July 18, 2005
A Roman Outrage in Paris
You know what's an outrage? France's treatment of Roman Polanski. Here's a guy who raped a 13-year-old American girl in 1977 and who then fled to Paris to avoid punishment. What's he doing these days? Suing a magazine for libel for claiming that Polanski exploited his murdered wife's name (Sharon Tate) in order to seduce a woman. Polanski might have a decent libel case. He might not. I don't really care. What is outrageous is the fact that he's suing a magazine publisher in London's High Court, yet testifying in the case via video link from Paris because he's afraid that he'll be extradited to the United States should he actually step foot in the United Kingdom. (France has a policy of not extraditing its own citizens even if they are complete scumballs like Polanski.) France does many things right. (Paninis, the Eiffel Tower, and the Musee d'Orsay all come to mind.) This is NOT one of them. This thug should be shipped back to the United States via Parcel Post (less comfortable than Federal Express) immediately and be sentenced and serve jail time for his 1977 conviction of having sex with a 13-year-old. (And according to the victim, it wasn't statutory rape; it was pure rape. She's since forgiven him and thinks he's suffered enough. Spending your life in France directing films in lieu of being sodomized by cellmates doesn't exactly seem like a fair trade-off in my book.) If there's a criminal law essay on the California bar exam, I might try to sneak in the following: "In the case of rape, a crime which that scumbag loser Roman Polanski committed in 1977, the prosecution must prove the following elements beyond a reasonable doubt...."
Comments
Roman's not kidding about not wanting to be extradited to the U.S. -- that's for sure. He wouldn't even come here when he was nominated for (and ultimately won) the Academy Award for Best Director for The Pianist. (In this Nuisance's opinion, the award was undeserved, not because he is a rapist but because that movie was just not that compelling.)
Posted by: The Attractive Nuisance at July 19, 2005 05:45 PM
This is the kind of high-quality people and high-quality foreign policy you get from the land of the White Flag.
Additionally, we'll put our cheese up against theirs ANY time!
Posted by: Oregon Tillamook at July 19, 2005 06:03 PM
Turns out the bastard won his libel case. Here, we have a French citizen suing an American company in a British court while remaining in France the entire time. Talk about a total joke. Polanski is a criminal thug who ought to be in prison.
Posted by: Fool at July 22, 2005 07:29 PM
