When I read of people – respected people – like the WaPo’s Annie Applebaum (and perhaps less respected people like the HuffPo’s Joan Shore) discussing the Roman Polanski thing I feel like I’ve landed in some sort of alternate moral universe. It chills my blood, makes me feel a little nauseous to think that I share the same humanity with such people, the same civilization, really. After all, these are not rustic Afghan farmers with alien notions. These are people who dare to think they can teach the rest of us what to believe.
Then I read Kate Harding at Slate, who begins not with Polanski’s charms, his tribulations, his allegedly brilliant cinematography. Who begins at the beginning:
Roman Polanski raped a child.
Everything else is commentary, although you should read it.
Too many people these days live in a world of moral relativism. There is no black and white (unless, perchance, you are castigating BusHitler or apologizing for the existence of the United States). All is a rather neutral (neutered) gray. Concepts like: Honor, Duty, Country, “No excuse, sir”, Self-reliance, Self-sacrifice, and Responsibility are so last 50 years ago. Gone to the dustbin of history along with God.
Roman is a feted (fetid) Hollywood and international man about town. Don’t bring up any inconvenient truths like drugging and raping a 13 year old and running for the hills.
I read Applebaum’s piece this morning and wanted to gag. It is good to see someone has put the focus back squarely where it belongs. And Flit I don’t care to see Mr. Polanski be raped in prison but I do look forward to him serving time for the crime he admitted to and, as far as I can tell, the facts are not much in dispute.
To say Mr. Polanski has somehow suffered enough because, well what exactly? Because he was a victim of Nazi oppressions, or has had to hide out in Europe all these past thirty years?
He raped a CHILD – yes that about says all I will ever need to know about Mr. Polanski Sadly his apologists insist on telling me more about themselves then I really want to know.
290 comments when I read the article – many arguing with the premise and at least one telling the author to get off her high horse. Crazy. Of course, right now there is sex slavery in the US, many of the victims are children and as a society we really aren’t doing much about it.
I’m glad this guy might get punished, wish it was just a start.
Ann Althouse points out that Applebaums husband is a Polish diplomat arguing for Polanskis’ case to be dismissed. A tad disingenuous, that.
I’ve got a 13 year old daughter who at 5′ 9″ and filling out looks older than her years.
Moral confusion on my part? Definitely.
Which would be appropriate response from a father: shotgun, explosives, poison or arson? None seem adequate to the morality of the task.
TNT suppository.
My brother recommended a baseball bat with about 100 nails driven into the barrel. No, don’t sharpen the heads off, leave them on.
I’ve got a 13 year old daughter who at 5′ 9″ and filling out looks older than her years.
I’m a Scouter (an adult Scout leader). We have various training courses. One we try to get everyone to take includes a tape called “Ages and Stages”. The point of the video is that there is very often a disparity between a child’s physical maturity and their emotional and mental maturity, that said discrepancy varies from child to child. Too many people make the mistake of thinking that if a child, male or female, is at a particular physical maturity stage that that are also at a particular mental and emotional maturity stage. They don’t say it in the video, but it’s clear to me that this is why we have statutory rape laws.
It should take about a week in a Troop to recognize that fact.
Buffalo Patrol
MT-31, 1988
“Back to Gilwell, Happy Land!”
I’d be happy to save you ammunition and cleaning and just let you use my snowblower. It’s 8 feet wide, 4 feet tall, dual augers, 90hp… Wide open it ought to spread the misted remains over at least a 100 foot by 30 foot swath.
Which, given the kind of person we’re dealing with, might not be a bad idea from an environmental point of view. Put that much pure, unadulterated evil in a mere 3′ x 6′ patch and you’d probably kill the grass.
– Max
Would that be mounted on a John Deere 6420?
Close! John Deere 4430.
Blackeagle603: You can never go wrong with the classics. Shotgun all the way. Given the perps history of running, you’ll probably need to start at the knees, though, and work your way up.
Dilemma with the shotgun is too many choices round my place.
“12 or 20 gauge?”
“Pump, auto, or topbreak?”
“Slug, 00, #1 or #4 buck?”
It’d be pelvis/hip first. Immobilizes better than a knee shot and somehow poetic in this case. Yeah, I’ve thought about it a bit since daughter #1 was carjacked at gunpoint in TJ a while back.
Collecting short barrel pumps for future wedding/house warming gifts for the daughters. The Son&Heir is already set with 2 barrels for his 870, a 270 and AR15.
A left-wing blog with a feminist viewpoint that I hang out on is pretty unanimous in proclaiming that this is a blatant example of white male privilege and that they want him back in the U.S. to be sentenced and incarcerated. Not to mention tried on fleeing the juristiction, etc. It sets up a pretty interesting conflict, as most of his supporters are left-wing types as well.
Interesting on how people whose profession and talent and mission it is to take us out of ourselves and get us to feel, emphasize and see what it’s like to be someone else can’t – or won’t – do that here for a 13-year old girl. There’s a movie waiting to be made; this story told from the victim’s viewpoint.
That’s an interesting point, one that I’d noted as well. This is perhaps one of the few issues that seems to unite our fractured polis. You have to wonder how the who got this so wrong could even for a moment think what they did, and then have the brass to publish it.
Which then leads me to thinking about all the great actors who’ve worked with this genius over the years since he pled guilty to raping a child.
Hollywood, ptui.
Hollywierd has been a depraved place for a very long time.
I’ve lately been watching a drama online that first aired on TV in the early 80s. I have been just stunned at the difference in how teenage girls are depicted then versus now. In the mid-eighties teens are depicted and treated as the children they are. Here in 2009 we argue about whether 13-year-olds should be able to make reproduction-related decisions without parental input.
I have to wonder how much of this moral blindness comes from people who have that 2009 view of teens and not the 1980s one… In other words, instead of seeing it as an adult manipulating a child and then assaulting her, they see it as “date rape” (couple gets drunk, then she wakes up from the fog in the morning and decides she didn’t give consent–note I am NOT saying rape can’t occur on a date, just saying that there are times where it is directly attributable to drug abuse). Both are wrong, but if you see a 13 year-old as a sexual being, the date rape viewpoint can be justified in some minds as a case of “tisk tisk, they made mistakes.”
(Just to be clear, I’m fully with those who have expressed their deep disgust for Polanski and his behavior; I’m just trying to get inside the head of the “other side”).
Lex–it’s the same world-view that sees most of the academic and social community in and around the Univ. of Chicago consider William Ayers to be a “respected member” of same while those who would look askanse at Ayers as being somehow retrograde troglytes out of synch with their times.
And Rashid Khalidi…
Roman Polanski drugged and raped a child……….This is a no-brainer. The depravity of journalists and others who would defend him just adds them to the list of self-identifying dirtbags.
He’s already plead guilty. All that’s left is his sentencing. Let’s get it over with – lock him up and throw away the key and let’s be done with it. Let him face the fangs of jailhouse justice. Which, if you ask me, is still too good for him.
BobConnolly and Homefront Six – well said.
Nothing to add.
I say give him some quaaludes and some Wild Turkey in a hardware store, tie him up and give her an hour to do anything she wishes to him…
As in force the pills and bourbon down his throat.
I’d been debating as to whether to click on the links, as repulsive as the situation is even at first blush, knowing nothing more than the fact he raped a child… because that’s all that matters. Reading how folks have in their minds, found this behavior excusable… leaves me nearly speechless. What has happened to our society that this offense, so heinous in my mind that I find execution as the proper punishment, has become even the slightest bit excusable?
It’s not American justice that finds it excusable. Polanski is a French citizen so the French have steadfastly refused to allow him to be extradited. The French, you see, are worse about their artistes than Hollyweird is about it’s faux-royalty. Artistes are a protected class – even moreso than here. To the French, Hollywood is vulgar and since Polanski has been perfecting his craft for 30 years in France…they believe said art belongs to the French. And since the French believe that Paris is the center of the art world, criticism of any kind – even for a heinous pig like Polanski – is just wrong. De classe’.
That and, I read this today, the French in general believe that Polanski has “suffered enough” thru the fate of his mother in Auschwitz and that his childhood was likely lived with a yellow star worn on his sleeve in France, putting him at great risk as a registered Jew during WWII. It seems the French believe they owe it to him to protect him as a way to pay him back for their past sins.
Anyone who commits a crime of this nature against a child should be executed.
Never understood or agreed with the argument about “we are more civilized, put them in prison, who are we to judge, …”. Of all crimes, those who commit sex crimes are the least likely to change their behaviour. If anything, society bears a grave moral burden for allowing these perverts to commit similar future crimes (and they will). And that is more civilized? Sorry, that rationale is beyond my ken.
Don’t misconstrue this as praise for Saddam Hussein, but this is one of those times when re-purposing an industrial plastic shredder might not be so wrong.
Seems pretty obvious Applebaum’s article is trying to rationalise the situation because having a husband who is buddies with a child rapist might cause one to ask hard questions about said husband. And then about one’s own judgment in having married a fellow who consorts with such sterling friends. I’m sure he seems like a perfectly charming fellow at dinner parties, but it doesn’t take rocket science to see what ought to happen to a guy who committed a heinous crime, plead guilty to it, and then bolted before he had to face the consequences.
Sat around a table in an ivory tower yesterday and was dumbfounded by the inability of those present to understand the simple fact that this jackass raped a child.
But, if Letterman can joke about child rape and time served is living in Europe, then maybe it is just not that big a deal. Maybe we should be focused on the victimization of the perpetrator. Of course, this same group of liberal Polanski supporters would be screaming for blood if the US extradited a black man for the rape of a white girl, but failed to do the same to a white man.
Makes me sick.
In a sane, rational, and law abiding society, I’m wondering why we even need to have this discussion?
Oh. Yeah. Maybe we’re not all of that anymore.
The society that tolerated Polanski fleeing the country, also allowed a U.S. Senator to remain in his seat after walking away from a car crash and allowing a young woman to die. Bill Ayers comes to mind with “Guilty as sin. Free as a bird. What a country!” as he’s trampling a flag underfoot. A retired football star and actor walks on a double murder charge; subsequent events notwithstanding.
Wood chipper. Feet first…slowly…sober.