Beyond Contempt but not the law
by Geoff Metcalf (10/1/09)
“When a person has been found guilty of rape he should be castrated.” --Billy Graham - Susan Estrich is right, “Roman Polanski deserves no mercy"(1), and Whoopie Goldberg is way (off the charts) wrong(2) .
Bloviating on ‘The View’ Whoopie said, “I know it wasn’t rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don’t believe it was rape-rape.” WHAT!?!? Are her corn rows too tight? Is she out of her flipping mind? What la-la land classification of rape or the most basic etymological definition is unclear? “Rape-rape”? That exceeds even the epically arrogant parsing of what the word “is is” by Bill Clinton. BULLFEATHERS!
How could she possibly know what happened to an impressionable 13-year old at the hands of a powerful Hollywood director three decades ago? Her pretension and presumption exceeds just ego and celebrity entitlement it sets a new lofty standard for relativism and denigrates all women.
Polanski was a 40-something Hollywood big shot living large when he manipulated and coerced a 13-year old girl to a movie star’s house where he plied her with drugs and alcohol so he could seduce her. When the child resisted his sexual advances, he forced her into sexual activities against her will. He raped her! It is not ‘alleged’ he raped her…he admitted it.
His French lawyer claims, “There is no reason, either in law or in fact, nor on the terrain of the most elementary justice, to keep Roman Polanski in prison for even one day,” Herve Temime told reporters. WRONG!
You damnbetcha there are rock solid reasons for keeping Polanski’s pampered butt in prison. First, violated plea bargains notwithstanding, he raped a child. Second, and arguably as compelling, he not only fled justice from the crime thirty years ago, he remains the poster boy for “flight risk”. If any weak kneed intimidated Swiss judge were ever to grant Polanski bail, he would book out of Dodge quicker than a DJ could cue up ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’.
As Estrich noted, “Roman the rapist pleaded guilty. This is not one of those stories where you need to insert an ‘alleged’ or a ‘purported’ before each sentence. This is not a ‘he said-she said.’ He was in his 40s. She was 13. He was a famous director. She was a child. He lied, lured, and plied her with drugs and alcohol.”
For the past 30 years, the diminutive director/convicted rapist has been living and working luxuriously in Europe as a fugitive from justice.
Polanski is a convicted rapist. Rape has gone morphed legally from a capital crime to a felony to a misdemeanor to a “crime against humanity”.
· 80,000 women were raped by Japanese soldiers during the six weeks of the Nanking Massacre.
· According to a British scholar at the end of World War II, Red Army soldiers are estimated to have raped around 2,000,000 German women and girls.
· Reportedly, an estimated 200,000 women were raped during the Bangladesh Liberation War by the Pakistani army.
· At least 20,000 Bosnian Muslim women were raped by Serb forces during the Bosnian War.
· It is estimated that more than 200,000 females living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo today have been raped in recent conflicts.
· Some 500,000 women were raped during the Rwandan Genocide.In any of the above atrocities do you thin Whoopie would question if it was “rape-rape”?
The Rome Statute, which defines the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, recognizes rape as crime against humanity if the action is part of a widespread or systematic practice. Gee, does the systemic use of the “casting couch” qualify as a systematic practice?
Despite the desperate efforts of entertainment industry idiots struggling to justify, rationalize and qualify Polanksi’s reprehensible crime with babbling bromides about his artistic body of work, that dog don’t hunt.
Rape is never justifiable. It is more than sexual assault. It is a violent crime and specifically (in this case) an abuse of power, prestige and influence.
Charles Caleb Colon once observed, “He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three things that never stand still.”
If Polanski were to be granted a pass on his atrocity, it enables all petty, venial, self important, selfish would be abusers of power and position and would grant license to future rapists (as long as they had acquired money, power and prestige). P.J. O’Rourke said, “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” The same can be said for celebrity spoiled brats.
Polanski deserves another day in court. Every effort should be employed to guarantee that happens.
Geoff Metcalf
1) http://www.newsmax.com/estrich/polanski_arrest_fugitive/2009/09/30/266515.html7
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