What the hell is wrong with Hollywood?

    Over 100 of Tinseltown’s elite have signed a petition urging that Roman Polanski be released.   In case you haven’t heard, Polanski was arrested in Switzerland last week and is being held for extradition to the United States.

    His crime: in 1977, Polanski took nude photos of a 13-year-old girl, served her champagne, gave her a quaalude and then raped her both vaginally and anally.  (Read the girl’s testimony before the grand jury.)

    It doesn’t matter that she did not seem to be the girl next door. (She told the grand jury that she’d already had sex twice before then and gotten drunk on both liquor and pills, as well, but never at the same time.)  It doesn’t matter that she forgave him.  HE RAPED A 13-YEAR-OLD!!!

    Polanski fled the country before sentencing because he feared a plea bargain he’d worked out with the L.A. District Attorney’s office would not be honored by the judge and he’d actually have to got to jail for RAPING A 13-YEAR-OLD.

    Among the people who signed the petition (the text of which can be found here) are Woody Allen (what a surprise), Martin Scorsese and Harvey Weinstein.  Shame on you for signing the petition and thank you for once again exposing Hollywood’s hypocrisy.

    Let’s contrast this Hollywood reaction to a Lifetime Achievement Oscar awarded to Elia Kazan.  Kazan was one of the greatest directors of the 20th Century.  On Broadway, he directed the first productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman.  His films include Gentlemen’s Agreement, On the Waterfront, East of Eden and Splendor in the Grass.

    When he accepted his award, probably half the audience sat on its ass.  Why?  In 1952, Kazan named names in testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, the infamous HUAC.

    A couple of points need be made.  At the time, the Soviet Union was our enemy.  A-bomb hysteria swept the nation.  People were building shelters in their backyards and stocking it with canned goods and water hoping to survive the inevitable attack.  Big cities had regularly spaced air raid shelters.  School children had weekly drills where they’d hide under their desks facing away from  windows, as though that would work.

    And Kazan himself has said: "I'd had every good reason to believe the party should be driven out of its many hiding places and into the light of scrutiny, but I'd never said anything because it would be called 'red-baiting.' [. . .] The `horrible, immoral thing' that I did I did out of my own true self."

    So taken in that context, even in hindsight, his testimony was to me not that terrible a thing.  Moreover, all of the eight people he named -- and who were subsequently blacklisted -- were already known to the committee.  It would be like someone giving testimony today naming Pol Pot and Hitler as the world’s worst dictators.

    But let us suppose that Kazan’s testimony was less that altruistic.  That he testified so he wouldn’t go to jail or be blacklisted himself is deplorable.  BUT HE DIDN’T RAPE A 13-YEAR OLD!

    So the gist of what I infer from this episode is that testifying before Congress (or ratting out on your colleagues, if you prefer) trumps RAPE!

    If you testify/squeal, you should not be honored, no matter the quality of your work.  But if you RAPE A 13-YEAR-OLD you should be allowed to continue your career.

    I don’t get it.  Do you? -- Curt Schleier