pundits, politicians and hundreds of celebrities weighed in on both sides of the Atlantic. And the picture changed.
That’s because in many ways, reactions differed little. There was Whoopi Goldberg, the American actress, claiming to find some difference between what Mr. Polanski did and what she called “rape rape.” And there was Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French celebrity intellectual, allowing as how Mr. Polanski, 43 at the time, “perhaps had committed a youthful error.”
Harvey Weinstein, the American movie producer, did Mr. Lévy one better with the phrase “so-called crime” to describe the act of unlawful sex to which Mr. Polanski pleaded guilty, and then Mr. Weinstein, in all apparent seriousness, told The Los Angeles Times that “Hollywood has the best moral compass.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Polanski was in his MID 40s when he raped a 13 year old!!
To his apologists “YOU LIE”
Wow, I had to do a double-take to make sure I was really reading a NYT article.
perfect example of loony thinking on the left.
Ok I am shocked that the NY Times would print this. I wonder if the paper has decided to try to stay in business?
I love this excerpt from the article:
Meanwhile, a popular French cable television satire, “Les Guignols de l’Info,” ridiculed Mr. Mitterrand. Recalling Chris Rock’s joke that O. J. Simpson would have been in jail years earlier if he had been “Orenthal the Bus Driving Murderer,” a puppet on the show depicting the French culture minister referred to “the Beast of the Bastille,” Guy Georges, who raped and murdered perhaps as many as 10 young women in the early 1990s. “If Guy Georges had directed ‘Citizen Kane,’ ” the minister-puppet said, “I would have let him out.”
Outrageous lies by the NY Times. Polls indicate that the French overwhelmingly want the pedophile to face justice in the US.
http://www.closeronline.co.uk/Assets/Image/080421_jeremythin_lead.jpg
What does this picture have to do with anything?
Harvey Weinstein could give Michael Moore loathsome pig lessons.
Not a great deal different from the United States at the moment, but in the near distance you can hear the tumbrels rumbling and Monsieur Guillotine sharpening his blade. Polanski is being defended by the favored class of which he is a prominent member, for no reason better than his membership. Self-styled aristocrats do tend to hang together. Personally I don't care so long as they are, in fact, hung.
I wonder what the former 13-year-old girl (now, woman) thinks about all the celebrities & directors & movie stars IN FAVOR of Polanski having gotten away with raping her. If I were her, I'd be furious. Maybe she'll come out of hiding and address the pro-rapist celebrities. Maybe she could appear on one of the talk shows. The Oprah Show? Oprah herself was raped (I've recently learned), so it would be interesting to see the woman on Oprah's show. (However, we don't know Oprah's opinion on all this.) Or, maybe she could appear on one of the conservative cable shows. With the pro-Polanski list adding more names every day, what thoughts must be going through the woman's head?
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