Those conscience-challenged Hollywooders who have rushed to the defense of the pedophile Polanski declare the gnomish old pervert should remain unpunished for having drugged and raped a child because:

a. he had a tragic past

b. he is artistically gifted

c. he's popular

d. he has suffered enough

e. he is repentant.

f. the woman who as a child was drugged and raped by him has said she supports letting him live free and dropping the matter altogether.

(You can see the Hollywood petition to release Polanski here. I suggest you wait an hour or two after eating to read Harvey Weinstein's repellent defense of Polanski. If you're looking to not just dip but swim in scum, see Round Up of Polanski's Hollywood Supporters.)

Here is what is so wrong with each of those defenses that it's no surprise they're championed by people who spend all of their time creating illusions and slavering over their own press releases:

a. Polanski had a tragic past. Charles Manson had a tragic past. Lots of prisoners had a tragic past. Should we release from prison Charles Manson and all the other prisoners who had a tragic past?

b. He is artistically gifted. Good point. We should only imprison the untalented. What are they doing to amuse and enlighten us? I say it's high-time judges start holding American Idol contests in their courtrooms, so that no more talented people will go to jail.

c. He's popular. So was Hitler.

d. He's suffered enough. Are people in Hollywood so phenomenally wealthy that they think living a life of luxury in France and regularly vacationing in Gstaad constitutes suffering? That's it. I'm going into the film business.

e. Polanski's repentant. Really? Then: a. Why has he never said anything to that effect?; b. Why doesn't he want to serve his time?; and c. Why has he yet to pay his victim the half a million dollars he agreed to 15 years after he fled the U.S. to avoid sentencing? Hollywood having trouble understanding the concept of guilt. What a surprise.

f. Thirty-two years after the fact his victim would prefer to let the whole thing drop. Even if Polanski's victim completely forgives him, since when does the kind forgiveness or the unkind vindictiveness of the victim of a crime determine the sentencing of the perpetrator of that crime?

A few other points:

A year before Polanski raped the then-13 Samantha Geimer, he had begun sleeping with Nastassja Kinski, then fifteen. But I'm sure he feels bad about that, too.

That Geimer's mother, to whatever degree, facilitated her daughter being drugged and raped makes it worse, not better.

That Geimer could have consented to being ... oh, I don't know ... drugged and anally raped, is beyond comment. She was thirteen. Polanski was forty-four. Even if a child does "consent" to having sex with a middle-aged man, why (not to mention how) was that man asking? (And to be perfectly clear: nowhere in the disturbing transcript of the grand jury proceedings in this matter is there any indication that Geimer "consented" to anything. The young girl testified that she repeatedly said "no" to the determined advances of the man who was supposed to be helping her career.)

The Hollywood Defenders of Mr. "I'd Like to Sleep With Rosemary's Baby" have largely framed the criticisms leveled against their support of Polanski as efforts by religious conservatives to yet again impress their hopelessly outdated morality upon a manifestly compassionate and enlightened intelligentsia. Which is fine. Except ... wait. Doesn't Hollywood also embrace and support feminists in their noble cause of ending sexual violence against women? Did Gloria Steinem and Eve Ensler just become secret pawn of Fox News and the Pope? Pick a lane, cretins.

And finally, could even the morally retarded Polanski have be thrilled when, on this of all issues, Woody Allen rushed to his defense?

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