Violation

I’m going to start with something really, really simple: Roman Polanski. Thank goodness Kate Harding at Salon has saved me the from the horrendous ickiness of actually writing anything substantive about this by saying the only thing that needs to be said:

Roman Polanski raped a child.

For those who want the longer version of Harding:

There is evidence -- albeit purely anecdotal, in this case -- that only the most debased crapweasel thinks "I didn't know she was 13!" is a reasonable excuse for raping a child, much less continuing to rape her after she's said no repeatedly.

Period. The only possible further discussion needed is about why anyone one who claims not to be a debased crapweasel would ever even have worked with Polanski* much less be defending him at this point. Having that discussion would, however, involve almost as much horrendous ickiness as writing about the original incident. In fact, it might involve even more horrendous ickiness. So I’m going to pass on that discussion and stick with:

Roman Polanski raped a child.

Think of this as a kind of mantra you can repeat endlessly in the unlikely event you actually know anyone who wants to defend Polanski.

*****

* I paid no attention to the Polanski rape story when in broke in 1977 (I was starting graduate school and nothing outside of the university existed) and in fact it became confused in my mind with Polanski’s affair with then-fifteen-year-old Nastassia Kinski. I thus mentally filed Polanski as distasteful but not depraved enough to boycott. Once he was arrested in Switzerland and I realized the nature of his actual crime, I was horrified to discover that two actors whose work I like very much - Harrison Ford and Johnny Depp - both made movies with him after the rape. I was even more horrified to realize that I’d seen both movies. It makes me feel ill to realize that some of my money may be going to pay for Polanski’s defense.