Never Expect Integrity from Writers

Writers, painters, actors and other “artists” get entirely too much slack for bad behavior. Ezra Pound is forgiven for being a Nazi sympathizer. Frida Kahlo was a devout Stalinist. And all sorts of current idiots who’ve apparently never picked up a biography get a hard-on for Mao or Che Guevara.

But at the end of the day, those are little more than crimes of the brain — muddle-headed thinking resulting from fashionable trends, contrarian politics, rebellious posturing, lack of moral compass and, sometimes, actual mental illness. People are allowed to think what they want, even when it’s wrong. Hell, I even hear wild stories about actors who find work despite NOT having voted for Obama.

Roman Polanski, on the other hand, drugged a 13-year-old girl and raped her. He gave her booze, fed her drugs and, despite her crying and saying no over and over, he raped her vaginally as well as anally.

But it’s all cool because he’s a talented director and he had to live in “exile” in France. Or he should walk because the sanctity of a film festival in a neutral country was “violated.”

You know who was violated? A 13-year-old child?

I never put any stock in the light-weight bullshit penned by Bernard-Henri Levy. Get beyond his vapid prose and there’s only doubly vapid thinking — like the fact that Polanski put up with Stalinism and Naziism makes it totally cool to rape a 13-year-old. That’s the brilliance on full display in a petition to support Polanski. What really depresses me is some of the other names who’ve signed on in support of someone who raped a 13-year-old. I just assumed someone like Milan Kundera would sign something like this, but really Paul Auster and Salman Rushdie? REALLY? I guess I should know better than to put folks up on pedestals, but that’s disappointing.

As far as the Hollywood suspects, I’d have to say I’m surprised at Debra Winger, but not so much at Woody Allen. Others on the lists making their way around: Pedro Almodovar, Wes Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, Monica Bellucci, Stephen Frears, Tilda Swinton, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Terry Gilliam. These aren’t celebrities standing up for socialism or neoconservatism, for Democratic politician X or Republican politician Y.

Under the guise of cosmopolitanism and international manners, they’re standing up for child rape.

Now, perhaps someone with his first book coming out should just keep his mouth shut about these things, but a) none of those degenerate-defending assholes read this blog and b) Roman Polanski raped a 13-year-old child.