Whoppi Goldberg: Defends rapists (Polanski) and Animal cruelty (M. Vick).
What/Who's next? Maybe a "the terrorists were well intentioned - and very talented" speech?
Also,this is from Mrs.Paysan, Roman's talent's not something so precious that it must be protected at such great cost. The truth is that there are a thousand people as competent at filmaking who are busy trying to survive in other ways, working too hard, or who don't know the right people to help them get a chance to display their own filmamking ability. Send him to prison, shoot him, there will be a dozen new filmakers with a chance to show us something wonderful.
It's only been the last week where you can see what Samantha's been up against the past thirty years. Between Whoopi, "victim advocate" Debra Tate and list of prominent enabler Filmmakers it's no wonder she wants the whole thing behind her. They seem to have lost a basic sense of humanity.
Got a question, just to stir up the debate that much more:
When Ted Kennedy died last month, many wrote or said that while he never had any legal repercussions from Mary Jo's drowning, he went on to become such a great statesman who dedicated his life to helping the poor and the learning disabled that we should move on. Polanski did time--maybe not enough in our opinion, but he did time and what he was expected of him to do, and they released him. (He fled because the judge was going to renege on the plea bargain; he didn't escape from prison). He has been long-married and is a good father; he is not a repeat offender. He has continued to make movies, including collaborating with Spielberg on Schindler's List and directing the Pianist, both very important because they remind us as well as inform a new generation of the horrors of the Holocaust.
Here's the question: what's the difference?
And I mean besides the: he raped, he admitted guilt, he fled the country, etc. responses which we all know very well now.
I mean: why should we as a society forgive EMK for his crime--nobody pushed for his arrest 30 years later--because of his good works after the fact and not RP, who has been just as postive and redeeming, if not more so?
* This is a straight-forward question, not an opinion.
The question is reasonable, but the answer is people's trust in the justice system.
Kennedy did stay and face justice and its consequences, although he did not know for sure what they would be at the time.
Polanski did not. If Polanski had been senteced and had his restitution discharged, it is quite likely that people would have forgiven him and stopped talking about it by now, for all of the other analogies to Kennedy you cited.
@Swordfish: How do you know that Polanski is not a repeat offender? Because he was never caught again? He continued to date very young girls. He went to France and started an affair with a 15 y.o. Kinski (yes, I know 15 is the age of consent in France.) Seigner is 33 years younger than he is. He clearly likes much MUCH younger women. The pattern is there no matter how hard you try to ignore it just b/c the women are of legal age, in their respective country, and consenting in these instances.
As for Kennedy, he at least dealt with the repercussions (he fled the night of the scene but reported it to the authorities the next day.) Obviously, he received a very very lenient sentence for what he did but he did not flee the country to escape sentencing and it was accidental even if it was stupid and his responsibility for driving intoxicated. Polanski PURPOSELY drugged the girl and engaged in inappropriate and illegal sexual behavior with a 13 y.o. It's just not the same b/c he did not actually intend to kill Kopechne. Besides, as far as drunk driving is concerned, the sentencing is never as severe and strict as you might expect. While Kennedy got off super easy b/c of who he was, he wouldn't have served that much more time had he been a nobody.
@Paddington: But did Kennedy face justice? I thought he fled the scene, spent all night trying to come up with a fake alibi then had his family make any potentially prison-term charges evaporate.
I could be wrong and will stand corrected.
@hotpinklovesofa: Fair. Though today he would serve more time than then. I believe Tarantino's Pulp Fiction co-writer was just sentenced to a year in prison for a fatal drunk-driving accident.
@Swordfish: Exactly. My friend was involved and severely wounded from an accident with a drunk driver. He barely did any time and his fine was negligible. Kennedy back-dealings had more to do with saving his career than the actual fear of facing a sentence given that it would've been so small back then anyway. The only difference I wanted to make was that one act was intentional (the rape, well actually the fleeing as well which would be 2 acts) while the other was accidental. Kennedy did not set out to harm Kopechne and even tried to save her, at least by his account. Polanski intentionally and purposely plied this girl with drugs and proceeded to rape her through oral, vaginal and anal sex.
@Swordfish: First, this is obviously ignoring the facts of the offense: an accident that resulted in death, vs. an entirely premeditated, intentional rape. But putting that aside...
The cliche is that getting sentenced, and doing any time allotted, pays your debt to society, but we allow the court to say what that debt is. This is why nobody's pushing for Donte Stallworth's or Kobe Bryant's arrest, either, even though both got off with little or no punishment: they stood up in court, heard the court's verdict, and lived with the consequences. Polanski skipped out on his sentencing and has been living the life of a rich Parisian ever since. If he'd stayed and the judge had upheld the plea bargain, there would have been a godawful outcry at the time - and justifiably so, for what it's worth - but 30 years later nobody would even remember.
Plus, there's the whole no-remorse "every man likes little girls" angle. That doesn't help.
@Swordfish: Still, there is a perception that Kennedy did this within the system, even though the system can be unfair. Basically, the price you pay for being a respectable member of American society is to agree to abide by the system's verdict. Polanski did not.
Can we leave out the age/the child/the "innocence" debate and just look at the facts: he drugged and forcibly had sex with and sodomoized a PERSON that said no, I do not want to do this.
He copped a plea bargain for a lesser charge, and then skipped the country. This is what happened, regardless of any back room deals or whatever. He plead guilty to rape and then left the country before he was sentenced.
Here's the thing I can't wrap my mind around. Disregard, for the moment, the legal hair-splitting over the okay-maybe-fucked-up trial, the question of the sovereignty of international film festivals, the bizarre idea that someone's abilities as a director somehow trump anything and everything, differences between European ideas of justice vs. American, etc., etc.
The man was 43 years old, and had sex (hell, for the argument's sake, let's say it WAS TOTALLY CONSENSUAL) with a 13 year old girl. On that piece of information alone, how can anyone in Hollywood or elsewhere be ok with having any relationship at all--personal, professional, whatever--with him?
Because he's an--allegedly--great director?
Who the fuck cares?
I have a really great dentist, but if I found out he had sex with a 13 year old girl, I'd probably stop going to him. My neighbor is a totally cool dude and has an AWESOME entertainment center, but if he had sex with a 13-year old girl, I'd probably stop going over there to watch football.
Wes Anderson, Martin Scorcese, Pedro Almodovar et al, I love your movies. But if you found out that the key grip was fucking a 13 year old girl in his spare time, would you be totally just cool with it?
I guess you would.
This whole thing is just so warped that I feel like I must be missing something. Some key piece of information that might give Polanski supporters some legal, moral, or logical leg to stand on. Like, I don't know, maybe that there was the slightest shred of doubt that he HAD SEX WITH A 13 YEAR OLD GIRL WHEN HE WAS 43. Then maybe I could understand a little.
@TrilbyEleius: I totally agree. It feels like a weird, stressful nightmare where everyone you know and respect turns out to have been a crab person all along, and looks at you like you're the crazy one for not being one.
Would your mother allow you to visit a dentist who's known all over town as a "skirt chaser," who parties hearty and pals around with men of a similar reputation like Jack Nicholson?
I say the answer to that would be a big fat NO.
Taking sexual advantage of a 13-year-old girl is abhorrent. But who sent this child into the wolf’s den...her mother did.
What did the woman think, they were going to sit around the pool, wear paper party hats and have milk and cookies???
But this makes the crime even worse. The poor kid can't even depend on her mother to take care of her -- so she ends up cast to whatever immediate physical desire the nearest middle-aged troll happens to be harboring. Children aren't things, where you can say, while, the lady didn't watch her purse, so she can't really complain that it was stolen.
@Paddington:
You say "Children aren't things," then go ahead and compare this child to a purse! The analogy you are trying to make is ineffective and begs to be expanded towards some logical progression.
Okay...then,
Let’s say… if you have a purse, which you treasure and contains those things close to your heart, do you willingly hand it over to a purse snatcher?
It's wisdom to put that which you value only into the hands of those you trust. Whatever the mother's motives were, she demonstrated bad judgment or at the least naivety, which placed, her child in jeopardy. She made a bad decision and her child became a victim of a sex crime.
I said it once and I think it is worth repeating: if Polanski was poor and black instead of a white European film director, NO ONE, not one person, would be signing a petition to drop the rape charges. The victim is not Polanski. It is Samantha Geimer- who was 13 when she was drugged and raped in the ass by a guy old enough to be her dad.
@if_i_only_had_a_heart: I'm not an apologist and I can't speak for any, but the reality is a bit more complex than that. If it was me? I'd want to hunt that motherfucker down and castrate him. If it was my child, I'd castrate him, sew it back on, and then castrate him again. But, as much as many of us might want it to, vigilante justice -- however just it may in fact be -- does not take the place of the justice system. I don't think your question presents a useful equivalency in that respect. This man should be universally reviled and shunned. But just because a person might argue that he deserves due process doesn't mean that they don't find his actions, and his person, reprehensible.
Roman Polanksi plied a child with drugs, raped her, and admitted to it because he thought he was going to get off lightly. He deserves to go to jail, period. Aside from the fact that he's not all that talented -- he didn't write Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby, or The Pianist; he directed them - it wouldn't matter if he was a combination of Freud, Einstein, and Shakekspeare, he would still deserve to go to jail. Regardless of what his defendant, Samantha Geimer, wants at this point -- let's say she made a financial deal with the devil and is sticking to it -- civil society is best served by Polanski going to jail. It's true, as The Times said in an editorial this morning, the timing of his arrest is a bit strange -- why wait all these years -- but that's hardly the main point, or question. And Sharon Tate's sister was absolutely disgraceful when she said the sex, between a man in his forties and a drunk thirteen year old kid was consensual. What's most disgusting, though, are those who say Samantha Geimer knew she was sexy, and therefore seduced him. Please! You could say that about a five year old, are anyone at any age who's being cheeky. Of course, pubescent girls try on their sexuality, dress provocatively, but that doesn't mean they deserve to be taken advantage of, and raped, or that they really understand what's up and down. At least not the way a forty-plus world famous director does. What would Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Woody Allen, or Polanski himself do if it happened to their own daughters, which they all have now?
@Tweezergal: Not defending Polanski on what he did (at all) but rather defending his artistic talents: you obviously know NOTHING about making movies; least of all anything about directing. It is an art, and he has excelled at it. Additionally- you maybe need to chill.
He can shit unicorns and stars and still be a rapist. Lets fight about his talent, because it is a moot point that he raped a 13 year old girl in the ass.
@saythatscool: But Woody didn't consider Soon Yi his daughter -- he didn't even consider her Mia Farrow's daughter. He kept insisting she was only Mia's "adopted" daughter -- not the best argument he ever made! I'm talking about the children he and Soon Yi adopted together, whom I'm sure he would have a different perspective on.
@somethingsfishy: You're right, I don't know anything about making movies, but I do know it's harder to envision a scene from right out of your head -- as in being the primary creative talent -- than in taking someone else's product -- the writer's -- and turning it into a movie. Admittedly, it's a different kind of talent, just like acting is, but not as hard -- at least in my opinion. Chill into what -- an ice sculpture. I simply wrote an opinion about the rape of a child, which, to my mind, doesn't merit "chilling" over, at least not from society's perspective; Polanski and advocates need to "chill" and just accept justice.
@saythatscool: Okay, I could have picked other actors as examples, but I chose Woody Allen, for instance, because he signed the Polanski petition and because he did something morally reprehensible to a child, and I thought, what if it were his own child, what would his perspective be? People sing entirely different tunes when something befalls them and theirs, especially those people who are the most vocal about leniency for a perpetrator when the situation concerns not-themselves-as-victims. And I chose Beatty and Nicholson because they're known Lotharios and I thought, what about if it's a girl or woman in their own family -- how would they feel if their own daughters were used and abused? But, you have a point, I could have chosen to view it from an entirely different perspective and named "Wiford Brimley."
@Balsa Wood: No, I'm not a screenwriter, and even screenwriters, in most cases, are not the primary creative talent; they usually base their screenplays on someone else's novel, book, or article. I'm just sick and tired of how everyone in Hollywood is "brilliant" or a "genius." Directing is a talent, yes, but a collaborative one, involving lots of people -- actors, producers, cinematographers, multiple screenwriters, animators, set designers, casting directors, etc.; moreover, it's a talent based on someone else's original vision and work. Having an editor go over a great novel is different, pure and simple -- and I don't mean a rewrite person, but an editor. But as someone pointed out before, Polanski's raping a child doesn't have to include a discussion about his talent, or lack thereof; it stands on its own for what it is, so I won't be mentioning talent again.
@Tweezergal: Would civil society really be served by his imprisonment? I mean, perhaps you want to shell out millions of dollars to put him through lengthy trial, and then, if he is sent to jail, pay for his accommodations. I don't, and I don't want other Americans to pay for his prison time either. Its purely symbolic of justice, not real justice.
@tnmnsquare: It's real justice -- not symbolic -- and according to your logic the finanical bottom line is what should matter most, even for a rape. So should murderers, embezzlers, and thieves also be relieved of serving a sentence, particularly if it's their first conviction? That, to my mind, would be the greater cost to society, financially, morally, and socially. What's especially galling about the Polanski case is that it's a perfect illustration of legal favoritism for the rich, devaluation of women, and a laissez faire sense of what's right and wrong: to wit, if you're seedy enough to escape rightful justice, you're home free. It's quite important he be brought back, and I'm sorry you can't see it. Why can't he and his advocates just accept his extradition without all this self-righteous moralizing? He's a fugitive, guilty of a terrible crime, so why is his incarceration symbolic? His advocates should just accept it, be quiet, and let justice take its course.
I just feel sorry for the victim. Not only was she forced to experience whatever occurred so many years ago, but she's had to relive it at a couple of points in her life and now that the internet and cable television has bubbled-up with such vitriol, she's going to be forced to face it over and over for the next few weeks.
And what makes it even better is that pretty much everything written about this case uses her married name, not her maiden, so her kids and everything she has done as an adult has been colored by this event.
since when is drugging and refusing to accept "no" not considered a crime, not consider rape, regardless of the age?
and if she was 13yrs and a non-virgin, does that mean she was an acceptable target? if she had been raped previously, would that also mean it was okay to rape her?
but truly, we realize that many people who consider themselves celebrities believe they are endowed by the creator with talents that allow them to do whatever they want, therefore they must uphold the right of Polanski's 'brilliance' to exempt him the charge of rape. let's ponder what kind of people excuse the drugging and rape of a 13 year old girl?
and as for the statements from Sharon Tate's sister about Polanski's talent - I offer that Charles Manson and his crew may have some artistic and musical talents that need to be exposed to the world for us to appreciate them. Release them, what they did to her sister was bad, but maybe she had been stabbed before? But hey, they have talent!
@noasalira: I appreciate that you're using what you think is sarcasm here to make a comment about equivalence between the Tate-LaBianca murder rampage and Roman Polanski's rape conviction.
It is not sarcasm though.
I've seen similar comments in other threads, and the fact is this, there is no way on Earth that what Roman Polanski did is even vaguely comparable to what happened to his 8 months pregnant wife.
People who've been traumatized (say by living through the Holocaust and then the brutal murder of your family at the hands of a cult of deranged psychopaths), rarely behave in a linear, TV Network Drama way in response to that trauma.
The tone of high moral dudgeon that gets directed at Mr. Polanski in comments like this is frankly, offensive. You can't discount the tragedy of this man's life when taking this event into consideration. And if you do, then you're being far worse than those you accuse of being apologists.
In the outrage I've seen directed at this man in the comments I've read, I see a whole lot rendering judgment out of their asses.
@lionel-mandrake: He doesn't get off the hook for his own crimes because bad shit happened to him. If anything, it tells me that he understands nothing about suffering if he could cause others to suffer after what he'd been through.
Legally, it doesn't matter what his life's experiences was before he DRUGGED and RAPED a 13-year-old child. Had he stuck around and not fled the country like the giant pussy he is, these experiences could maybe go to mitigating factors of his crime and influence the sentencing, but they are not a defense of his crime.
@freedc: Look, if some people had disemboweled my bride and unborn child, I'd stalk them in the dark night and crack their skulls with a pipe. I'd be like, "f*ck the laws of man and due process, I'm going medieval on these a-holes." All that @lionel-mandrake is saying, I think (?!) is that you go a little insane when something so radically vicious happens to your loved ones. We're by no means excusing Polanski's rape of a minor girl, just underlining the fact that there are exceptional mitigating circumstances here..
@snugbug: If some people disemboweled your wife and unborn child, would you rape some other child? What exactly is the point here? There's a difference between exceptional circumstances, and exceptional mitigating circumstances. Even if living through the Holocaust and having his wife killed traumatized him severely, how does that excuse raping a 13-year-old?
@lionel-mandrake: So its OK to call "offensive" at others' anger about child rape, but not to be offended by child rape and a self-righteous guy who perpetrated it. You need to clean out that frontal lobe and check your moral compass; when you locate it, ask it about honest outrage, and if child molestation is enough to bring it out. Get back to us.
@Boswell: I'm not calling anger at child rape offensive. I'm calling attitude of disregard towards the murder of Roman Polanski's family offensive, when discussing this particular issue.
By the way, my moral compass stopped guiding me to absolutist judgments along about the time I became a grown-up.
@lionel-mandrake: GO talk to any number of grown men in jail right now. I will bet you five dollars most of them had traumatic childhoods, maybe not Nazi internment trauma, but the trauma of repeated abuse, neglect and poverty. Many of them too may have witnessed a loved one brutality murdered, but they did not escape their sentencing. It is moral relativism to say one man is excused for his crimes because he had it harder than another.
@Astigmatism: That doesn't excuse it. Nothing excuses it. But it also doesn't mean that the events are not connected. I hate using analogies because they are always imprecise, but there are soldiers suffering from PTSD who kill their children and wives and we don't say "well, that he was subjected to untold horrors doesn't matter, he's a monster"; we also don't say "he should be excused of his crime because of his trauma." Instead, we look for an almost impossible cognitive reconciliation wherein these tragedies must confront each other again and again without either one ever disappearing or being solved. If someone disemboweled my wife and unborn child? I'm pretty sure Polanski didn't rape that child as an act of revenge. We're beyond the realm of the rational here.
@pony_express: Nobody's saying he should be excused. Just that it's difficult to see the murder of Sharon Tate be rendered irrelevant so as to make the point that rape is inexcusable. Rape is inexcusable and the murder of Polanski's family is inexcusable. It is possible to think those things at the same time. Our criminal justice system is not so good at that either.
@minou: Thank you. I feel like I've been trying to make this point for two days, but everyone is so far up on their indignant, sanctimonious high horse, they don't want to hear anything other than "lock him up".
I never said his past excused his actions. I was merely critiquing the heated (and sometimes fanciful) invective used in discussing this issue.
Personally, I don't think anyone (myself included), and especially on an internet comment thread, is qualified to render any sort of judgment on this issue.
10/01/09
What/Who's next? Maybe a "the terrorists were well intentioned - and very talented" speech?
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When Ted Kennedy died last month, many wrote or said that while he never had any legal repercussions from Mary Jo's drowning, he went on to become such a great statesman who dedicated his life to helping the poor and the learning disabled that we should move on. Polanski did time--maybe not enough in our opinion, but he did time and what he was expected of him to do, and they released him. (He fled because the judge was going to renege on the plea bargain; he didn't escape from prison). He has been long-married and is a good father; he is not a repeat offender. He has continued to make movies, including collaborating with Spielberg on Schindler's List and directing the Pianist, both very important because they remind us as well as inform a new generation of the horrors of the Holocaust.
Here's the question: what's the difference?
And I mean besides the: he raped, he admitted guilt, he fled the country, etc. responses which we all know very well now.
I mean: why should we as a society forgive EMK for his crime--nobody pushed for his arrest 30 years later--because of his good works after the fact and not RP, who has been just as postive and redeeming, if not more so?
* This is a straight-forward question, not an opinion.
09/30/09
The question is reasonable, but the answer is people's trust in the justice system.
Kennedy did stay and face justice and its consequences, although he did not know for sure what they would be at the time.
Polanski did not. If Polanski had been senteced and had his restitution discharged, it is quite likely that people would have forgiven him and stopped talking about it by now, for all of the other analogies to Kennedy you cited.
09/30/09
As for Kennedy, he at least dealt with the repercussions (he fled the night of the scene but reported it to the authorities the next day.) Obviously, he received a very very lenient sentence for what he did but he did not flee the country to escape sentencing and it was accidental even if it was stupid and his responsibility for driving intoxicated. Polanski PURPOSELY drugged the girl and engaged in inappropriate and illegal sexual behavior with a 13 y.o. It's just not the same b/c he did not actually intend to kill Kopechne. Besides, as far as drunk driving is concerned, the sentencing is never as severe and strict as you might expect. While Kennedy got off super easy b/c of who he was, he wouldn't have served that much more time had he been a nobody.
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I could be wrong and will stand corrected.
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The cliche is that getting sentenced, and doing any time allotted, pays your debt to society, but we allow the court to say what that debt is. This is why nobody's pushing for Donte Stallworth's or Kobe Bryant's arrest, either, even though both got off with little or no punishment: they stood up in court, heard the court's verdict, and lived with the consequences. Polanski skipped out on his sentencing and has been living the life of a rich Parisian ever since. If he'd stayed and the judge had upheld the plea bargain, there would have been a godawful outcry at the time - and justifiably so, for what it's worth - but 30 years later nobody would even remember.
Plus, there's the whole no-remorse "every man likes little girls" angle. That doesn't help.
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He copped a plea bargain for a lesser charge, and then skipped the country. This is what happened, regardless of any back room deals or whatever. He plead guilty to rape and then left the country before he was sentenced.
I really don't get what the debate here is.
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The man was 43 years old, and had sex (hell, for the argument's sake, let's say it WAS TOTALLY CONSENSUAL) with a 13 year old girl. On that piece of information alone, how can anyone in Hollywood or elsewhere be ok with having any relationship at all--personal, professional, whatever--with him?
Because he's an--allegedly--great director?
Who the fuck cares?
I have a really great dentist, but if I found out he had sex with a 13 year old girl, I'd probably stop going to him. My neighbor is a totally cool dude and has an AWESOME entertainment center, but if he had sex with a 13-year old girl, I'd probably stop going over there to watch football.
Wes Anderson, Martin Scorcese, Pedro Almodovar et al, I love your movies. But if you found out that the key grip was fucking a 13 year old girl in his spare time, would you be totally just cool with it?
I guess you would.
This whole thing is just so warped that I feel like I must be missing something. Some key piece of information that might give Polanski supporters some legal, moral, or logical leg to stand on. Like, I don't know, maybe that there was the slightest shred of doubt that he HAD SEX WITH A 13 YEAR OLD GIRL WHEN HE WAS 43. Then maybe I could understand a little.
BUT THERE'S NOT.
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Would your mother allow you to visit a dentist who's known all over town as a "skirt chaser," who parties hearty and pals around with men of a similar reputation like Jack Nicholson?
I say the answer to that would be a big fat NO.
Taking sexual advantage of a 13-year-old girl is abhorrent. But who sent this child into the wolf’s den...her mother did.
What did the woman think, they were going to sit around the pool, wear paper party hats and have milk and cookies???
09/30/09
But this makes the crime even worse. The poor kid can't even depend on her mother to take care of her -- so she ends up cast to whatever immediate physical desire the nearest middle-aged troll happens to be harboring. Children aren't things, where you can say, while, the lady didn't watch her purse, so she can't really complain that it was stolen.
09/30/09
You say "Children aren't things," then go ahead and compare this child to a purse! The analogy you are trying to make is ineffective and begs to be expanded towards some logical progression.
Okay...then,
Let’s say… if you have a purse, which you treasure and contains those things close to your heart, do you willingly hand it over to a purse snatcher?
It's wisdom to put that which you value only into the hands of those you trust. Whatever the mother's motives were, she demonstrated bad judgment or at the least naivety, which placed, her child in jeopardy. She made a bad decision and her child became a victim of a sex crime.
It's a tragedy all the way around.
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Paddington doesn't know what an "analogy" is...and neither do you. That was my point.
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1. what if it was your child?
2. what if it was you?
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So, probably not the best argument you've ever made.
09/30/09
Plus, second on the Woody Allen.
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Wiford Brimley comes to mind:
[2.bp.blogspot.com]
Or Eddie Mekka who played Carmine 'The Big Ragoo' Ragusa on Laverne and Shirley:
[www.judithgeiger.com]
I like to think that neither of these guys ever stuck it in 13 year old's chocolate pudding factory. But who knows really?
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And what makes it even better is that pretty much everything written about this case uses her married name, not her maiden, so her kids and everything she has done as an adult has been colored by this event.
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and if she was 13yrs and a non-virgin, does that mean she was an acceptable target? if she had been raped previously, would that also mean it was okay to rape her?
but truly, we realize that many people who consider themselves celebrities believe they are endowed by the creator with talents that allow them to do whatever they want, therefore they must uphold the right of Polanski's 'brilliance' to exempt him the charge of rape. let's ponder what kind of people excuse the drugging and rape of a 13 year old girl?
and as for the statements from Sharon Tate's sister about Polanski's talent - I offer that Charles Manson and his crew may have some artistic and musical talents that need to be exposed to the world for us to appreciate them. Release them, what they did to her sister was bad, but maybe she had been stabbed before? But hey, they have talent!
09/30/09
It is not sarcasm though.
I've seen similar comments in other threads, and the fact is this, there is no way on Earth that what Roman Polanski did is even vaguely comparable to what happened to his 8 months pregnant wife.
People who've been traumatized (say by living through the Holocaust and then the brutal murder of your family at the hands of a cult of deranged psychopaths), rarely behave in a linear, TV Network Drama way in response to that trauma.
The tone of high moral dudgeon that gets directed at Mr. Polanski in comments like this is frankly, offensive. You can't discount the tragedy of this man's life when taking this event into consideration. And if you do, then you're being far worse than those you accuse of being apologists.
In the outrage I've seen directed at this man in the comments I've read, I see a whole lot rendering judgment out of their asses.
09/30/09
Legally, it doesn't matter what his life's experiences was before he DRUGGED and RAPED a 13-year-old child. Had he stuck around and not fled the country like the giant pussy he is, these experiences could maybe go to mitigating factors of his crime and influence the sentencing, but they are not a defense of his crime.
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By the way, my moral compass stopped guiding me to absolutist judgments along about the time I became a grown-up.
09/30/09
09/30/09
09/30/09
09/30/09
09/30/09
I never said his past excused his actions. I was merely critiquing the heated (and sometimes fanciful) invective used in discussing this issue.
Personally, I don't think anyone (myself included), and especially on an internet comment thread, is qualified to render any sort of judgment on this issue.