Two WaPo columnists agree: Go easy on rapist
September 28, 2009 3:50 pm ET by Jamison Foser
"Liberal" Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen says Roman Polanski shouldn't be imprisoned for rape:
Time does not minimize the crime, which in its details is creepy, but jail would no longer serve a purpose.
Actually, Cohen never uses the word "rape." Indeed, at one point, he refers to it as a seduction:
He seduced -- if that can possibly be the word -- the 13-year-old Samantha Geimer with all the power and authority of a 44-year-old movie director who could make her famous.
No, Mr. Cohen, "seduced" cannot possibly be the word. Pick another. Give "rape" a try. It fits pretty well.
At least Cohen's Washington Post colleague, Anne Applebaum, sets him straight. Oh -- wait, I'm sorry; Applebaum agrees Polanski should not be imprisoned:
He did commit a crime, but he has paid for the crime in many, many ways: In notoriety, in lawyers' fees, in professional stigma. He could not return to Los Angeles to receive his recent Oscar.
Oh, he wasn't able to receive his Oscar? Well, that changes everything! Clearly, the man has suffered enough! In fact, let's all apologize to him. Applebaum comes close in her conclusion:
If he weren't famous, I bet no one would bother with him at all.
Well, nobody would write columns arguing that he's already been punished enough by being kept from displaying an Oscar on his mantle, that's for damn sure.
(H/t Atrios)
UPDATE: Conservative blogger Patterico says Anne Applebaum's husband, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, is lobbying the US to drop proceedings against Polanski. That sure seems like something Applebaum should have disclosed, doesn't it?
UPDATE 2: Applebaum says she's disclosed before, so it's no big deal that she didn't this time:
"I have disclosed that before, more than once. Also, when I wrote the blog I had no idea that my husband, who is in Africa, would, or could do anything about it, as Polanski is not a Polish citizen. I am not responsible for his decisions and he is not responsible for mine. "
Applebaum's previous disclosure of who her husband is, of course, has next to nothing to do with the question of whether she should have disclosed that her husband is lobbying the US to go easy one Roman Polanski at the same time she is writing a Washington Post column to that effect.
But then, maybe she's just adhering to the Howard Kurtz school of intermittent disclosure.
UPDATE 3: Applebaum's defense of her defense of Polanski has some flaws.
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I do think it bears repeating however that the Polish Government is attempting to intercede in favor of Polanski. And the Foreign Minister of Poland is Mr. Anne Applebaum as P O'Neill notes:
http://bestofbothworlds.blogspot.com/2009/09/she-wouldnt-wouldnt-she.html
The village really is a swamp.
This is ridiculous, so what if he's been successful?
Yeah, he's suffered enough all of these years, living in Europe, and still making a living, a GOOD living, and not being able to receive his Oscar?! Oh, the horrors he's had to live through...
He committed a crime, he should be tried in a court of his peers, and either convicted, or let go based on the evidence.
And it's true, if he weren't famous, no one would bother with him at all, because he'd already have been tossed into prison, and then, rightfully so, been part of society where the term and stigma of "sex offender" would follow him around for the rest of his life.
Not defending Polanski, just some context.
Fog, I heard something similar, but it was the prosecution who made the plea deal with Polanski and then went behind his back and requested the judge change the sentence.
Earlier this year, Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza in Los Angeles dismissed Polanski's bid to throw out the case because the director failed to appear in court, but said there was "substantial misconduct" in the handling of the original case.
I think Polanski got off lightly, with one one charge of engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.
And if the prosecution was playing both sides, Polanski had the opportunity to appear before a judge that clearly was willing to address the "substantial misconduct by the previous prosecutor.
So enough!
It's time for Polanski to be in prison receiving the punishment the men in prison give to scum who rape and molest children!
But I think this is a bit off-topic for MMFA. Richard Cohen's (lousy) reporting on this one doesn't seem to have anything to do with politics, let alone with liberals vs. conservatives.
WorldViewer you are being sucked into ignoring the important element, the main element of this story. Wapo is forwarding the standard conservative line in defending the male rapist. It's been a long time,.. she was asking for it,.. she has forgiven him,... he is a good man,.. etc. etc. etc.
Liberals are fond of taking the side of the women as victims. They want to help or protect the victims. Where is the Wapo editor who is forwarding the liberal side of this (womens) issue? Maybe ther is one but it ain't these two gems.
I think you are stretching things, MiddleLeft. I think you are stretching things in your interpretation, but, more importantly, I think that you are stretching your interpretation to fit into a "liberal vs. conservative" mode. I respect your intelligence, but I think you're making a mistake in this case.
That being said, I think it's an important point to note about the media. The MRC is probably right in their criticism as well, and the absurdity of that phrase in general highlights how solid the common ground is on this particular issue. Using this as an example of how Cohen is not really liberal isn't the key point, because regardless of ideology he's just plain wrong here.
I have read a lot of stupid posts on this site, but yours needs to win an award. Lets see you back up your contention that conservatives defend rapists. That is absurd!!
For whatever reason, MMFA has been taken a sidestep into the bizarre lately. First, attacks on the death of Glenn Beck's Mother, and now this. It appears as though all the adults have left the interns in charge.
But again, I will be waiting for your links and your evidence.
I can't imagine why you folks have become soooo vocal, in light of your 8 years of silence.
Not a word spoken against Bush, who vacationed for a month prior to the worst tragedy to ever happen to this country.
Not a peep when Bush started a war with a country that did not attack us and lied about the intelligence used to start the war. Not a sound was made when that same war cost the lives of over 4,500 Americans, more than died when the country was attacked.
You could hear a pin drop, when the cost of that invasion cost American taxpayers over 686 BILLION dollars (and counting).
And when the median income for Americans declined 4.2%? NOTHING!
When the number of Americans living in poverty jumped to 39.8 million (the largest number in absolute terms since 1960)? NOTHING!
The number of children living in poverty jumped more than 21%? NOTHING!
The number of Americans without health-care increased 20.6%? NOTHING!
Your daily/hourly "President Obama is a (take your pick)socialist, communist, Nazi, fascist and failure" are simply unhinged rants from the loony, Republican Whine Machine!
WorldViewer you are being sucked into ignoring the important element, the main element of this story. Wapo is forwarding the standard conservative line in defending the male rapist. It's been a long time,.. she was asking for it,.. she has forgiven him,... he is a good man,.. etc. etc. etc.
Liberals are fond of taking the side of the women as victims. They want to help or protect the victims. Where is the Wapo editor who is forwarding the liberal side of this (womens) issue? Maybe ther is one but it ain't these two gems.
In 1977, Polanski, then aged 44, became embroiled in a scandal involving 13-year-old Samantha Gailey (now known as Samantha Geimer). It ultimately led to Polanski's guilty plea to the charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.[31]
According to Geimer, Polanski asked Geimer's mother if he could photograph the girl for the French edition of Vogue, which Polanski had been invited to guest-edit. Her mother allowed a private photo shoot. According to Geimer in a 2003 interview, "Everything was going fine; then he asked me to change, well, in front of him." She added, "It didn't feel right, and I didn't want to go back to the second shoot."
Geimer later agreed to a second session, which took place on March 10, 1977 at the Mulholland area home of actor Jack Nicholson in Los Angeles. "We did photos with me drinking champagne," Geimer says. "Toward the end it got a little scary, and I realized he had other intentions and I knew I was not where I should be. I just didn't quite know how to get myself out of there." She recalled in a 2003 interview that she began to feel uncomfortable after he asked her to lie down on a bed, and how she attempted to resist. "I said, ‘No, no. I don’t want to go in there. No, I don’t want to do this. No!", and then I didn’t know what else to do,” she stated.[32]
Geimer testified that Polanski performed various sexual acts on her[33][34][35] after giving her a combination of champagne and quaaludes.[36] Specifically, Geimer's testimony was that Polanski kissed her, performed cunnilingus on her, penetrated her vaginally, and then penetrated her anally, each time after being told 'no' and being asked to stop.
I know you can't trust everything in Wiki, but I think this is enough to convince that he should stand trial and let a jury decide...
It was reprehensible for certain, and he deserves his day in court, as does the victim. Unless, there is a statute of limitations enforced at the time it happened, which I don't know if there was/is.
You're surprised? So you think that MMFA would side with a child molester? Where did you get such a perverted idea as that? I would never make such an assumption about anyone on your side.
Now I'm just waiting for the lightening [sic] to strike me down! j/k
Just remove the slash and put in the "er" already.
There's another angle to the reporting, however. I came across the whole Applebaum brouhaha when I was monitoring Breitbart's Big Hollywood site. Apparently, it was an outrage that the liberal columnist Applebaum wrote such a liberal column urging leniency for Polanski in the liberal Washington Post. Applebaum, who once worked at the AEI, is no liberal, and we MMfA devotees know that WaPo is NOT a liberal paper. I went over to the WaPo's website, where I proceeded to read the nastiest bunch of anti-Semitic filth I've ever encountered (granted I don't read Hezbollah and Hamas propaganda-so maybe I'm naive). It appears that BigHollywood sent all of the right-wing psychotic racist crazies to attack the moderately conservative Applebaum on the WaPo website. (What's particularly ironic is that I suspect that Mr. Breitbart may also be Jewish--and spewing of anti-Semitic garbage against Applebaum and Polanski may not what he had counted on!)
It's funny, a Jewish right-winger, in his zeal to liberal, decadent Hollywood, and the so-called liberal Washington Post, helps excoriate a reliable conservative and fellow Jew, by sending his angry mobs who hurl anti-Semitic epithets.
I'm a gentile, German-American, no less, and a huge critic of Israel, so when I read anti-Semitic hate that upsets me, it has got to be really, really bad. This kind of racism is why Jewish Americans should steer clear of the Republican party. Neo-conservative Jews such as Krauthammer and Wolfowitz are in an uneasy alliance with some vile, reprehensible yahoos, who hate Jews as well as blacks, no matter how much the Republicans claim that they love Israel.
As I said, someone should have been charged with a crime that was not. Samantha Geimer's mother met the Great Mr. Polanski, and THROUGH her 13 year old daughter at him, "go do whatever this man asks you to do, you are going to be discovered, a big movie star, make millions of dollars and support me". Samantha Geimer's mother absolutely should have been charged with a crime.
So 42 days in a prison hospital is sufficient punishment for 44 year old man who raped, drugged and sodomized a 13 year old CHILD?
You are off your freaking rocker!
I don't give a rat's a** WHAT this child's mother did or didn't do, Polanski was the adult and HE he had NO right to touch that CHILD!!!
THAT IS THE POINT!!