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Jeffrey Wells #sexist #psycho hollywood-elsewhere.com

[ In regards to Polanski rapinki a 13 year old girl]
A little girl"? Kris, c'mon....don't simplify. Samantha Geimer wasn't Dorothy Gale in buckled shoes and pigtails and a blue-checked dress who was playing dolls and hopscotch with friends when a cackling schoolyard creep named Roman Polanski slipped a Mickey Finn into her Coca-Cola and thereby had his way. And doesn't her mother dropping her off at Nicholson's house mitigate things somewhat, at least to the extent you might not want to call her a "little girl"? Polanski did a fiendish and detestable thing, but it sounds to me like Geimer's mother was an enabler and provocateur in this episode. It seems as if she delivered her daughter on a silver plate to a pack of ravenous wolves (because guys at a Hollywood party are always ravenous)...like a goat tied to a pole in the middle of Jurassic Park. What did Geimer's mother think was going to happen when she dropped Samantha off at Nicholson's? Did she think that her daughter would...what, meet Daniel Ellbserg out on the patio and have a stirring discussion about the Pentagon Papers? Or meet a CBS casting director looking for a very special young teen who could fill a part in a new series? Unless mom was retarded she had to know that some guy might make a move, Hollywood being the bacchanalian place that it is or at least was, especially back in the coke-and-quaalude days of the '70s. I helped raise two boys and know something about the basics of parenting young teens and I would have never dreamt of dropping off a daughter of mine at a party filled with older men...c'mon.

Jeffrey Wells #sexist #psycho #elitist hollywood-elsewhere.com

To be fair to their point, I'm not sure that you and other full-on defenders (or "appologists," if you prefer) for Polanski aren't engaged in a mirror-land version of the same thing. You didn't defend Jacko, I don't imagine you'd be AS jazzed to defend Michael Bay of a similar charge.

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You're right -- I wouldn't feel as strongly about this if Michael Bay was the transgressor. Or OJ Simpson. And there's no question that I felt zero sympathy for the young-boy-coddling Frankenstein freak that Michael Jackson turned into. Polanski is a master filmmaker and therefore a kind of Art God, and yes, in my heart of hearts I feel that he occupies a special place in the ongoing creation-and-destruction process and should be, at the very least, afforded the respect that he has more than earned. He's not just some corner-grocery schlemiel. He's Roman Polanski -- a self-torturing artist and seer and a candle-lighter in the depths of the human condition. And an artist who hasn't, to my knowledge, been chronically and repeatedly buggering young girls. Yes, he acted like a slovenly unthinking beast with Samantha Geimer, but once and only once (as far as the law and known recorded fact is concerned). Once! And she's past it. And so is everyone else except for the ranting online moralists.

So on top of everything else, genuine Art Gods...yeah, you're kinda right...deserve, I feel, a certain kind of consideration that could also, perhaps, be extended to Joe the Plumber types from time to time, depending on their particulars. We need to show compassion and understanding all around when and where appropriate. I'm not saying that Art Gods are exempt from honoring the laws of decency and compassion that we all must follow, but they are, I feel, very high on the general totem pole. Because Art Gods bring a certain understanding and clarity about common woes and miseries to humanity, and in a way are (I feel) the Chosen Messengers because their work clarifies our situation, refreshens our spirit and lightens our load.
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