The left has broken down every cultural standard: on good birth, on language, on relations of the sexes, on sex itself, and on right and wrong generally. Should it be so surprising in this milieu that the last taboo, the taboo against sex with children, is now being attacked, at least for the talented who deserve special privileges?
The left’s fervent attacks on the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandals might seem confusing, but it’s now clear that these attacks were chiefly a pose to delegitimize one of the few respected voices criticizing the trends of the age. We saw a bit of the real moral idiocy at work among the left in the recent celebration of Michael Jackson, in spite of his well known penchant for pedophilia. But in the arrest of Roman Polanski, a sexual degenerate of the worst kind who drugged and raped a 13 year old girl, the tone of his supporters has been surprising even by the low standards set by the left and the Hollywood gliterrati.
“As a Swiss filmmaker, I feel deeply ashamed,” Christian Frei said.
“He’s a brilliant guy, and he made a little mistake 32 years ago. What a shame for Switzerland,” said photographer Otto Weisser, a friend of Polanski.
Who knew that making a few good movies was enough to give one carte blanche literally to rape and maim and drug and sodomize children? Well, that, and he’s a Holcaust Survivor, which makes him the victim par excellence entitled to victimize others apparently.
The protests of the French “cultural minister” really takes the cake:
“To see him thrown to the lions and put in prison because of ancient history — and as he was traveling to an event honoring him — is absolutely horrifying,” French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand said after Polanski was arrested upon arrival in Switzerland to attend the Zurich Film Festival, where he was to receive a lifetime achievement award. “There’s an America we love and an America that scares us, and it’s that latter America that has just shown us its face.”
I’m sure glad we are shutting down GITMO to appease the well developed consciences of these people.
It seems at times that we are competing with incredible panache to win the Most Decadent Declining Empire Award, lest the Safavids or Romans retain their titles! Indeed, I haven’t seen this many otherwise respectable people get motivated to help a rapist escape justice since Leo Frank!
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It’s been weird seeing all of these people come to Polanski’s defense in the last couple days. There appears to be a strong Jewish component to it – maybe that’s because of the industry he’s in. But a little bit ago even Larry Auster came out scolding the people who want to bring this guy back and make him pay for what he did. Like he should get a pass for child rape because he’s old or he was in the Warsaw ghetto when he was a child.
“even Larry Auster”? Larry makes every unprincipled exception and weird deviation from traditionalist conservatism on account of his loyalty to his coethnics, even when they do something like this!
Good post. This is not some taboo love story or misunderstanding. He drugged her, ignored her pleas, and raped her.
I can’t believe people honor this guy. Why on Earth would world leaders like Sarkozy go public with their support?
I am still waiting for little green footballs to start another guilt-by-association post to tar anyone who supports this guy.
But I don’t think it will happen. That only happens to racists.
If that’s true he’s not quite who I thought he was. I’ve noticed he can get irrationally nasty, but never in defense of an admitted child rapist trying to escape prosecution.
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/014370.html
An expression of the power of feminism?
Larry makes every unprincipled exception and weird deviation from traditionalist conservatism on account of his loyalty to his coethnics, even when they do something like this!
Ditto Michael Medved. The man who has become rich and famous as a “conservative film critic” defending traditional morality today came up with a half a dozen poorly argued reasons why Polanski should be let go.
Sorry to hear that about Medved. I used to think he was OK.
Mickey Kaus brought up the story about the “Unicorn” killer yesterday. It’s strangely like the Polanski one: A Jewish guy in the 1970s commits a felony on a non-Jewish white American girl, gets caught, is released on bail, skips bail and flees to Europe, lives in Europe for many years before being arrested, and used public sympathy toward Holocaust victims in his defense.
I am actually a little surprised that it has taken the Left so long to tackle pederasty (pedophilia is a different matter – it is the next moral frontier). As I think I mentioned to you some time ago, I think the Left’s previous reluctance has been partially due to feminism’s fear of male domination over females, which is obviously what develops in most relationships between an older man and a teenage girl.
But the Left long ago normalized unnatural sexual desires, and has also celebrated sex between teens, so pederasty, which is immoral but quite natural, should not be too much of a challenge. I saw a quote from Polanski in which he explained that he was being unfairly pursued because the judge, prosecutors, etc, all themselves want to have sex with teenage girls. This is probably true, at least when it comes to their sexual desires in and of themselves. But Polanski gets the moral formulation exactly backwards. They want to pursue him not out of jealousy, but because they understand the temptation of the vice and thus recognize the need to punish such an egregious and vile example of it.
Because of the feminist angle mentioned above, and because of our society’s general (and mostly accurate) conception of teenage males as sex-starved maniacs, I think homosexual pederasty will be the first activity to become accepted.
Perhaps the lossening of sexual mores underway in the seventies only took a brief reprieve due to the logically flawed and increasingly unpopular principles of feminism. A new generation of young men, loosened from all religion but contemptuous of cant and feminism, have begun to attack on the basis of the power of “game,” “alphaness,” and a more sophisticated understanding of psychology coupled with complete moral idiocy.
I noticed we were quoted on VFR. Weird. I didn’t know that you, Mr. Roach, had a history with Larry Auster.
About that argument they’ve been batting around over there, that the girl may have looked to be older than she was – Polanski admitted to a judge 30-whatever years ago that he knew she was 13. If it had been my daughter, he’d have been badly maimed many years ago. Then again, I wouldn’t have let my daughters near a freak show like that.
Auster writes many interesting things and I agree with much he says. But he often is very nasty, very petty, he holds a grudge like none other. In his latest, he dares to suggest I’m anti-Semitic and obsessed with him, when it was another reader who brought up his odd-ball defense of Polanski. I drew a reasonable conclusion from the anomalous fact that he’s defending an admitted rapist, something I’ve never seen him do in any other context. I mean, Lawrence Auster and the rights of the criminally accused rapists are not exactly two things that go hand in hand. So this odd, otherwise inexplicable decision of his to credulously repeat Anne Applebaum’s defense of Polanski–and, indeed, his agreement with all things paleoconservative but for their widely held skepticism of our government’s close relationship with Israel–has little explanation outside of his philosemitism.
The hypocricy is manifest, because he is always drawing out patterns, hidden agendas, unstated values, and the like from the speech of a great many people, including our President, the neoconservatives, George Bush, liberals, conservatives, and everyone else. It’s called analysis and critical thinking, but when it’s applied to him in a way that perfectly explains the contradictions in his thoughts, he descends into ipse dixit denunciations, the guilt by association nonsense he rightly criticizes Charles Johnson of LGF for, and other forms of illogic and invective. The jig is up, and many many conservatives have figured him out from the agreeable John Derbyshire and Steve Sailers of the world to the white nationalists at the Age of Treason and Prozium, and everyone in between.
In a healthier society, someone like Polanski, even if he’d escaped to France, would never have made another film, simply because people would have refused to work with him, or to pay for his production costs. It’s indicitatve of the culture we live in that his crime was then — and is now — widely viewed as simply an erotic peccadillo.
Can any of us imagine explaining to a job interviewer or prospective client a suspcious gap in our resume chronology with the following: “Oh yes, that was when I drugged and raped a 13 year old girl, plead guilty to statutory rape, then fled the country to avoid sentencing. My life was in a bit of turmoil at the time.”
Only to be met with the chucking reply: “No problem then; she was a teenager, after all. So, when can you start?”
Polanski should, at best, have been allowed to play out the next 30 years of his career bagging groceries in a Carrefour.
I can’t find anything by Medved concerning Polanski.
I’d be curious to see what he writes because Bill Bennett just cited a book of his for indirect support.
The Polanski Double Standard – Bill Bennett – The Corner on National Review Online
In the last few days there was a huge backlash, including in France (yes) and Poland. Both countries have backtracked from their former support.
The Hollywood gang misjudged the public’s mood. They thought that because it’s Obama time, they could support this pervert. They were wrong.
Google “polanski” and “backlash” and you’ll see what I mean.
[...] VFR, I see that Lawrence Auster is claiming that Chris Roach is an “anti-Semite.” He is “bent out of shape,” “nuts,” [...]
Great post. You’re too good a guy, Chris, to waste time trading barbs with the likes of Auster.
I can not believe ANYONE would defend Polanski. In a sane world the Jew rapist Polanski would have been slotted years ago by someone hired by the victim or her family.
With Jews like Auster and Medved, their Jewishness is paramount. In the end, that’s all that matters to them.
Blood will out.
I hope conservatives NEVER forget it.
Medved is awful. He would throw open our borders if given the chance. He’s basically a chickenhawk version of John McCain.
Sometime in the last day or so Larry silently changed the title of his post from “America’s vendetta against Roman Polanski”
to “The arrest of Roman Polanski”.
He’s left his unhinged “stunned”, “appalling”, and link to Applebaum’s equally unhinged screed intact. For now. After all, he’s changed his mind. That entitles him to go back and tidy up the bits he doesn’t like. Even odds he eventually deletes the whole thing. It’s just too damning to his “traditionalist” pose.
He claims it’s evil to think his jewishness prompted him to react and write what he did, then he accuses Roach of being motivated by jew-hate-ishness.
That’s one of the many magical properties of jewishness. It’s never the reason jews do anything – but it’s always the reason anyone else does! If you think jewishness motivates jews to do anything it’s only because your anti-jewishness compels you to!
Meanwhile Auster still hasn’t provided any other explanation for his initial, hyperbolically phrased post. In fact in eventually admitting that he didn’t know the facts of the crime, and now claiming he didn’t know Polanski was jewish (even though he linked to Applebaum’s op-ed that made a big deal about it) he’s only making it clear he’s a liar as well as a pro-jewish zealot.
The point bears repeating: It was Applebaum and the very earliest news feeds that put Polanski’s jewishness front and center, but Auster blames “anti-semtism” for doing that.
Now remember, always remember: “There is Auster derangement out there”.
What’s your source on the guilt of Leo Frank?
I’ve always thought it peculiar that-given the lack of a history of anti-Semitism in the South-that Southerners would pick a Jew to take the fall for a rape and murder that today’s CW says was committed by a black.
TAANSTAFL, I also think it’s very presumptuous of Auster to think it’s Anti-Jewish to say he or anyone happens in one instance to be apparently motiviated by ethnic loyalties. Is the concept of ethnic loyalties as a motive in general so totally off-the-wall for conservatives, in particular when it is described as a motive for a deviation from an otherwise generally held view? I don’t think this explains everything he does or that every Jew does, as he suggests, but I think it explains this particular position of his and its strange tone, which otherwise defies explanation. Other than Scooter Libby, which is a debatable case, I can’t think of any other situation he’s ever defended an accused criminal, and never ever have I seen him defend a violent rapist before.
ICR, on Leo Frank, I read a very good book on the case called And the Dead Shall Rise. It’s very interesting. The evidence of his guilt, while not as overwhelming as what we often see today, was very substantial. He had means (bare hands), motive (sexual obsession), and opportunity (he was in factory at time of murder). The trial included testimony of a co-conspirator, and it also included the testmiony of many other factory girls of his lecherous, repeated advances.
It’s very clear that the anti-semitism was a non-factor in the actual trial, though general hatred of Frank began to prevail as the evidence of his guilt accrued and some resentment arose of the strange rallying of the Jewish community in his defense (which included the foundation of the ADL). It was a feeling much like the puzzlement and contempt whites felt for blacks that supported OJ.
Even so, the prosectuor was very explicit that he would be ashamed of anti-semitism, even while they and the defense were very open and unashamed of their anti-black racism. Jews were generally treated OK in the South at the time, and anti-semitism was very mild, though anti-Frank feeling was very pronounced.
Auster writes:
I don’t know about you Roach, but I didn’t think of Polanski’s jewishness until I read this in the AP account of his arrest:
It was hard to miss, and as I noticed later, it came before the details of the crime he was arrested for.
A day or so afterward I followed Auster’s link to The Outrageous Arrest of Roman Polanski, by Anne Applebaum, which included this passage:
Again, it was hard to miss. It positions Polanski’s jewishness as a “mitigating circumstance”. It directly attributes his decision to flee to anti-jewishness.
That’s when it occurred to me that Polanski, Auster, and Applebaum are jews. And that’s when I could finally make sense of the hysteric terms in which their lame arguments were made. Auster’s ridiculous contortions since, responding to arguments you never made confirms it.
He writes:
and
As I noted in Fruitloopable Presumption, Auster has a strange habit of flatly stating what he calls “rebuttable presumptions”, just as he does above.
As for anti-semitism in the South, they did manage to name a Jew as Secretary of State during the Confederacy years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judah_P._Benjamin
[...] http://mansizedtarget.com/2009/09/29/the-last-moral-frontier/ [...]
Auster asks, “how will Roach react to my changing my position on finding out what Polanski’s crime consisted of?” If I had to put money on it, I’d say he quickly realized he went a bridge too far, but his initial tone has no explanation other than knee-jerk ethnic solidarity. The stuff about not knowing Polanski’s background is possible, but I think highly unlikely. I simply don’t believe Auster here; I think he’s lying. As you say, it’s in the Applebaum piece, and it was widely discussed when Polanski won an Oscar for the Pianist several years ago.
In a sane society, Polanski would have been quickly hanged or given a serious sentence and then forced to live the rest of his life as a pariah.
Auster shrieks that he isn’t defending Polanski because he’s Jewish, how absurd! It’s normal for people to defend pedophiles!
I mean come on, she looked 18, and besides, it’s been years since he did it. Not like the rape of a child has any lasting mental and emotional consequences!
Well, which is it Auster, a defense of a fellow Jew or a fellow pedophile, or maybe both?
Hey Auster, even violent criminals in prison have a moral code and they abhor pedophiles. You’re lowdown, man.
If it had been 32 years since a black man had raped a jewish 13 year old would Auster have made those lame statute of limitations arguments? I imagine the opposite. If there wasn’t already a legal notion that SoL doesn’t toll for fugitives he would have invented it on the spot!
He explained why he changed his position to my satisfaction. Just read this literally:
He silently changed the title, hiding some of his initial emotion. His “change of position” didn’t include any explanation for this emotion other than the one he hides in plain view, cloaked in irony.
If he really changed his mind, rather than simply realizing he went a bridge too far, he could have complained about Applebaum’s substandard writing instead of picking nits with The sub standard world of conservative writing. If he wanted to alter his title without appearing to be hiding something he could have noted he was doing so and why.
Intellectual honesty isn’t nearly as hard as Auster makes it look.
I’ve had a run-in or two with Auster myself, so I’m not immediately inclined to take his side. But in this case I think I’d cut him some slack. My initial reaction to Polanski’s arrest was similar to his: “eh, it all happened last century, the guy is old as the hills & presumably harmless now, and I loved *Rosemary’s Baby*, *Macbeth* & *Chinatown*.
Especially *Macbeth* – arguably the best film adaptation of Shakespeare ever made.
But that was before I found out all the damning details that have come out since the story first broke. So my attitude has followed pretty much the same trajectory as Auster’s. And I’m about as WASP as you can get.
That said, Mr. Roach’s comment #2 above was thoroughly understandable and Auster’s reaction was way over the top. When you’ve gotten something wrong, the best defense is not a renewed offense: it’s a good-humored withdrawal from the field. And, alas, that just doesn’t seem to be in Auster’s rhetorical repertoire.
Don’t you dare slander Michael Jackson’s name. There is no evidence that Michael Jackson ever molested anyone other than the words of proven and admitted liars who couldn’t keep their lies straight under oath. If they had evidence in 1993, Sneddon would have arrested Michael Jackson and charged him with child molestation, instead the police investigation went on for more than a year and no charges were ever brought. Jackson was found not guilty in 2005 because he was NOT GUILTY. The prosecution presented NO evidence to support Gavin Arvizo’s claims that Michael Jackson molested him. Instead all the evidence, even the prosecution’s ‘evidence’ pointed to the fact that Gavin and his family were a bunch con-artists trying to pull the biggest con of their careers with the help of the mainstream media. People like to claim Michael Jackson was a pedophile based on these idiotic lines of reasoning.
1. “He’s spends time with kids instead of women, therefore he is a child molester”. If so how come all the kids he spends time with aren’t accusing him? How come all the victims that exist in your imaginations never come forward with allegations. He’s had thousands of kids at Neverland over the years, and only three accusers, all whose parents happen to be con-artists chasing after money.
2. “He paid them off so he’s guilty.” Do you know the difference between a civil case and criminal case? WTF is something as serious as child molestation doing in civil court instead of criminal court. If you think someone molested your kid you go straight to the cops, you don’t call your lawyer and file a lawsuit and then refuse to cooperate with the police once you get a settlement. Explain to me where in the settlement http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0616041jacko1.html does it say the money is contingent upon the accusers failure to cooperate with the police. It was the Chandler’s decision and theirs alone to run after taking the money. If you bother to read it (I know its to difficult for idiots) you’d notice MJ claimed he’s innocent in the settlement and accuser and his lawyers agreed to sign it. By this idiotic logic, Janet Arvizo and her children were telling the truth when they claimed that a JC Penny’s security guard beat and sexually abused her because JC Penny settled with her for more than 100,000. Please.
3. “He had money so he beat the rap.” Martha Stewart, Paris Hilton, Chris Brown, Madoff, etc. I guess did not have enough money to beat the rap. Michael Jackson’s trial was one of the most expensive trial in U.S. History. It cost taxpayers 2.7 million dollars. http://news.softpedia.com/news/Michael-Jackson-s-Trial-Costs-2-7-million-5327.shtml Sneddon had been chasing after Michael Jackson for 12 years and he still could not find any evidence or credible witnesses, despite ransacking Neverland twice with 70 police officers, setting up a hotline for alleged victims to come forward, and traveling around the world looking for victims.
4. “OJ Simpson got away with it, so Michael Jackson got away with it too.” People who think OJ is guilty can point to evidence, something that MJ haters have a hard time doing. By that same logic, Charles Manson is also innocent because some people are wrongfully convicted. Therefore, we should release all convicted criminals from prison.
5. “He sleeps with boys.” This is not illegal. If you want to use this as proof of his guilt, then at a minimum the boys he’s sleeping with have to be the ones accusing him, NOT you. This didn‘t happen in the Michael Jackson case, contrary to popular belief. Gavin Arvizo the boy accusing him in 2005 never slept in bed with Michael Jackson, according to the Martin Bashir interview and witnesses at the trial. He slept in the guest room with his family. Macaulay Culkin, Wade Robson, and Bert Lewis, all testified they slept with Jackson in the early 90s and nothing happened. Do you know better than them what happened to them? Jordie Chandler (the boy got the settlement in the early 90s) skipped the country so he wouldn’t have to testify in the 2005 case. Gee, I wonder why?
6. “There was ‘lurid’ testimony. ‘Little boys never lie’. When a child speaks we should believe them…” I can give lurid testimony about you too. I wonder if that makes it true. Here’s one of my favorites from you tube. On the witch hunt for victims Diane Diamond comes across a boy who could give ‘lurid testimony’ that Michael Jackson molested him and details of his time at Neverland. She believed him and wasted months trying to corroborate his story and even gets the police involved. Turned out this kids a liar who’d never even met Michael Jackson. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3GbPkR-ne4
Read, Aphrodite Jones’s book ‘The Michael Jackson Conspiracy’ and Geraldine Hugh’s book ‘Redemption’ and the GQ article, http://www.buttonmonkey.com/misc/maryfischer.html
As for Polanski, he hasn’t been tried and convicted of anything yet. You should wait and see ALL the evidence against him instead of the sensationalist media lies.
“As for Polanski, he hasn’t been tried and convicted of anything yet.”
He already pled guilty to statutory rape, then fled the country prior to sentencing. AFAIK, he’s not legally entitled to a trial at this point (Roach can help us out here, since I’m not a lawyer).
He’s convicted; that’s what a guilty plea does. He was awaiting sentencing under the terms of his guilty plea.
Incidentally, it’s normal in guilty pleas to leave some discretion to judge. That’s what the whole “colloquy” with the judge prior to sentencing does: it says essentially, “you realize that this is just between you and prosecutor, but judge can deviate if he chooses from the agreement for a lot of reasons, not least if he thinks the plea does not serve justice.” That apparently is what Polanski was concerned about as the setencing approached in ’77.