Re: Roman Polanski finally arrested
Soda,
You're perspective is probably correct. I was driving today and thinking about this and I realized that my perspective is clouded by my background. As a person who grew up in So Cal and was around that scene as a very young person (my sisters worked in LA studios and I was around all the time) I saw lots of things that tend to jade ones perspective on what folks are about.
I saw lots of girls and women who were complicit in a lot of things that they would twist and spin in ways that made you realize how 'created' everything can be. I knew people who used to do whatever they thought they had to to be 'close' to stars and I knew of people who tried to use their experience to further themselves.....
As a parent of a teenage girl, the odds that I would allow my daughter to be alone in any capacity with a film director is less than nil (if that is possible)... I don't have any friends who would have allowed the situation the young girl was in to even occur... so, that part of the account has always caused me to question whether or not a setup was taking place.
I'd grant that no matter what, Polanski was wrong and should have been punished for his crime. However, any of us, if we had agreed upon a deal with the court and then discovered that despite the fact that we'd followed our part of the deal.... the judge (arguably front and center in the justice system) was reneging on his part of the deal... I might think I was getting a raw deal and I might run.
The powerful irony of injustice by the very person who personifies justice might be powerful enough to make a person doubt the whole system to the degree that they would forego 'playing along' and take off....
Asking for accounting from a public entity is asking to be lied to.... kind of like a wife asking if a pair of pants make her ass look fat...
I'm by no means a Polanski 'fan' but if it wasn't a setup and if her parents innocently let their daughter go hang out with a 40 year old hollywood director never suspecting that his 'taking pictures of her' might lead elsewhere.... well, they weren't from my neighborhood....
Of course, I remember asking my dad if I could join the boy scouts (back in the sixties) and he laughed and said, 'hell no, if I want you molested, I'll do it myself." (my dad could have a pretty coarse sense of humor... but he could see what the future held.... he also visited our priest when there was interest in my brother becoming an altar boy.... interestingly, the priest decided that my brother wasn't a very good candidate.)
So, I'll demur and defer on this one..... I tend to think that if you tempt the devil, he'll usually pay you a visit.
Here is an article by one of the folks who was working for the prosecution and shown categorically to be a liar... My niece is an attorney and she has a mantra "better to let 10 guilty people go than incarcerate 1 innocent person."
I don't think Polanski was innocent, but I think the actual circumstances suggest that he was a fool.