The Roman Polanski gerfuffle

I'm . . . I don't quite know what to call it. 'Annoyed' is far too mild a word, but 'outraged' doesn't work either, because the idiots in Hollywood have caused that so often it's become a cliché. 'Fed up' will have to do for now, inadequate though it feels.

It seems that over a hundred Hollywood celebrities have come out in support of director Roman Polanski, who's in jail in Switzerland on a US warrant for his arrest on charges of child rape.

Roman Polanski in 2005 (image courtesy of Wikipedia)

His extradition hearings are due to begin soon. According to the report, Whoopi Goldberg has gone so far as to claim that what he did wasn't really 'rape-rape' (her choice of words).

Let's not lose sight of the facts. Polanski pleaded guilty to the charges against him, which were outlined by the prosecution in nauseating detail, including giving illegal narcotics to a 13-year-old girl before performing oral, vaginal and anal sex upon her, despite her terror and repeated pleas for him to stop. The sickening details are recounted in this news report, if you want them. For myself, having dealt with far too many pedophiles behind prison walls, I don't want to sully this blog with such filth.

Unwilling to face prison, Polanski fled the US after pleading guilty, and has spent the past thirty-odd years living a life of luxury, wealth and privilege in Europe. The nations where he lived obligingly refused to extradite him - not overtly, which would have aroused comment, but simply by ignoring his presence, neglecting the international warrant for his arrest. The Swiss finally appear to have grown a spine, and acted on the warrant. Good for them!

If you or I did what Polanski admitted, under oath, to doing, then we'd be facing the rest of our lives behind bars. No question. Why the hell should he escape the consequences of his actions just because he's a gifted film director? Why should that convey some sort of immunity to him? What do these Hollywood glitterati think they're doing, asking for an exception to be made in his case? What if it were their daughter he'd raped and sodomized? (I shudder to think of the possibility that some of them might actually tell their daughters to be proud of the fact they'd 'had so famous a lover'!)

Bring him back to the USA, sentence him, and throw him in prison along with all the other child molesters. The other convicts have interesting ways of showing their . . . ah, displeasure with such creatures - and Polanski will deserve every bit of it. In spades.

Peter