Polanski's Many Detractors

If the impression you have from reaction to the Roman Polanski extradition case (see Nick Gillespie's great posts here and here) is that the media and the broad Left are overwhelmingly rallying around the weird little Polack, please do think again. Today the Washington Post editorialized that "Sexual assault on a 13-year-old girl isn't 'a little mistake,'" then called for Polanksi's extradition, and took a slap at the director's celebrity apologists: "Thankfully, a backlash is developing, fueled by the public getting a clear understanding of Mr. Polanski's sordid crime and his cowardice in evading justice."

That comes one day after a similar editorial in The New York Times, and two days afer the hometown L.A. Times. An incomplete roll call of unsympathetic commentators would include Steve Lopez, Richard Cohen, Eugene Robinson, Peter Bradshaw, Joan Smith, Kerry Dougherty, and many more. Deserving special mention among that list is this brutal deployment of the English language by Salon's Kate Harding: "Reminder: Roman Polanksi raped a child." Even the French government is allegedly dropping its support, and one can more than seldom hear a discouraging word at the telltale heart of Polanskiphilia, The Huffington Post.

I've got a copy of RoPo's memoir, Roman by Polanski (get it???), sitting on my desk. Would you like to see an excerpt involving the sexing up of girls not of driver's permit age? Too late! This section describes events from October 1976:

One day a German gossip columnist invited me out on a double date with two girls he wante me to meet. Both were young and, in different ways, strikingly beautiful. One of them was rather dowdily dressed. I asked her name. "My friends call me Nasty," she said. […] Very late that night, after a long round of discos, the four of us ended up in my suite. Leaving Nasty with the journalist, I took the other girl, a stunning blonde, to bed. By the time I surfaced the journalist had gone. Nasty was half-asleep in an armchair in the sitting room. Taking her by the hand, I led her back into the bedroom.

We never repeated this threesome, though I saw a lot of both girls thereafter. I dated the blonde for several weeks, but it was Nasty who grew on me more and more. […]

Nastassia introdued me to her mother, who discussed her career with me […]. That was when I first learned Nastassia's age. She was only fifteen.

We made love more than once during my three months in Munich. […] On the night we met I'd thought her a couple of years older than her friend, who was, in fact, seventeen.

Charming! Just a couple of months later came The Incident. Yes, he describes it in the book. I'll keep the nauseating excerpt to a minimum:

Then, very gently, I began to kiss and caress her. After this had gone on for some time, I led her over to the couch.

There was no doubt about Sandra's experience and lack of inhibition. She spread herself and I entered her. She wasn't unresponsive.

Polanski was "incredulous" that anyone would consider his actions a crime. And he was indignant that photographs of him yukking it up in Munich on leave from his case became an issue, since the females in the photo were attached to various friends. Of course, at the time, he was still shacking up with Kinski, though in fairness she was a wisened old lady of 16.