Let Polanski Go... Says Founder of Feminist Majority Foundation

I know, I know -- yet another Polanski post.

Still.

Some of the industry's most prominent women said they believe Polanski, who faces a sentence as low as probation and as high as 16 months in prison for pleading guilty to having sex with a minor, should be freed. "My personal thoughts are let the guy go," said Peg Yorkin, founder of the Feminist Majority Foundation. "It's bad a person was raped. But that was so many years ago. The guy has been through so much in his life. It's crazy to arrest him now. Let it go. The government could spend its money on other things."

We could also stop prosecuting all rapes and spend that money on "other things," too. We could stop prosecuting all sorts of criminals. Somehow, though, I don't think this person's logic goes that far, or if she's willing to commit to such an odd agenda.

This quote is great:

In an interview, Weinstein said that people generally misunderstand what happened to Polanski at sentencing. He's not convinced public opinion is running against the filmmaker and dismisses the categorization of Hollywood as amoral. "Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion," Weinstein said. "We were the people who did the fundraising telethon for the victims of 9/11. We were there for the victims of Katrina and any world catastrophe."

That is shocking on so many levels. Among them, the implication that celebrities were necessary for the 9/11 fundraising, or that they should have the great bulk of the credit, rather than the millions of much poorer people who donated more than an hour of their time for a telethon. Same with Katrina.

This guy really is pushing the idea of droit du seignor. He really believes that. The Kings provide to the peasants in the field, and the peasants owe the Kings certain indulgences in repayment of that benevolence.

But there's another semi-prominent crack in the Wall of Sound, and this guy says (as I suspected) that Hollywood really doesn't believe this. It's just that the Pro-Rape lobby is intimidating the Anti-Rape people into timid silence.

Producer Bo Zenga ("Scary Movie," "Soul Plane"), is one of the few executives taking a different view. "I don't actually believe that people in Hollywood would put protecting their own above a 13-year-old girl who was raped," he said.

"I think these people have honestly forgotten what this is really about. Everyone needs to go back and read the grand jury testimony to remember how vicious this rape was because right now everyone thinks we're debating whether or not Polanski got a raw deal. It irritates me that people around the world think that all of Hollywood is saying that the rapist is the victim. Because I don't feel that way, and neither do most of the people I talk with."

Via Andy Levy's Tweet.

BTW: Anne Appelbaum continues covering herself in glory.

posted by Ace at 02:29 PM

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