The case of film director, Roman Polanski, is troubling.  In 1977 he gave a 13-year old girl Quaalude and champagne, and then raped her.  In the 1978 trial he admitted doing so, but then fled the US and has lived in France ever since.  Last week, he was arrested in Switzerland, where he had gone to receive the Zurich Film Festival’s “Golden Eye” award for lifetime achievement.  [Polanski is a French citizen and France had refused to extradite him.]  The arts community in France, much of Europe and in the US has collectively come to Polanski’s defense for this “so-called crime.”  As Terry Teachout has argued in the Wall Street Journal, “The unseemly rapidity with which Mr. Polanski’s friends lined up to support him is also a demonstration of the extent to which Hollywood is isolated from the rest of the world. . . No matter what he may have done in the past, Mr. Polanski is an artist and therefore ought to go free.  Period.”  Hollywood justice, perverted and deviant, has seen more than 100 filmmakers and actors petition for Polanski’s release.
 
Kathleen Parker, Washington Post columnist, has correctly observed that “If it isn’t deviant for a 43-year-old man to stalk, drug, rape and sodomize a 13-year old girl, what is?”  That so many are now saying that this deviant has “suffered enough” and should be freed speaks volumes about the deviancy of Hollywood as a subculture!  Roman Polanski is a fugitive in a rape case and has “an outstanding debt to society.”  Parker writes:  “Justice isn’t only for the pillaged girl, now a forgiving mother of three, but also for a world that needs to affirm without hesitation that civilized people don’t abide the sexual abuse of children.  Anything else sends a message that children aren’t safe—and that predators are.”  Western civilization must hold Roman Polanski accountable for his despicable deviancy!