The girl’s grand jury testimony is creepy and disgusting and I think should leave anyone defending Polanski at this point ashamed and embarassed.
I seem to detect a general trend amongst the glittteratti. There seems to be less support for RP today.
Thankfully, the comments section is going to town against her. I only did a quick scan, but I didn’t see a single post that sided with her at all.
Of course, it doesn’t help that her husband is a Polish politician and writer lobbying for Polanski’s release, somthing she conveniently forgot to mention in her original OpEd.
And the backlash seems to have worked:
Wha??? When was this?
Oh, and I believe it was Whoopi Goldberg on The View who made the “rape-rape” comment.
(As for her whole – oh, well, she’s had sex before and she’s in the know – anyone else notice that in the transcript, she refers to cunilingus as “cuddliness?”)
What a complete and utter asshole. I’m sorry for the victim, but really, this man needs to be shown the consequences of his actions.
WTF is Rape-rape vs rape? Is Rape-rape like what happened to Rob Lowe?
This whole thing is one sorry mess.
Oh is that what she meant? I don’t know why, I just parsed that as they started snuggling. Cunnilingus does make sense considering he…well, did that to her.
Reading the transcript makes it seem so obvious. I mean, there are ways it could be parsed in an ambiguous way. If she never said no, if she just sort of went along with it out of fear–it would still be rape because she’s underage, but you could argue, “Well, he thought she was into it.” Still gross but sort of believable. But she was saying no and trying to get away from him from the jacuzzi, from the swimming pool, through the forced oral sex.
I would have to agree that Roman Polanski deserves to go to jail.
However, I think he is one of the great directors of our time. He’s created a lot of beautiful art for this world. All in all, I think a world in which Mr. Polanski remains free is preferable to me to one in which he goes to jail. Maybe in this case justice should not be served.
Agreed. I’d add that other men who might find themselves tempted to act similarly need to be shown what will be the consequence of failing to resist that temptation.
Really? How many people would he have to rape before you felt he should be punished?
This type of thinking is pathological. It really is the mark of someone with no moral compass, i think.
Oh come on, Avumede’s post has got to be parody. Like that Village Voice article about how awesome Roman Polanski is. RIGHT?!
Perhaps the slipperiest of all slippery slopes.
Just one, I think. We should just pick one young girl, and tell her, “Honey, sucks to be you, but the thing is, the world needs beauty and art. And Mr. Polanski can give it to us, but in return he really wants to force his erect penis into your rectum. So it’s a small price to pay, don’t you think?”
She could stay in a place called Omelas. :rolleyes:
I think they should put him in the same prison that “Chuck” Manson is in, install cameras and make it into a FOX reality show.
Maybe you are right. I don’t have the zeal for punishment that many in this thread have. I don’t consider that a moral failure on my part, but I understand how other reasonable people may differ.
Apologies if this was shown earlier, but I found this interesting: US officials have tried to arrest Roman Polanski around the world since 1978.
I, too, had thought they’d sort of given up trying to arrest him, but it looks like there was some activity over the years, although there are some lengthy gaps in the chronology listed in the link above.
You really should. A few good movies, a few great movies, the best fucking movies that God His Own Self could ever imagine, they don’t justify a butcher’s bill of 1 raped teenager.
I guess some of us like the cinema more than others.
Surely a great movie is possible from this story: the gifted artist with a troubled life and the dark event that he spends a lifetime running from, ultimately failing.
I find Polanski most interesting. It’s accurate to call him a brilliant director. His life has had far more than its share of tragedy. His supporters seems to want to characterize the rape as not especially serious - a momentary lapse, “it wasn’t rape-rape”. But it looks to me like a truly evil act, carefully planned and carried out with full understanding of what he was doing. We can learn something about human nature by confronting the fact that humans occasionally do this sort of thing.
AND the director of the great movie gets one free rape, so it’s win-win all around!