by Paul Jacob
Roman Polanski and Barack Obama: One is a rapist and the other a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Could any two men be more different? And yet they are similarly blessed — with a certain kind of attention.
The moist eyeballs and loud applause come from their respective supporters . . . two groups not all that dissimilar. And the manner ofthat attention says a whole lot about what it means to be human.
Through a Special Lens
The story was big newslast week. Filmmaker Polanski trekked to Switzerland to accept anaward, but was waylaid at the airport, nabbed for a crime to which he had pled guilty decades earlier. He had fled the U.S. before sentencing and been on the lam for 30 years. In the interim he had made a number of movies, some quite renowned.
But the rape charge was still there, and a recent documentary about the case had spurred the interest of his California prosecutors. They decided that his freedom in Europe was a slap in the face, a bad example. So they went after him.
That was merely interesting. What followed was fascinating.Hollywood folk from Ms. Debra Winger and Mr. Woody Allen to the great Harvey Weinstein were appalled that an important artist would be hounded so. A petition of protest made the rounds. Whoopi Goldberg went so far as to say that the charge to which Polanski pled guilty wasn’t “rape rape.”
True, sorta. He pled guilty to having sexual relations with a minor.Yes, there is a difference between forcible sexual relations and such relations declared unlawful because of age differences. But this is not the case upon which to hang the extremely dubious case against statutory rape laws. The court documents in the Polanski rape case show that what the man actually did was “rape rape,” to useWhoopi-ese. Polanski plied a 13-year-old girl with drugs and alcohol and continued his course even after she told him “no.”
I am pretty sure neither feminism nor common sense has undergone a major transformation, downgrading rape from crime to “no-no” on the grounds that “no” doesn’t always mean “no.”
Thankfully, the Hollywood response was not univocal. Chris Rock expressed incredulity over those who defended a director just because he had made good films.“Even Johnny Cochran don’t have the nerve to go ‘Did you see OJ play against New England?’”
But the typical Hollywood response does show us something. It shows us that a bunch of oh-so-correct eco-feminist proud-to-be-liberal celebs can make an exception . . . for one of their own.
You Have Got To Be Kidding
I wonder who was more surprised at the Norwegians’ Nobel Peace Prize announcement, President Barack Obama or every other intelligent person on the planet.
Obama himself expressed shock. But some people weren’t all that surprised. They couldn’t be, you see. They were just so gushed up with love and pride and the “yes, we can” spirit.
That Obama hasn’t actually done anything to deserve this award — all he’s done is make a bunch of speeches convincing people that yes-oh-dear-me-yes, he was for peace — is painfully obvious. He wouldn’t be the first recipient unworthy to press his soles into the footsteps of the first Peace Prize winner, Frédéric Passy.
The line of prize winners do not uniformly line up as men of peace or good will. Kissinger? Arafat?? Woodrow Wilson???
One needn’t plumb the depths of the Scandinavian soul to figure outwhy Barack Obama was chosen. Surely it’s nothing other than that theNorwegians are just so darned relieved to have that cracker Bush out ofoffice, and giddy to have a like-minded Euro-socialist ally as leader of the free world.
Silly, yes. Idiotic. But so was the Hollywood defense of Polanski.
It’s just proof of man’s tribal nature. The oh-so-cosmopolitan social democrats may think they have evolved beyond a barbaricin-group thinky mindset, but they would be wrong. In their very acts of defining who’s in the group — which deviant to hold their noses and defend (Polanski) and which exemplar to fard up to godhood (Obama) —they show themselves unable to demonstrate a truly civilized dedication to principle.
Rule of law? Not for Polanski.
Award on merit? Not for Obama.
As with the Republicans during the Bush years — when principles went out the window because the Big Spenders and obvious enemies of freedom were said to be “basically good guys,” and “ours” — fellow feeling and social identity overshadow all else.
Luckily, it looks like Polanski’s going to prison. And the NobelPeace Prize? It doesn’t really matter; it doesn’t mean much of anything. Not any more.
Paul Jacob is President of Citizens in Charge. His daily Common Sense commentary appears on the Web, via e-mail, and on radio stations across America.
