If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!
via corner.nationalreview.com
It's just another thing your parents were right about. It has ever been true, hasn't it, that the arts community, actors, writers, artists etc. has had a moral depravity problem, for want of a better term. It's not new. You could find a lady of character on the stage in 1810 or whenever, but you'd have to look hard. There's probably some explanation for why this is so, but it seems to be so. The new thing is that with media growing so important, people with disorderly morals seem to becoming ever more influential, and that's no so good.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying all artists are moral degenerates. I just think it's obvious that the mean of the normal distribution of moral quality in some professions is significantly offset in the direction of moral laxity. There are doubtless many morally upright actors, novelists and so on. I just think as a percentage they would be smaller than the similar class of say, dentists. A parent who has a child who has her heart set on dental school need not worry about sexual exploitation in the same way as a parent whose child's heart is set on Hollywood. Someone who said, The dental profession is a moral cesspool! would be thought odd or perhaps in possession of some peculiar bit of knowledge. Someone who said Hollywood is a moral cesspool! would be stating a truism. All that is going on with this Polanski thing is that people are getting an unusual look at the distorted moral (or not very moral) lens through which people in a certain network view the world. In a similar way, you would probably get expressions of surprise and outrage among the world of bouncers, professional fighters, and hangers on over the prosecution of a guy who beat somebody up for stealing his parking spot. Who wouldn't beat somebody up for doing that? Lust, anger, everybody has their favorites. For avarice, try Wall Street.
See also this. The French aren't all bad.
What we need is some Swiss lawyers or others with knowledge of the relevant law and institutions to blog about this. My sense is Polanski is in very deep trouble. The Swiss and the Swiss legal profession in particular are pretty well steeped in rule of law values. If you are thinking, what about tax evasion, you are being naive. You used to be able to evade taxes in CH precisely because of their strict enforcement of certain laws. The Swiss also recently take a dim view of pedophilia. My guess is Polanski will sit in a Swiss jail and then be extradited to the US, as per the treaty. Among other problems, it's hard for a notorious fugitive to get bail. If the Swiss are smart, and they are, they will see that their reputation as a jurisdiction that takes its treaty obligations and its own law seriously is far more important than its reputation as a venue for international playpersons. But we'll see.
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