Rosenbaum on the arrest of Polanski

[Alan Brody]

From his website:

American lynch mobs never die; they only become more self-righteous about their savagery. [9/28/09]

Like Whoopie Goldberg, he's already getting some negative feedback on the internet for his statement. Of course, his profile is not nearly as high as hers. Many other film directors across the world, including Woody Allen and Martin Scorcese, have rushed to Polanski's defense, which may already be starting to backfire on them as well. I wonder where Welles would have stood?

Later Rosenbaum statement in the NYT:

I’m not at all in favor of giving artists free passes when it comes to their personal morality. But in the case of Roman Polanski, anyone who’s bothered to follow the history of his case in any detail is likely to conclude that (a) he’s already paid a great deal for his crime, (b) the interests of journalism and the entertainment industry in this matter usually have a lot more to do with puritanical hysteria and exploitation than any impartial pursuit of justice.

It’s his fame that fuels this event and discussion, not the specifics of a case more than 30 years old.

Considering the many crooks who continue to go unpunished (including Wall Street tycoons, prominent politicians, war profiteers, torturers of innocent people, and racist hatemongers) — most of whom continue to be rewarded and validated by the same press and the same self-righteous “moralists” who are now calling for Polanski’s head — it seems hypocritical to express so much outrage and bloodlust against Polanski at this point.

This would be true even if he weren’t famous — although it’s also true that if he weren’t famous, he wouldn’t have been arrested in Switzerland in the first place, so this is a sword that cuts two ways. It’s his fame that fuels this event and discussion, not the specifics or the morality of what he may or may not have done some 30-odd years ago.

[mido505]

Given that it is Barack Obama's Justice Department and not George W. Bush's that decided to tighten the screws on Polanski, I am not sure what "puritanical hysteria and exploitation" has to do with his arrest. What I do know, along with anyone else who has "bothered to follow the history of his case", is that the 44-year-old Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl champagne and quaaludes; orally copulated with her against her will, and then vaginally and anally raped her. How's that sound, fellas? Sound like self-righteous moralism to be appalled by that? How many of you Daddies at Wellesnet would like to see your movie-struck 13-year-old daughter engaged in non-consensual oral copulation, and anal and vaginal sex with a 44-year-old man, even if he did direct Chinatown? The argument that Polanski has "already paid a great deal for his crime" would be laughable if it were not mendacious and disgusting; Polanski has spent the last thirty years living like a king in France and in his bloody chalet in bloody Gstaad, directing numerous films, and receiving accolades and awards the world over. So the poor little bunny couldn't go to Los Angeles to pick up his Oscar; well, that's what we have Fed Ex for.

The travesty in this case is that it took thirty years to put the tiny little child rapist behind bars. In 1979, a year after Polanski fled custody, he gave an interview to Martin Amis, during which he said the following: “If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!” Well, Roman, with all due deference to your genius and the superior insight that goes with it, I don't want to f--- young girls. I don't want to f--- young boys either, for that matter. But there is a word for those that do, and the word is paedophile. And in a civilized society, a paedophile rapist doesn't warrant a get out of jail free card, even if he did direct a couple of good flicks...

[mido505]

Here is the link to the victim's grand jury testimony, at The Smoking Gun: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/po ... over1.html It's been posted over there for about five years, so I presume folks like Rosenbaum, who have followed the case for years, have read it. Perhaps cultured types like Woody Allen and Rosenbaum are willing to give Polanski a pass because he was courteous enough to switch to anal rape when he found out that the girl was not on the pill. How thoughtful.

Contrary to Rosenbaum's meretricious assertion that Polanski is only being hounded because of his celebrity, if Polanski had been a shoe salesman from Duluth he would have been thrown immediately into prison and left to rot. There would have been no plea deal, no dramatic flight, no interviews with Martin Amis, and no thirty years directing films and waltzing around Gstaad and Paris. And God help the guy if he had been a Republican political figure. Just ask Mark Foley, who was quite rightly forced to resign from the House of Representatives for actions far less severe than Polanski's monstrous action.

What would Orson have thought? I would hope that that very moral man would have been appalled at Polanski's crime, and pleased to see the possibility of justice finally being served.

[ToddBaesen]

Forget what Orson Welles would think (although, in my opinion, I've absolutely no doubt that the ultra-liberal Orson Welles would be signing the petition to set Polanski free), but just think about what Jesus Christ would do.

Do you think Jesus would send Polanski to jail for life?

Do you think Jesus would ask the court to execute him?

Or would Jesus ask the angry people to forgive him for his crime, as his victim has already done?

Again, in my opinion, Jonathan Rosenbaum rightly points out the sheer hypocrisy surrounding all the people who are so highly offended and so outraged by this 30-year old story.

Where does this hate and anger come from?

The Jesus Welles would have shown us in his planned film version would certainly not have understood it, nor do I.

[mido505]

Great post, Todd. I agree completely. Therefore, I am sure you will agree that we should forgive all those Catholic priests who buggered little altar boys so many years ago! I mean, some of those cases are 20-30-40 years old! After all, I am sure those priests were full of love, and wouldn't Jesus forgive them too? At the very least, those Catholic priests have got to be a little bit closer to Christ than the admittedly agnostic Polanski. They were doing God's work, weren't they? Why despoil all that good work over a little child rape, when forgiveness is all?

While we are forgiving everyone just like Jesus would, how about we forgive George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and those awful justice department lawyers who made the legal case for torture? Didn't Jesus say "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's". He understood how the world works. He knew, to quote Polanski supporter David Lynch, that "in heaven, every thing is fine, you've got your good things and I've got mine".

In fact, if we are really going to follow this train of thought to it's logical end, why don't we just forgive everybody! Get rid of the laws, the lawyers, the judges, the prisons, and just forgive! The next time someone drugs and rapes your thirteen year old daughter, or son, or niece, or nephew, or aquaintance, forgive, just like Jesus! The world will be a better place without all that irrational hate and anger, and with all the money we save once we jettison our entire legal system, we will be able to afford univeral health care! With all the chaos and mayhem that will ensue, we'll need it.

[The Night Man]

I’m not at all in favor of giving artists free passes when it comes to their personal morality. But in the case of Roman Polanski, anyone who’s bothered to follow the history of his case in any detail is likely to conclude that... he’s already paid a great deal for his crime....

Forty-two days in jail then three decades in Paris and Gstaad. Hasn't the man suffered enough?!

[ToddBaesen]

Naturally, I don't agree that Priests sexually abusing young boys should go unpunished, but you are comparing two very different types of crimes, and that does not make your case very convincing (at least to me).

As you aptly noted, Polanski did not commit a murder, like Presidents and heads of State can do and get away with. Nor was he a serial rapist, like the Catholic Priests were.

Furthermore, in the case of the Priests, who had abused many young boys, most of them were never forgiven by their victims. The keyword being "victims."

Obviously everyone is offended by the rape of 13-year old girl, but we, the members of the outraged public are not the victims in the case. If the victim wants the case to be dropped, I simply cannot fathom why everyone wants to see Polanski dragged back to LA to be punished after 30 years. Having the media bring it all up again for her is probably the exact nightmare she wants to avoid after all these years. If she had said, "bring him back to face justice," I would agree with you. But she has said, exactly the opposite.

[Glenn Anders]

Gentlemen: I know that Toddy Baesen has never been the same since those long sessions with Carl in the cellar of the Ha-Ra Club. The Rack. The Gimlets. Forced to watch Krazy Ken Russell's THE DEVILS on a continuous loop. The subject of traumatic experiences triggers a "Stockholm Syndrome" in him. He has been making great progress, as witnessed by his relatively balanced response to ME AND ORSON WELLES, compared with Mr. French's incomprehensibly fulsome praise on our Front Page of that modest little indie. But now, I fear Toddy has suffered a setback.

And, while much my own thinking supports your premise, I must hold you responsible, mido505:

You have dragged this unfortunate, almost irrelevant discussion into the territory of "moral relativism."

No one should be above the Law. Not George W. Bush, responsible for the lies which led a great nation into intractable phony wars, at a cost of thousands upon thousands of dead and maimed Service men and women, of millions of needless dead and maimed civilians, and trillions of dollars from our national exchequer. Not Dick Cheny, who engineered "The Project for a New American Century," which has discredited America almost everywhere and increased exponentially the hatred felt toward us in the Third World.. Not corrupt officials or Congress-persons of either Party. Not Wall Street and corporate executives, who may have ruined economically tens of millions of lives in America and around the World. Not pedophile priests, who took advantage of their sacred vows and powers to exploit young children sexually. Not Roman Polanski. Not a poor, ignorant Ghetto "gang banger" on the street corner. If they have been accused of heinous crimes, they should be sent before a grand jury, indicted if the evidence warrants it, and given the opportunity to plead guilty or not guilty, and have a jury of their peers decide their guilt or innocence, if they so choose.

That, gentlemen, is called "due process," and guaranteed under the United States Constitution. It's the closest temporal thing that we have to the forgiveness of Jesus or some other holy figure.

In the list above, those accused of great numbers of heinous crimes (President Bush and Vice President Cheney) have not even been indicted. Most of the Republican and Democratic Congress-persons have bluffed it out, been allowed to resign, given light sentences (with time off for good behavior), or "community service." The priests were usually "shined on" to other parishes. The gang banger (a hypothetical composite) gets sent away in huge numbers (according to statistics) or is "shot resisting arrest."

But only one, Roman Polanski, pled guilty before a court of law to one count of a sexual crime involving a minor. That's his problem. He pled guilty, and then, fearing his plea bargain would not be honored, perhaps afraid of the retribution often meted out to pedophiles by other inmates in prison, possibly not quite of sound mind following the hideous murder of his pregnant wife, he skipped the country. As you suggest, mido505, instead of taking his medicine, he lived a comfortable, even luxurious, but uncertain life in Europe, making only one really significant film, THE PIANIST (a very personal film reflecting his luck and guilt in escaping the Holocaust). And when he wished to have his sentence be set aside, after 30 years, he refused to come to LA to stand beside his attorneys at the bar of justice.

Toddy, Mr. Rosenbaum, Mr. Allen, Mr. Scorsese, Mr. Lynch, etc., no matter how understandable, Roman Polanski has made some very bad choices, starting with getting into a hot pool with a chilled, naked thirteen year-old girl.

I think it is clear: We are no longer speaking of a moral outrage, a terrible sin, or an act which Jesus or whoever might forgive. We are speaking of a clear and aggravated violation of California Law.

In a better world, in a better nation than we have become, Roman Polanski would have served his time beside Bush, Cheney, the Congress-persons, the Wall Street insiders and Corporate CEO's, the priests, and the gang bangers.

Because he screwed up, Mr. Polanski, director of one of the ten best films ever made in America (CHINATOWN), is probably going to spend a year or two in prison all by himself before he dies. When he has served whatever time the court lays on him, let him be forgiven. [But like all pedophiles, I'm afraid, he will be hounded or, at least, carefully watched.]

Orson Welles, who left America partly to escape a possible "prosecution for political crimes," might sadly find poetic justice in that.

Glenn Anders

[Terry]

The Pedophiles are Guilty!

We are seeing the fulfillment of prophecy. The pedophiles are receiving a penalty that is certainly hard, but far less than they deserve. Sexual perverts erred in adding up the forces available to them for this moral war, and now are gradually experiencing the destructon that they planned for US.

Every sex offender is our enemy in this historic struggle, regardless of whether he vegetates in a Chicago ghetto or carries on his parasitic existence in New York or San Francisco. All pedophiles by virtue of their birth and their criminal genome are part of an international conspiracy against the United States of America. They want its defeat and annihilation, and do all in their power to bring it about. That they can do nothing inside the government is hardly a sign of their loyalty, but rather of the appropriate measures we took against them.

One of these measures is the institution of the yellow star that each sex offender must wear. We wanted to make them visible as pedophiles, particularly if they made even the least attempt to harm children. It is a remarkably humane measure on our part, a hygienic and prophylactic measure to be sure that the sex offender cannot infiltrate our ranks unseen to sow discord.

As the sex offenders first appeared several weeks ago on the streets of New York graced with their pedophile star, the initial reaction of the citizens of the media capital was surprise. Only a few knew that there were still so many sex offenders in New York. Everyone suddenly found someone in the neighborhood who seemed like a harmless fellow citizen, who perhaps kept to himself a bit more than normal, and whom no one had thought to be a sex offender. He had concealed himself, mimicked his surroundings, adopting the color of the background, adjusted to the environment, in order to wait for the proper moment. Who among us had any idea that the Enemy was beside him, that a silent or clever auditor was attending to conversations on the street, in the subway, or in the lines outside schools? There are pedophiles one cannot recognize by external signs. These are the most dangerous. It always happens that when we take some measure against the sex offenders, Human Rights Watch websites report it the next day. The enemy is in our midst. What makes more sense than to at least make this plainly visible to our citizens?

In the first days after they published the listings of the sex offender registry, newspaper sales in New York went through the roof. No pedophile could conceal his mark of Cain. One began to see sex offenders on the streets of the west side of New York in the company of non-pedophile foreigners. These sex offender lackeys actually should wear the pedophile star themselves. The excuse they give for their provocative conduct is always the same: the pedophiles are after all human beings too. We never denied that, just as we never denied the humanity of murderers, Jews, thieves and pimps, though we never felt the need to parade down Broadway with them! Every pedophile is a decent pedophile who has found a dumb and ignorant Liberal who thinks him decent! As if that were a reason to give sex offenders a kind of honorable escort. What nonsense.

The sex offenders gradually are having to depend more and more on themselves, and have recently found a new trick. They knew the good-natured Nancy Grace in us, always ready to shed sentimental tears for the injustice done to them. One suddenly has the impression that the American sex offender population consists only of underage kids whose childish helplessness might move us, or else fragile old men living under bridges. The sex offenders send out the pitiable. They may confuse some harmless souls for a while, but not us. We know exactly what the situation is.

For their sake alone we must win this war. If we lose it, these harmless-looking pedophiles would suddenly become raging wolves. They would attack our women and children. There are enough examples in history. That is what they did in their compounds in Waco and the Southern states when polygamists marched in. There is no turning back in our battle against these pedophiles — even if we wanted to, which we do not. The sex offenders must be removed from the American community, for they endanger our national unity.

That is an elementary principle of moral, national, and social hygiene. They will never give us rest. Who cares about their difficulties, they who only want to force the world to accept their sexual perversion? The pedophiles are a parasite that feeds like a foul fungus on the cultures of healthy but ignorant peoples. There is only one effective measure: cut them out.

How stupid and thoughtless are the arguments of the backward friends of the sex offenders in the face of a problem that has occupied mankind for millennia! How they would gape if they could ever see their dear pedophiles in power! But that would be too late.That is why it is the duty of a national leadership to take all necessary measures to keep such a thing from happening. There are differences between people just as there are differences between animals. Some people are good, others bad. The same is true of animals. The fact that the sex offender still lives among us is no proof that he belongs among us, just as a flea is not a household pet simply because it lives in a house. When Mr. Baesen or Mr. Anders feel pity for an old man wearing the pedophile star, they should also remember that a distant nephew of this old man by the name of John Evander Couey sat in a Florida hospital and prepared a plan by which all Americans under the age of 6 would be kidnapped, raped and buried alive. They should recall that a son of his distant niece is a pervert named John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer who, if they succeed, may one day rape and murder the only granddaughter of Mr. Baesen or Mr. Anders. It will all be for the benefit of perverted sexual gratification, to which this old man also subscribes, no matter how fragile and pitiable he may seem.

If we Americans have a fateful flaw in our national character, it is forgetfulness. This failing speaks well of our human decency and generosity, but not always for our political wisdom or intelligence. We think everyone else as is good natured as we are. Our army defeated Afghanistan and Iraq in three weeks, after which we saw American soldiers giving bread and sausages to hungry Muslim women and children, and gasoline to refugees from Kurdistan to enable them to return home as soon as possible, there to spread at least some of their hatred against America.

That's how we Americans are. Our national virtue is our national weakness. We do not want to change all that much, and as long as our world-famed good nature does no great harm, why should we? mido505 gave us some good advice, however: Put the tiny little child rapist behind bars.

If this advice applies anywhere, it apples to our relations with all sex offenders. Carelessness here is not only a weakness, it is disregard of duty and a crime against the security of the state. The pedophiles long for one thing: to rape children. It must never come to that. One of the most effective defenses is an unforgiving, cold hardness against these destroyers of our people, against the instigators of this war, against those who would benefit if we lose, and therefore also against the victims, if we win.

Therefore, we must say again and yet again:

1. The pedophiles are our destruction. They started this war and direct it. They want to destroy American decency and our people. This plan must be blocked.

2. There are no distinctions between sex offenders. Each sex offender is a sworn enemy of the American people. If he does not make his perversion plain, it is only from cowardice and slyness, not because he loves us.

3. The sex offenders are to blame for each child who goes missing. They have him on their conscience, and must also pay for it.

4. If someone wears the pedophile star, he is an enemy of the people. Anyone who deals with him is the same as a sex offender and must be treated accordingly. He earns the contempt of the entire people, for he is a craven coward who leaves them in the lurch to stand by the enemy.

5. The pedophiles enjoy the protection of our enemies. That is all the proof we need to show how harmful they are for our people.

6. The pedophiles are the enemy's agents among us. He who stands by them aids the enemy.

7. The sex offenders have no right to claim equality with us. If they wish to speak on the streets, in lines outside shops or in public transportation, they should be ignored, not only because they are simply wrong, but because they are pedophiles who have no right to a voice in the community.

8. If the sex offenders appeal to your sentimentality, realize that they are hoping for your forgetfulness, and let them know that you see through them and hold them in contempt.

9. A decent enemy will deserve our generosity after we have won. The sex offender however is not a decent enemy, though he tries to seem so.

10. The pedophiles are responsible for this war. The treatment they receive from us is hardly unjust. They have deserved it all.

It is the job of the government to deal with them. No one has the right to act on his own, but each has the duty to support the state's measures against the sex offenders, to defend against them with your neighborhood watch, and to avoid being misled by any pedophile tricks.

The security of the state requires that of us all. The sex offenders must be got out of America, if necessary by applying most brutal methods.


Joseph Goebbels, 2009

[nhu]

Polanski drugged and raped a 13 year old girl. That's all you really need to know about Roman Polanski in this matter.

He then fled the US. That makes him a fugitive and the state of California and the US Justice Department have every legal right to now demand his extradition from Switzerland. The fact that his victim is not interested in his further prosecution means nothing legally.

There is an undercurrent of anger and disdain towards the female victim in this thread, and a strange minimzing of pedophilia that I can't quite understand.

I'd rather have the NY State online sex offender registry available to warn parents than to have the NYPD show up at the parents home telling them that their child was raped and killed by a pedophile.

Some have brought up pedophile priests. The big difference is that you don't see Catholics signing petitions asking that they be set free. The pressure on the church to face up to this problem has come from within the Catholic community.

[Alan Brody]

Obviously everyone is offended by the rape of 13-year old girl, but we, the members of the outraged public are not the victims in the case. If the victim wants the case to be dropped, I simply cannot fathom why everyone wants to see Polanski dragged back to LA to be punished after 30 years. Having the media bring it all up again for her is probably the exact nightmare she wants to avoid after all these years. If she had said, "bring him back to face justice," I would agree with you. But she has said, exactly the opposite.

Well said, Todd. That's pretty much the bottom line for me too.

There is an undercurrent of anger and disdain towards the female victim in this thread, and a strange minimzing of pedophilia that I can't quite understand.

On the contrary nhu, I would say let's not victimize the victim all over again for the sake of a media circus.

But your point about the minimizing of pedophilia is a good one. What I find particularly amazing is how the battle lines are being drawn in the Polanski case. Much of the Film and entertainment industry (including Whoopie, for example) is rallying around Polanski, while most of the rest of the world thinks he should go to jail. This suggests, dare I say it, that the entertainment industry in general, and those that seek to enter it, may have a different moral standard concerning the issue of sex with children (remember that cut scene in The Godfather where the mother tells her daughter to get back into the studio executive's bedroom?). At the very least, it's an issue that seems to be taken rather lightly in the entertainment industry. Nabakov's Lolita, for example, in which a forty-something man has sex with 12-year-old girl, is regarded as one of the great books of the 20th century, and Kubrick's film of it is highly regarded as well. It's even treated rather lightly in Welles's own film of The Trial, with the suggestion that Joseph K may have been playing around a bit with his 'barely 15-year-old cousin' Irmie. In Leaming's book, Welles said that the only time he ever contemplated the idea of pedophilia was when he saw the 10-year old Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Jane Eyre. "Remind me to be around when she grows up" he reportedly said to someone. But in the same book, Welles describes Errol Flynn showing up on the set of The Roots of Heaven with a gorgeous 15-year-old girlfriend that, as Welles put it, "would have made a Polanski out of anybody!". I think we can safely assume that he was joking.

[Terry]

The sex offender registry is a disgusting lie and anyone who's swallowed the government and corporate media's fear mongering about it deserves the constant paranoia they live in. The registry gets packed with anyone convicted of any so-called sex crime, most of which aren't even crimes, but legislated Christian hatred and bigotry. I feel sympathy for the parents stuck on the registry for life because some social worker trying to make a name for herself took their kids away, the parent took their kids back and was subsequently convicted of kidnapping, or the man busted for trying to hire a prostitute, the fifteen year old who had sex with his thirteen year old girlfriend, or the drunk who thought he was privately relieving himself in an alley. Any convict who actually poses the risk the registry says he or she does should never be placed back in a community. But even that is crystal ball bullshit, pretending to know what someone will do in the future, when even predicting the weather a week from now is impossible. And then they load the list up with people who committed victimless crimes or crimes that had nothing to do with minors, and then whoop and yelp that they're going to murder your children, so you rejoice when the government takes away the constitutional rights of a million Americans, making it impossible for them to be hired for a job, buy a home, rent an apartment or even stay at a homeless shelter. Americans are so ignorant that they don't even know that the term pedophilia refers to a sexual attraction to prepubescent kids and has nothing to do with pubescent minors. But anyone who has sex with a seventeen year old is a pedophile in this country, even if your state's age of consent is sixteen. So we get constant lies about what a pedophile is, what a sex offender is, what the recidivism rate for sex crimes is, and you Good Germans lap it all up, piss yourselves in fear, foam at the mouth in rage, attack or ostracize your neighbors who are on the registry for convictions you don't know the first thing about, and wave your fucking flags without even caring that you're part of the Fourth Reich.

It's too bad Polanksi didn't serve his time decades ago and instead waited for the next All-American Witch Hunt to begin. It's amazing and deeply revealing how a simple substitution cipher transforms every speech Goebbels or Hitler ever made about Jews into what today's elected officials, partisan news propagandists and the ignorant programmed masses say about sex offenders. At least the anti-homosexual laws are no longer enforced and the American Psychiatric Association has removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, so one demonized sexual orientation is off the hook, though only somewhat.

[Glenn Anders]

I really think that, in some ways, this is an unfortunate thread.

Roman Polanski, no matter how brilliant a director, no matter how troubled, broke moral, state, and Federal(?) law, by his own admission. Then, he broke his bond and fled the United States. My entry was trying to suggest that we should not have selective law enforcement. Presidents, CEO'S, congress-persons, priests, film directors, sports stars, pedophiles, the guy on the street -- you name 'em -- should be held to the same standards. The girl was not legally competent to judge Polanski's transgression at the time, and what she may think now is beside the point.

As of now, the matter has nothing to do with art or morality. Polanski's violation of law has to be dealt with, taken off the books, even after 30 years.

Glenn

[Glenn Anders]

Precisely and succinctly stated, Peter.

[RayKelly]

Or would Jesus ask the angry people to forgive him for his crime, as his victim has already done?

I was at Mass when a priest I respect greatly criticized the church establishment for protecting pedophile priests. He quoted this bit of scripture, which I think indicates where Jesus might have come down on the issue of sexually exploiting children.

But whose shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Roman Polanski raped a 13 year old a girl and escaped punishment for 30 years. If a man commits such a terrible crime -- whether he is a director, a priest or a candlestick maker -- he has to be punished.