Smitty, Stacy McCain’s co-blogger asks, “Does this tune sound familiar?”
As Ed Driscoll notes, “Hollywood Unites To Defend Polanski“. Forget the “What if that was a conservative” question. The more interesting question is “How does this resemble Ted Kennedy?”
On the one hand, we’re asked to justify statutory rape. On the other, some sort of murder. We’ll let the legal beagles split those hairs.
AdvertisementIn either case, the left enjoins us to reject standard interpretations of the law, and pursue instead some hand-wavy sort of justice: “He’s an artisté”, or “He’s done so much good legislative penance”.
So I differ slightly with Ed on this one. It’s not so much a dark Kafka moment of the Law attacking an individual, but a bifurcation of the idea of equality under the law into a common and elite branch of law.
Oddly enough, I think that’s what I was trying to say, though obviously now in retrospect I wish I had phrased my thoughts more clearly.
I think I’ve been pretty clear though, about how disgusting I think Polanski’s original act was. In contrast, I wonder if Whoopi Goldberg has an ounce of shame over her remarks today on the View?
Meanwhile, Jim Lindgren of the Volokh Conspiracy writes, in an Instalanched post:
When I was running university film societies in the 1970s and early 1980s, I considered Roman Polanski’s Chinatown the best film made in the 1970s. I don’t know what I would think today because I haven’t seen it for three decades. And I still consider Rosemary’s Baby one of the best horror movies ever made.
I mention this because good artists are not necessarily good people and bad people are not necessarily bad artists.
That last sentence is actually a topic I explored back in the very early days of Blogcritics, with an artist whose sins, though venial, were, to the best of my knowledge nowhere in the league of Polanski’s.
And to follow-up on a post from early Monday morning, Patterico spots a Washington Post journalist’s latest modified limited hangout; as Patterico phrases it, “Anne Applebaum: I Had Absolutely No Way to Know That My Husband Was Helping Polanski — That Is, Other Than by Reading a Story Which I Myself Linked.”
Finally, to bring this post full circle, regarding the Kennedy clan, “U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy fears that supercharged passions fueling the national health-care debate may lead to violence.”
A topic he’s certainly familiar with.
Update: Further thoughts here.
In life, Richard Wagner was a thoroughly vile man. He was a raging anti-semite. He took the wife of his best friend for his mistress. He screwed over lots of people.
But he’s dead, and everyone he screwed over is dead. The music, however, the glorious music lives on. Wagner is a classic example of a bad man who was a masterful artist.
Thomas Paine was not much loved by people who knew him. Then again, Hitler painted pictures too, didn’t he? How much do those sell for, these days?