« Huh | Main | Afghanistan »
The Unsnarkable
By Jeff Fecke | November 28, 2009
I could write paragraphs and paragraphs about Bernard-Henri Lévy’s bizarre and disgusting HuffPo article, in which he does a premature touchdown dance at the prospect of the freeing of convicted child rapist Roman Polanski. Were I to do so, I’d probably start by noting that Lévy is wrong to say Polanski is about to be freed; at best, Polanski is about to be released on a $4.5 million bond, will have to wear an ankle bracelet, and remains without a passport. The extradition hearing remains, and is considered a slam dunk by most legal experts; Polanski is far from having been “freed.”
Were I to go on, I’d probably note Lévy’s deep concern that Polanski’s children have evidently been taunted in school because their dad’s a convicted fugitive child rapist. Now, that’s not fair to Polanski’s kids — they didn’t choose their dad, and one can’t blame them from the fact that their dad once forcibly raped a 13-year-old. But one can’t help but wonder whether Polanski’s children would face taunts if Polanski had paid his debt to society when it was due. Or, for that matter, if he had simply made the very easy decision not to rape a child.
I could go on in this vein for some time, pointing out the factual errors in Lévy’s piece, his pathetic attempt to paint Polanski as some sort of political prisoner, or the fact that not once in the article does Lévy even acknowledge that Polanski was ever even accused of drugging, forcibly raping, and sodomizing an underaged girl, not to mention the fact that Polanski pled guilty to statutory rape in the case, then fled before he could be sentenced.
I could note all this, but I won’t, because nothing I can say would be more damaging to Bernard-Henri Lévy’s credibility than these, his own words, as written:
I am mostly thinking about him: Roman Polanski, who I don’t know, but whose fate has moved me so much. Nothing will repair the days he has spent in prison. Nothing will erase the immense, unbelievable injustice he has been subjected to. Nothing will take away the hysteria of those ones who have never stopped pouring contempt upon him, hounding him through hatred and asking for his punishment as if we were living the darkest and most ferocious hours of the McCarthy era all over again. At least the nightmare is about to end. At least the end of the hell is looming. And this, for the time being, is what does matter.
Lévy wrote these words, sincerely, about a convicted child rapist and fugitive from justice. Nothing I could possibly say would be more damning than that.
Topics: Feminism, Roman Polanski, Sexual Assault | 6 Comments »
November 30th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Well put. Thank you.
Does anyone understand *why* there is so much deeply felt support for Polanski among some people? I honestly don’t get it for a second, so I feel like I must be missing something here. I can’t imagine that it’s based on anything I’d ever agree with, but I’d still like to know. It just seems bizarre to pour out such feelings in support of a child raper.
November 30th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Often priests or other religious figures who have committed sexual crimes get similar treatment from people who know them. First, there’s the sense that your friend can’t have really done such terrible things, right? You know him or her personally, had dinner with him, listened to his sermons for years and now someone says he’s a rapist? That doesn’t compute because the person you know isn’t some guy with his mugshot in the news.
Second, on a related note, it interferes with all the good memories one might have of a person. I was involved with a monastery out in California about ten years ago. Recently I found out that the abbot had allegedly been taking advantage of and abusing some of the younger monks. I have a lot of fond memories of the place and the man. My initial reaction wasn’t so much denial as irritation at being burdened with the news, because while I haven’t been much of a Christian believer for a a while now, I didn’t really want my good memories burdened with the knowledge that the monastery never had been everything it was cracked up to be.
November 30th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Erik Hare wrote:
I think it’s a civil war on the left. On one side, you have the elitists: the privileged libertines who embrace liberalism because of its acceptance of all forms of sexuality. These would be the kind of people who defend Polanski. On the other side of the civil war are the idealists: the doctrinaire true believers, those who study social theories and constructs, those who see a victim in every non-white-male. These would be the kind of people who despise Polanski. They’re joined by level headed people who recognize a crime for what it is, and its this confluence of non-apologists for Polanski which creates the false impression of consensus about his guilt.
What’s confusing to the idealist camp is that the elitists even exist inside the liberal tent. There is so much deep denial about the pervasiveness of the elitists and elitism that those on the left can seldom bring themselves to admit that pervasive elitism on the left is what causes them to lose elections.
December 1st, 2009 at 1:36 am
JD,
It takes a truly sick individual to try to use sexual assault to score political points. Shame on you.
December 1st, 2009 at 11:02 am
Jaxebad wrote:
Huh? Score political points? I’m not running for office, and as a libertarian I don’t care which major party succeeds.
OH! I get it now. Okay, I’ll play along:
Shame on you for disagreeing with MY opnion too!
Did I do it right?
December 1st, 2009 at 5:01 pm
I wouldn’t take this as a “shame on you” moment, but I would say that I think JD’s response points a hyperpoliticized view of the world. I don’t think these issues fall along a left-right axis. Most people who support Polanski are either his friends (famous people have lots of friends) or people who would like to be his friend or a friend of his friend. Pretty much everyone else wants to see him in jail. This is a situation in which the personal becomes political, not the other way around.