Silly Little Country

Sympathy for the Devil

After reading a LOT of articles and posts on the arrest of Roman Polanski in the last while, I've concluded, after starting out with NO real opinion, that I have no sympathy at all.
Howard Kurtz provides a nice summary.
I rather like the idea of his having been hoist on his own petard, and the hubris of him and his legal team.

"Roman Polanski's attorneys may have helped provoke his arrest by complaining to an appellate court this summer that Los Angeles prosecutors had never made any real effort to arrest the filmmaker in his three decades as a fugitive, two sources familiar with the case told The Times.
"The accusation that the Los Angeles County district attorney's office was not serious about extraditing Polanski was a small part of two July court filings by the director's attorneys. But it caught the attention of prosecutors and led to his capture in Switzerland on Saturday, the sources said."

And Kate Harding is cited regarding the poor man's sad exile:

which in this case means owning multiple homes in Europe, continuing to work as a director, marrying and fathering two children, even winning an Oscar, but never -- poor baby -- being able to return to the U.S.)

Megan McArdle has a great response to one astonishing, and likely not unusual, European reaction:

The French, too, have forgiven him of course:
"Seeing him alone, imprisoned while he was heading to an event that was due to offer him praise and recognition is awful. He was trapped," French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said at a news conference Sunday. "In the same way there is a generous America that we like, there is also a scary America, that has just shown its face."
You would think we'd busted him for unpaid parking tickets. The guy drugged a thirteen year old girl in order to rape her. Perhaps the French have some sophisticated, European point of view on these things that I, with my puritan ancestry, simply cannot rise to.

I would say in some way of course that his arrest is a suitable lifetime achievement award in the end.
Unfortunately I fear the extradition may never happen.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 12:04 PM