Also, what LP said. This case is not ambiguous or complicated, nor does it tell us much of anything about larger Big Issues, except for what it reveals in people’s bizarre reactions.

It’s simply this: it’s far easier for the closet molester right wingers and their “feminist” allies to carry on about Michael Jackson, Polanski, whatever, than it is to address the pervasive and criminal neglect and abuse of our people, and our children (as if only”children” are deserving of sympathy and protection), in the prisons, the drug war, the communities stripped of adults fed into the prisons, the brutal lack of health care, economic insecurity…finish this yourself.

Oh no, wrapped in sanctimonious self-aggrandizing primal hate, they PRETEND they’re “saving the children” by ranting about isolated examples of “molesters.” Bet your last recovery dollar these are the same dickwads that cheer on the drug war and police brutalizing poor and minority kids, preaching about “personal responsibility” for those with nothing. And health care? Feh, let em eat moldy bread, thar’s penicillin in thar.

I have no special sympathy for Roman Polanski, and have said before he deserves to be called to justice. But waste our time pretending this insignificance is worth all the bluster? No, this is mere media-induced smoke and mirrors.

In the meantime, infant mortality rates in DC and Bedford Stuyvesant rival Botswana, thousand line up in LA and Houston and Appalachia for refugee field health clinics. It’s not embarrassing, it’s criminal.

Alan Grayson has it right, a holocaust is happening every day, dumped at the doors of overcrowded emergency rooms, standing in line at the food pantry, sleeping in cars, and being evicted from their homes. And they worry about Polanski? Bullshit.

http://www.thenoseonyourface.com/conservative-satire/roman-polanski-on-to-catch-a-predator/

1) You should read Dr. B’s post, which starts off in a vaguely similar place, but ends up with very different conclusions, and 2) As I wrote above, most if not all of this “exuberant outrage” would seem to be in response to the exuberant rape apologism (-gasm?) pouring out of various folks, everything from “but Nazis were mean to him” (poor Roman, the only person in the world who ever suffered horribly at the hands of the Nazis!) to “it was her mom’s fault” (apparently her mom invisibly teleported into the house, used mind-control powers to make Polanski give her daughter drugs and alcohol, and then – oh, I don’t even want to go there). I don’t think feminist purity tests tend to be a useful road to go down, but if somebody needs one for some reason, I’d say calling out blatant and noisy rape apologists is as reasonable a demand as any!

1. The election of Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes (total of 20 years in office)
2. Two invasions of Iraq
3. No universal health care bill passed
4. A major economic crisis leading to a wave of foreclosures and massive unemployment
5. Significant escalation of the “war on drugs” and the “war on terror” leading to the erosion of civil liberties

How much worse could things get with Polanksi in custody?

About as much as evil bankers, health care, credit card fees, high unemployment, drugs, prostitution, foreclosures, and the Iraq invasion do.

Who are these “torch wavers”, exactly? Certainly nobody posting or commenting at CT, or any of the other left-leaning blogs I read.

It’s perfectly possible to believe—as I, and I would bet the vast majority of CTers, do—that the US criminal justice system is far too punitive in general and toward sex offenders in particular, and to believe that it’s important that Polanski suffer some legal consequences, both to establish the important principle that the rich and powerful are not above the law, and because Polanski committed what was unambiguously a rape.

Do you really believe that the only way to avoid abusive prosecutions under sex offense laws is to decriminalize rape? I’m sure you don’t. But in that case, what on earth do the “19 year olds who have sex with 17 year olds, peeping toms and public urinators” have to do with Polanski?

I raise my voice for immediate release Roman Polanski.
Important and immediate issue, my ass.

“…recall how we were rendered helpless by the expropriation of the progressive politics of identity in order to further dismantle the social welfare state.” …Richard Estes.

It’s about identity politics, and that we must prove ourselves feminists with an exuberant outrage at this insignificant miscreant. Are we, or are we not, sympathetic to child rapists? Important and immediate issue, my ass. Mom, apple pie, flag for the SWPL set.

I agree, it is a horrible shame how the Air Force has to keep holding all those bake sales just to buy a bomber or two.

After all, one would expect a country that’s the world’s richest and third most populous – while also having entrenched poverty, deep social divisions, substantial levels of immigration and a historical system of racial apartheid not legally abolished until well within living memory – should be able to fund a nation-wide system of public education for some spare change found under the White House sofa cushions, right?

Less flippantly, it really helps to keep in mind that in effect there isn’t actually a “public school system,” but several. At a minimum, there’s one for affluent, often suburban areas, one for often struggling rural(ish) areas and one for impoverished, often majority-minority, usually urban areas. There’s this persistent rhetorical twitch where these wildly different systems get subsumed/conflated/erased into each other, as if Philadelphia ($9,947 per pupil, per capita income $16, 509, median family income $37,036, 22.9% of the population below the poverty line) and suburban Lower Merion Township, PA ($17, 184 per pupil, per capita income $55,526, median family income $148,123, 4.5% of the population below the poverty line) shared the same school district.

Granted, this is going rather off topic, as Polanski is presumably too infirm to rape all of the eighth graders in the U.S. (and so clearly should be set free!)

“In fact, we should cut diplomatic ties with any country that does not respect the basic human right of a child”

For what it’s worth, we and Somalia are the only two countries which have not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Granted, compared to some poverty-ridden, high-infant-mortality, child-soldier-using, underage-prostitution hotspot, we’re doing amazing, but compared to our peers . . . meh.

“Child molesters don’t have any rights.”
Yes they do – seriously curtailed of necessity in order to protect others, both directly and indirectly – but they’re still human. Depressingly.

“Hollywoodites and Europeans”

Again, this isn’t some issue of ” degenerate Hollywood and European cultures”, but privileged moral morons and those who imagine that they’re somehow allied to them vs. everyone else (here and in Europe)

“There are a lot of people in the U.S. still standing for what we have always stood for—the protection of the innocent.”

Well, as an ideal, and largely in retrospect, maybe. But as a practical matter, for quite a while certain innocents could be torn away from their (similarly enslaved) families, abused in every possible way (talk about rape culture!), and etc. Now, from the beginning there were folks here who opposed that, to their undying credit, and if you want to claim them as part of the heritage of Ideal America, I wholeheartedly agree. But as a historical matter . . .

“the immoral social evils associated with your [Europeans’?] new government system”
Wha . . .?

(And are there moral social evils?)

“I pray we never get to the condition of spinelessness that we see in Europe.”

I know – it would be hideous to have guaranteed affordable health care, sane levels of parental leave, reasonable access to child care, enough vacation days that one can actually get to spend time with one’s children, even home nurse visits for new parents. The horror – the horror! (Yes, I know this isn’t what you’re talking about – but again, it’s clear that Europe has no monopoly on child-rape apologists. Honestly, I wish we could roll up all evil and stupidity in a neat little ball of Other conveniently labeled ‘Hollywood and Europe’ (or ‘mega-rich vultures’, or ‘the GOP’, or whatever) – we’ve got a kid on the way, and I am horrified to find so many of my fellow citizens are apparently ok with them being either a middle-school-aged rape-object or a middle-aged child-rapist (if of sufficient fame and status) – but I don’t know if it’s that easy.

“ We are fighting for a minimum of life in prison without parole for people who rape children, and we will win.”

I disagree with a lot of what roy belmont and cripes are saying, but they’re right that one has to careful – from what I’ve , there is a real problem with people being imprisoned for years/hounded for life because as kids they engaged in with consensual sex with other kids, etc. Not that justice is a finite&conserved quantity and letting Polanski go will somehow fix this, or that cases like his are in any way analogous to that! But we want to avoid slipping into a worst-of-both-worlds scenario, where there are seriously punitive consequences for the poor and middling sorts – even when this is wildly disproportionate to the actual acts – but in practice the wealthy and well-connected get away with slaps on the wrist. (I know you certainly don’t want the latter, but given the distribution of power, I can see what those two are worrying about, where this utterly appropriate outrage ends up falling on the low, but missing the high. Not sure what to do about that. Keeping quiet about Polanski’s crimes & the current vomitous outpouring of rape apologia obviously isn’t the answer – again, there’s no law of conservation of (in)justice where pooh-poohing rape reduces the amount of privilege & neofeudalism in the world; if anything they share a distant & tangled root in the idea that those “above” own & can dominate those “below”; oppressions are intertwined and overlapping, etc.), but . . .

“ And I personally would deem the death penalty more appropriate for such crimes. Maybe a good old-fashioned hanging or two would send the right message.”

Of course, there’s the obvious problem with the justice system’s documented inability to determine guilt accurately enough to get to dispense such irreversible and uncurtailable punishment. Beyond that, I’d personally oppose the death penalty for any crimes, on the grounds that just as high-status primate Polanski doesn’t get to rape children, super high-status metaphorical primate ‘The State’ doesn’t get to kill folks.

Of course – roy and cripes, beating straw-torchbearing peasants is fun, but note that at best the only (partial) example in this whole almost-300-comment thread is Laurie, and most of the other discussions I’ve seen don’t even have one. Not that there aren’t real life examples, but seriously!

No, the position of the “torch wavers” is that it is absolutely ridiculous to consider Polanksi’s arrest outrageous. The various defenses rolled out in favor of Polanski have been absurd.

Muddying the waters is a bunch of moral panickers running around screaming hysterically about moral panic, comparing Polanski’s arrest to Marcus Dixon’s, and talking nonsense about bankers and degenerate Europeans. It has been a real shame.

LaurieG 10.01.09 at 3:07 am (#252)

Is the United States the ONLY country in the world standing up for the safety of little girls?

Obviously not. Was that meant to be a stupid question?

This is a human rights issue. Child molesters don’t have any rights.

They forfeit many; they don’t forfeit all.

He should be brought back and given the maximum sentence possible.

Tempted to agree, though if maximum means death through natural causes I don’t think the retribution is sufficient motive. Punishment, yes.

Hollywoodites and Europeans reading this, be aware: There are a lot of people in the U.S. still standing for what we have always stood for—the protection of the innocent.

Oh please. Rights of the individual, yes. Protection of the innocent? You’re just another country, doing better than many, but falling far short of what you’d claim.

The vast majority of us are completely unimpressed by European (so-called) “culture,” and a great many of us see Europeans as having spinelessly caved in to the immoral social evils associated with your new government system. Or rather, one is the result of the other. We are the last bastion of Western CIVILIZATION and I guarantee you we aren’t giving it up without a fight.

Well, a great many of us Europeans (unfairly, perhaps) see you as consumed with a quite striking bilious, self-satisfied, self-serving, self-aggrandizing image of yourselves. Social evils my arse, quite frankly.

I pray we never get to the condition of spinelessness that we see in Europe.

I pray we never forget ourselves so far as to get to the condition of sanctimonious, self-righteous, incurious, bigoted, “no bullshit” bullshit that we see on occasion in the US.

Maybe a good old-fashioned hanging or two would send the right message.

And maybe not. The point is to be better than barbarians, not to outdo their barbarism.

I would hope to hear from at least one European reading this that the views expressed at the film awards in Switzerland that this sub-human was going to attend, do not reflect the views of all Europeans.

Well I’m European (by birth), as is Kieran Healy if I recall correctly, and the views expressed on that petition by self-deceiving or self-misguiding actors and directors do not reflect my own or Kieran’s, or any of my friends. And I suspect they don’t reflect the views of most Europeans, let alone all of them. Does that slake your thirst? or do you wish to vaunt your superiority over us in some other way?

But I’m not holding my breath.

Try it. It might stop you from posting such hateful bile in what should be a just cause.