And so it continues. If you thought some in Hollywood’s defense of Roman Polanski for raping a 13 year old girl hit rock bottom when Whoppie Goldberg seemingly decided to redefine the meaning of rape — a statement so dismaying that it sparked pointed SNL bit — it has now sunk to another level….in the blogosphere.
An associate producer of the highly touted Polanski documentary has been “spamming” a conservative blog with anonymous attack quotes since the blog author has been raking Polanski over the coals. The person has since apologized and stressed that she was acting independently. DETAILS ARE HERE.
Others on TMV and elsewhere have written extensively about the recent twist in the Polanski case. But the bottom line is that it underscores a reality in America: there are people at certain levels who are willing to look the other way and discard values that most Americans hold dear — and that they THEMSELVES would hold dear if it was not someone they knew or liked who was under attack for violating a norm and law.
Who cares if Polanski is a genius, loved by millions, an artist, a great filmmaker, a great thinker — or whatever….
At issue is a crime and someone fleeing the country.
If a reader of this site, or Howard Schmidlap down the corner, had fled the United States and was arrested in Europe, would those now defending Polanski defend the TMV reader or Schmidlap? They would (a) not care or (b) feel he violated the law and should come back and face the legal music. They wouldn’t be arguing that tragic things in the reader’s or Schmidlap’s life were a license to rape a child and flee the county to escape the responsibility of showing up in court that (non-Hollywood) Americans must face.
But Polanski is a friend, a colleague, and/or someone on the same professional, artistic or financial elite level as they are. So they argue for double standards.
If you read extensively on the Polanski controversy, it is clear that NOT EVERYONE in Hollywood wants to look the other way on Polanski. But the arguments about Polanski have a deja vu quality — bringing back memories of the days when a famous football player named OJ Simpson had fans defending him when he was charged with murder because he was a great football player and a (not so great but busy) actor/commercial pitchman. I’m not talking about the trial here — but the initial reaction of some to the news that Simpson was arrested.
America’s most addicting drug is fame and fortune — with fame being perhaps the most entrancing and addictive of all. It’s a combination of addiction and religion. Polanski’s fame, genius as a film maker are all irrelevant: the issue is his legal case, conviction and the fact that he fled the country.
And neither he nor his famous, wealthy, VIP Hollywood supporters who have big, fat media microphones should be allowed to “edit” the law.
The cartoon by Taylor Jones, El Nuevo Dia, Puerto Rico, is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.