Word: polanski
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Score it as the first serious collateral damage stemming from the ongoing detention of film director Roman Polanski. Just two weeks after his impassioned protest of Polanski's Sept. 26 arrest, French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand finds himself under attack for his description of sex during trips to Thailand, which critics called sex tourism. Mitterrand, the nephew of late socialist President François Mitterrand, wrote about sex trips in a 2005 novel, detailing paying "boys" for sex. At the time the book was printed, the publisher's official description of La Mauvaise...
...favored to succeed her father Jean-Marie Le Pen as leader of the far-right National Front party - voices her outrage at Mitterrand's accounts, and demands he resign from the culture portfolio. Le Pen has been critical of public figures in France who rushed to defend Polanski following his arrest in Switzerland on U.S. arrest warrants for his 1997 guilty plea to criminal charges of having sex with a minor...
Despite the usual refusal of the left to deal with Le Pen, overlapping motives are driving the common offensive by traditional political enemies. "It's above all the first direct political consequence of the Polanski case, in which Frédéric Mitterrand became iconic of the élites defending [Polanski] by immediately thrusting himself to the heart of the controversy," says political commentator Alain Duhamel. "Some resent him as the living legacy of Mitterrand. The left is still furious at him for agreeing to serve under Sarkozy. Still others want to make him pay for his sophisticated...
...none of this changes the fact that Roman Polanski drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl. Polanski did not allow himself to be properly sentenced for this crime, instead choosing to flee the country on the fear that his transgression would be met with a prison sentence. Justice was never served, and it does not have an expiration date. The administration of justice may be 30 years late and may only be taking place now because of Polanski’s celebrity, but this is merely a reflection of the unfortunate fact that not everyone who escapes justice...
From a broad perspective, little may be accomplished by jailing Polanski—his victim has expressed no desire to see Polanski punished, the arrest comes decades after the fact, and Polanski has by all known accounts not committed any other transgressions. But the idea that this man should be given a free pass simply because he is a celebrity or because his punishment is overdue is offensive to the idea that all individuals are to be treated as equals under the law. Roman Polanski’s life has been difficult and his achievements great, but he should have...