I am sick to death of the glitterati and their silly defenses of child rape. Yes, Roman Polanski has made a great film or two (and a lot of mediocre crap). That doesn’t change the fact he’s a child rapist.
Kate Harding calls it well.
The point is not to keep 76-year-old Polanski off the streets or help his victim feel safe. The point is that drugging and raping a child, then leaving the country before you can be sentenced for it, is behavior our society should not — and at least in theory, does not — tolerate, no matter how famous, wealthy or well-connected you are, no matter how old you were when you finally got caught, no matter what your victim says about it now, no matter how mature she looked at 13, no matter how pushy her mother was, and no matter how many really swell movies you’ve made.
*****
The reporting on Polanski’s arrest has been every bit as “bizarrely skewed,” if not more so. Roman Polanski may be a great director, an old man, a husband, a father, a friend to many powerful people, and even the target of some questionable legal shenanigans. He may very well be no threat to society at this point. He may even be a good person on balance, whatever that means. But none of that changes the basic, undisputed fact: Roman Polanski raped a child. And rushing past that point to focus on the reasons why we should forgive him, pity him, respect him, admire him, support him, whatever, is absolutely twisted.
An escaped mental patient broke into the United Nations yesterday, getting all the way to the General Assembly and delivering a ninety-minute speech.
A day after the stunning security breach, U.N. officials were still attempting to sort out how it was allowed to happen.
“We’re trying not to play the blame game here,” said U.N. spokesperson Carol Foyler. “The simple fact is, a legally insane man somehow got all the way to the podium, so how do we keep that from happening again?”
Theories abound as to how the mental patient made it to the U.N., with some suggesting that he may have escaped during a field trip to a county fair.
Reacting to the rambling and incoherent ninety-minute rant, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton echoed the feelings of many: “I was like, where’s Kanye when you need him?”
The government yesterday publicly hardened its position on bank executive bonuses saying it will be “very, very robust” in clamping down on bonuses for 2008 in banks in which it holds shares. It will only allow modest payments for clerks earning around £20,000 a year.
It came as David Cameron said he would cap all 2008 bonuses at £2,000 for staff in banks owned or partly owned by the government. He also said the government should be willing to sue any bank executive who insisted their contract entitled them to a large bonus for the year.
Britain’s Prince Harry has been sent on course on equality and diversity after a series of high profile racial gaffes have damaged the young royal’s reputation, it was reported Thursday.
Harry, an officer in the British Army, was formally disciplined by superiors after videos surfaced showing him using offensive language — referring to a fellow soldier as a “Paki” and another as looking “like a raghead.”
Now, according to the Daily Mirror newspaper, the 24-year-old has been ordered to attend lessons on how not to be racist and gain understanding of how offensive his comments are. …
The latest development follows a new claim that the prince, third in line to throne, told a black British comedian that he didn’t “sound like a black chap.”
In a 2005 gaffe, Harry apologized after he was photographed wearing a Nazi uniform at a party.
Former French President Jacques Chirac was rushed to a hospital after being mauled by his pet dog who is being treated for depression, in a dramatic incident that rattled the ex-president’s wife.
The couple’s white Maltese poodle, called Sumo, has a history of frenzied fits and became increasingly prone to making “vicious, unprovoked attacks” despite receiving treatment with anti-depressants, Chirac’s wife Bernadette said.
The Plague is back, this time attacking terrorists.
At least 40 al-Qaeda fanatics died horribly after being struck down with the disease that devastated Europe in the Middle Ages.
The killer bug, also known as the plague, swept through insurgents training at a forest camp in Algeria, North Africa. It came to light when security forces found a body by a roadside.
The victim was a terrorist in AQLIM (al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb), the largest and most powerful al-Qaeda group outside the Middle East.
It trains Muslim fighters to kill British and US troops.
Now al-Qaeda chiefs fear the plague has been passed to other terror cells — or Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia’s Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.
Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” — he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”
Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?” Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah — you have scored a point there.”
Mr Saakashvili, who was in Paris to meet Mr Sarkozy yesterday, laughed nervously when a French radio station read him the exchange. “I knew about this scene, but not all the details. It’s funny, all the same,” he said.
The daughter of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher said Britain’s “Iron Lady” is suffering from dementia, the family’s first public confirmation of what has been widely rumored in Britain for several years.
Thatcher’s condition has deteriorated so much that she forgets that her husband, Denis Thatcher, died in 2003, her daughter said in a memoir that is to be published next month and was serialized over the weekend in the Mail on Sunday newspaper.
Congratulations to Matthew Mitcham who prevented the Chinese from going 8 for 8 in the diving medals. As UK prodigy Thomas Daley noted, it’s good for the sport in terms of breaking down the mental barriers in the competition. The Chinese are spectacularly good, and it’s good for the sport that others are competetive too.
I have to agree, however, with a variety of commentators that NBC’s coverage was lacking. So often the cameras would pan to the audience and show medalists’ families and loved ones, but not Mitcham. Omitting his family and his partner (he’s the only openly gay man competing in Beijing) was conspicuous and a poor choice. NBC knows better than that.
