But still, it's hard to resist when Saletan, at this late date, jumps in to defend Roman Polanski.
I know: if I hadn't read his two pieces for myself, I still wouldn't expect that, even from someone as useless as Saletan.
Saletan's argument is that Polanski's likely to get a worse sentence than he would have gotten back in 1978, and that's just plain unfair. Especially since he'll be judged by the mores of a different era.
Huh?
That's what happens when you gamble: instead of settling for what you've got, you might wind up better off - or worse. If you win, life is good, as it was for Polanski for three decades. But if you lose, then it sucks to be you. Shit happens. If life were full of 'heads I win, tails I break even' bets, we'd all take them.
The fact is that Polanski could have gone to trial in 1978, and been judged by 1978 standards. He chose not to. Now he may have to walk into a courtroom in 2009 or 2010, and be judged by contemporary standards. Sucks to be him.
What's more, he bases his argument around the notion that Polanski would now be judged as a pedophile, which he says wouldn't have been the case in 1978, and in apparent support of this point produces a lot of evidence to support the notion that the victim was probably sexually mature at the time - a point that I've nowhere seen disputed.
But the real problem is that Saletan regards Polanski as a man whose desire for a sexually mature, but underage and consenting, young woman got the better of him.
We're arguing that he's a rapist, which is a whole 'nother thing. The big problem for most of us isn't that the girl was underage, but that she didn't want to have sex - and Polanski forced her to against her will. That's rape, regardless of the age of the victim.
And even if we concede Saletan's point, and assume arguendo that both parties were willing: why should Polanski get any sort of break? Did he do anything to indicate that he was a man who made a bad mistake, but realized he shouldn't have given in to his urge to have sex with an attractive minor?
Polanski, 1979:
"If I had killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But...fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls. Everyone wants to fuck young girls!"
I'll take that as a 'no.'
Update: I accidentally posted this, though I meant to be saving it as a draft. (If you read the original, its fragmented nature was probably pretty apparent. Aggh.) What's above is a considerably reworked version.
