Roman Polanski Meets Industry Standards

Roman Polanski Meets Industry Standards

There are writers who are outraged that the entertainment industry seems to be coming together to defend why director Roman Polanski should not be extradited to the United States to be sent to prison for drugging, raping, and sodomizing a 13 year old girl. (And contrary to Whoopi Goldberg’s claim that it wasn’t “rape-rape”—-read the transcript of the victim’s testimony. She kept saying “No,” in between going in and out of consciousness from the drugs Polanski gave her.)

And why not? Polanski simply meets industry standards—which regards rape—-and even rape of children, as no big deal. Polanski, unfortunately, is not just one weird example. Victor Salva, the director of Powder, is a convicted child molester, who once filmed himself having oral sex with a 12 year old boy—an actor who Salva directed in a “low-budget horror film about three boys terrorized by circus clowns.” (In the interests of realism, they should have been terrorized by Hollywood directors.) Salva served 15 months in prison (it is California), and so of course, he ended up making a film for who else? Walt Disney Studios. I suspect that Walt Disney, the guy who wanted Disneyland to be the happiest place on Earth for children, would be horrified.

A CBS producer gets caught in a sting, offering to swap football tickets for someone’s 11 year old daughter. “I will be very gentle with her.” I’m guessing that once he gets inside a prison cell, his fellow inmates will find out why he’s there—and they won’t be gentle with him.

Three weird examples? John Doe v. Capital Cities, etc. (1996) is another of those charming examples of the sort of people that infest the entertainment industry. (“Capital Cities” is the owner of ABC.)

An aspiring actor is first drugged and then gang-raped by a casting director and four other men one Sunday at the casting director’s home. Can the actor successfully allege causes of action for sexual harassment and negligent hiring against the casting director’s employers?

The question that the courts had to answer was whether gang-raping an actor was within the job duties of a casting director. Now, those who have long worked in Hollywood would probably answer, “Yes. At least, it’s one of the perqs of the job.” I’ve known people that got out of the business because the path to employment often led through the casting couch.

I’ve tried to identify what happened to the rapists in John Doe v. Capital Cities. They are identified in that suit as Jerry Marshall, Barry Parker, Michael Sullivan, Ken Dickson, and Fred Goss. Unfortunately, these are all very common names, so it’s hard to tell whether the people working in the entertainment industry today by those names are the guys who drugged and raped John Doe. (There are two different people in the entertainment industry or related fields named Fred Goss who are old enough, and live in Los Angeles: one is an actor and comedian, the other writes opera reviews for The Advocate, a gay newspaper.) The tragedy is that when an industry mobilizes to defend someone like Roman Polanski, it becomes very easy to believe that this minor little misbehavior would not have been obstacle to future employment.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin linked to this September 29, 2009 Daily Telegraph article, which quotes from an interview with Polanski back in 1979. It's too vulgar to quote (even with various words dashed out), but essentially: Polanski is convinced that what he did to that little girl is what everyone wants to do. Classic projection problem.

This Really Hits The Nail on the Head

This Really Hits The Nail on the Head

Concerning Roman Polanski's extradition to the U.S. to serve time for a crime that he was convicted of long ago, this is a remarkably crisp statement of the problem by John Nolte at Big Hollywood:

Pleading guilty to unlawful sex with an underage girl — the drugging, raping and sodomizing of a 13 year-old — isn’t stopping Hollywood from ginning up an indignation campaign over the possibility of fugitive director Roman Polanski being held accountable for his crimes. Yes, these are the values of those who control the most powerful propaganda device ever created. Which begs a question: If his unspeakable deed doesn’t meet the standard, what exactly would Roman Polanski have to do in order to become a pariah in this town … I mean, besides vote for Sarah Palin?

Whenever I say to myself, "Could the entertainment industry really be such evil people as much of their product suggests?" I get examples like this to remind me, "Yes."

The trial transcripts of the victim's testimony are here. It's rough and it's unpleasant. Pretty clearly, this 13 year old made some very, very poor decisions along the way--but that's part of why our laws treat children as children, and require adults to not pursue children for sex. And since I expect that feminists will be joining the clamor of defending Roman Polanski next, "No means no." And this 13 year old said "No" on multiple occasions when this sleazeball was having sex with her.

What's With Leftists & Children?

What's With Leftists & Children?

This isn't the first time--not by a long shot. From the May 9, 2008 San Francisco Chronicle:

(05-08) 18:49 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Bernie Ward, the most prominent liberal voice on Bay Area talk radio for more than two decades, admitted Thursday to distribution of child pornography by e-mail in a plea deal that will send him to federal prison for at least five years.

Ward, 57, a former Roman Catholic priest, was a fixture on KGO-AM 810 for three hours every weeknight, known in recent years for his fervent denunciations of President Bush and the war in Iraq during his news talk show. He also hosted "God Talk," a Sunday morning program on religion, and was a prolific fundraiser for the station's charity drives.

But his career disintegrated Dec. 6 with the unsealing of a federal grand jury indictment, issued three months earlier, that charged him with two counts of distributing and one count of receiving Internet images of child pornography. KGO fired him Dec. 31.

At a 30-minute hearing in federal court in San Francisco, Ward admitted he was guilty of a single charge of distributing child pornography, saying it involved "exchanging an image of a minor engaged in sexually explicit activity" in December 2004. The plea agreement he signed, quoted in court, contained an admission that he had sent between 15 and 150 pornographic images via e-mail.

People that believe that there is nothing right or wrong (except being a Republican) not surprisingly sometimes act on it.

Switzerland Loses It

Switzerland Loses It

At first glance, it reads like a really, really deadpan parody of animal rights. But it seems to be deadly serious. From the Swiss government's Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH), The dignity of living beings with regard to plants: Moral consideration of plants for their own sake:

The Federal Constitution has three forms of protection for plants: the protection of biodiversity, species protection, and the duty to take the dignity of living beings into consideration when handling plants.

Huh? The dignity of animals? No, they mean the dignity of plants.

It became clear, however, that for plants – unlike animals – it was almost impossible to refer to moral intuition. There is no social consensus on how to deal with plants. Even within the ECNH, the intuitions relating to the extent and justification of moral responsibilities towards plants were highly heterogeneous. Some members were of the opinion that plants are not part of the moral community, because they do not satisfy the conditions for belonging to this community. Others argued that plants should not belong to it, because otherwise human life would be morally over-regulated. A further group felt that there were particular situations in which people should refrain from something for the sake of a plant, unless there are sufficient grounds to the contrary. This opinion was justified either by arguing that plants strive after something, which should not be blocked without good reason, or that recent findings in natural science, such as the many commonalities between plants, animals and humans at molecular and cellular level, remove the reasons for excluding plants in principle from the moral community. The only criterion on which all the members could agree, despite their very differing intuitions, was that we should not harm or destroy plants arbitrarily.

G. K. Chesterton is often credited (perhaps incorrectly) with the saying, "When men stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing. They believe in anything." The proof is visible above. What next? Should we be concerned about mistreatment of rocks? Rocks might "strive after something" also.

I found this astonishing indication of where Europe is heading over at Volokh Conspiracy, where the winning comment has to be:

Can ‘Mineral Rights’ be far behind? I don’t know about moral equivalence, but this panel has clearly demonstrated that they are intellectually inferior to a box of rocks.

UPDATE: Oh yeah: here's the music video by the Arrogant Worms: "Carrot Juice is Murder."

This isn't exactly news; I was surprised when I was took History of Los Angeles class in grad school that millionaires (equivalent to a lot more money today) were among the big funders of some of Southern California's socialist communes in the 1900-20 period.

There are a couple of disturbing examples that have popped up in the news in the last few days. The first is that one of the leftist groups funded by billionaires like George Soros and Peter Lewis was fined very heavily for unlawful contributions:

The Federal Election Commission has fined one of the last cycle’s biggest liberal political action committees $775,000 for using unregulated soft money to boost John Kerry and other Democratic candidates during the 2004 elections.

America Coming Together (ACT) raised $137 million for its get-out-the-vote effort in 2004, but the FEC found most of that cash came through contributions that violated federal limits.

The group’s big donors included George Soros, Progressive Corp. chairman Peter Lewis and the Service Employees International Union.

The settlement, which the FEC approved unanimously, is the third largest enforcement penalty in the commission’s 33-year history.

ACT, which ceased operations in 2005, was formed in late 2003 and rapidly deployed an enormous organization to do the retail-level grunt work of politics.

It opened more than 90 offices in 17 states from which it mobilized an army of more than 25,000 paid canvassers and volunteers to knock on doors, stuff envelopes and make phone calls urging voters to defeat President Bush and support Democratic or “progressive” candidates including Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate.

It makes you wonder how much larger Bush's victory margin would have been if the billionaires hadn't been breaking the law. This other news item is about some rather curiously large campaign contributions to Hilary Clinton's campaign. From the August 28, 2007 Wall Street Journal:

DALY CITY, Calif. -- One of the biggest sources of political donations to Hillary Rodham Clinton is a tiny, lime-green bungalow that lies under the flight path from San Francisco International Airport.

Six members of the Paw family, each listing the house at 41 Shelbourne Ave. as their residence, have donated a combined $45,000 to the Democratic senator from New York since 2005, for her presidential campaign, her Senate re-election last year and her political action committee. In all, the six Paws have donated a total of $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005, election records show.

...

It isn't obvious how the Paw family is able to afford such political largess. Records show they own a gift shop and live in a 1,280-square-foot house that they recently refinanced for $270,000. William Paw, the 64-year-old head of the household, is a mail carrier with the U.S. Postal Service who earns about $49,000 a year, according to a union representative. Alice Paw, also 64, is a homemaker. The couple's grown children have jobs ranging from account manager at a software company to "attendance liaison" at a local public high school. One is listed on campaign records as an executive at a mutual fund.

The Paws' political donations closely track donations made by Norman Hsu, a wealthy New York businessman in the apparel industry who once listed the Paw home as his address, according to public records. Mr. Hsu is one of the top fund-raisers for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign. He has hosted or co-hosted some of her most prominent money-raising events.

People who answered the phone and the door at the Paws' residence declined requests for comment last week. In an email last night, one of the Paws' sons, Winkle, said he had sometimes been asked by Mr. Hsu to make contributions, and sometimes he himself had asked family members to donate. But he added: "I have been fortunate in my investments and all of my contributions have been my money."

Does this remind anyone of what happened when a bunch of Buddhist nuns gave big contributions to the Clinton/Gore campaign--and then admitted that it wasn't their money? From September 4, 1997 CNN:

Man-Ho Shih, one of three nuns testifying today at the Senate campaign finance hearings, said she threw away a copy of her list of donors who gave a total of $45,000.
Asked why, Man-Ho said, "I'm afraid the document might cause embarrassment to the temple." The temple's administrative officer said she destroyed other documents too, in Fall 1996 after news stories about the now-infamous Hsi Lai Temple luncheon appeared.
Yi-Chu, the temple's bookkeeper, said she also destroyed documents and made new entries in the temple's books. "Developments were unfolding so fast that I was -- I really got nervous," she said. "See, I'm the bookkeeper of the temple, but I'm not a professional accountant. And for a lot of entries, I don't know how to deal with them. So I decided to destroy some of the documentation and make some new entries in the books."
Both Man-Ho and Yi-Chu said they acted on their own, and not at the direction of anyone else.
The nuns, dressed in brown robes, appeared on the first day of renewed campaign finance hearings by Sen. Fred Thompson's committee. In a written statement read by their attorney, Brian Sun, the nuns acknowledged the temple reimbursed members of the order who made $5,000 contributions to the Democrats, but said if the temple broke the law, it did not do so intentionally and none of the money came from overseas. (288K wav sound)
Tax-exempt religious organizations, like the temple, are not allowed to make political contributions. It is illegal for anyone to make political donations in someone else's name.
Gore's appearance at the fund-raiser has proven a major embarrassment for the vice president, but he also faces new Justice Department scrutiny on another front: his 46 fund-raising calls from the White House.

Oh yes, I'm sure none of that money came from overseas! Without question!

My friend Stacy McCain's book Donkey Cons has a very detailed account of the corruption involved with overseas money coming into the Clinton/Gore campaign in 1996--and how Republicans made no serious effort to look into this.

Proof That The Idaho Statesman Publishes Every Letter It Receives

Because if they were at all selective, they would leave out these proofs that Democratic prejudice is widespread:

Hunters and rednecks have no respect for wildlife

There are two species of man that I do not have much respect for: rednecks and hunters. At least rednecks, being closely related to the chimpanzee, have some excuse.

Adam Graham observes:

First of all, I have to wonder would the Statesman have published an article beginning with, “There are two species of man that I do not have much for: hippies and Blacks. At least Blacks being closely related to the chimpanzee have some excuse.” Or how about we replace it with Jews, Indians, etc.? The Statesman would have refused to run it, but instead, it’s okay to attack “rednecks.”

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the Idaho Statesman doesn't publish every letter it receives. Maybe they think that this is one of the smarter letters they have received.

How Dare I Quote An Environmentalist About Al Gore!

Over at 43rd State Blues, BinkyBoy does his usual classy and accurate number, complaining that the reports about Al Gore dining on an endangered species were inaccurate:

Al Gore recently was seen eating Chilean Sea Bass. To those that are ready to jump to judgement, that suddenly makes him less of an environmentalist.

Unfortunately, they're lying again.

Now, there has since been a news report that says the first news report was wrong. It turns out that the environmentalists who made the first, and inaccurate claim--were wrong.

Now, if BinkyBoy is upset that his hero is being falsely castigated by environmentalists in a newspaper article, then this is where the rage should be directed. If the environmentalists who made the initial claim knew that it was a false statement, you could claim that they were "lying." But to claim that people who report a newspaper report by someone on Al Gore's side is "lying" is about what I have come to expect from BinkyBoy--a rather severe carelessness about the meaning of words.

"Lying" means that you are making a statement that you know or have good reason to be believe is false. A statement can be incorrect without being a lie.

BinkyBoy has an awful lot of rage at people that don't agree with him, and it shows up in very juvenile behavior--such as calling people liars for linking to a news report by people whom BinkyBoy would normally defend.

What's really interesting is that 43rd State Blues has a comment section where a reader might ordinarily point out this distinction. But I have been specifically prohibited from commenting there. Policing comments is a lot of work; that's why I don't have comments enabled on my blog. If BinkyBoy didn't want the extra work of doing so, I could understand and agree. But BinkyBoy apparently doesn't mind doing the work of policing comments--he just won't allow me to comment there. How typically Democrat: they believe in free speech, as long as you agree with them.

Gee, I Wonder Why

Instapundit has a wondrously droll criticism of the new book: The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America:

As with Anya Kamenetz's Generation Debt, this seems like more excessive complaint from the privileged classes. (Brook and Kamenetz overlapped at Yale, in fact). And is it really true, as the back cover asserts, that only the "corporate elite" can now enjoy middle-class comforts?

I opened Brook's book up and saw this passage:

After graduating Yale in 2003 with a double major in film studies and gender studies, Tara moved to San Francisco to pursue queer documentary filmmaking. She settled in the Castro district, the historic epicenter of American gay culture, and quickly discovered plenty of enticing projects. "There were lots of opportunities to do film and to help people with their films, but no one had any money to pay me so I did a lot of volunteering and part-time work," she told me in a Castro coffee shop.

My goodness. What message could the market system have been trying to send?

Gee, I'm surprised Tara didn't get a MacArthur Fellowship, and funding from George Soros' Open Society Foundation. (Okay, I'm not really surprised, but if they had, it wouldn't have surprised me, either.)

There is nothing so obnoxious as members of America's overprivileged elite whining that the whole society doesn't roll over for them and give them the money to do what they want. Tara might have to wait until she inherits Daddy's millions before she can work on destroying what's left of American culture that is good.