Photo Credit: asterix611 on Flickr
Author
Gore Vidal weighed in on the Roman Polanski rape case today, beating
out even the biggest Polanski cheerleaders for the most apologist, most
misogynist and most despicable take on the case to date.
So what's your take on Polanski, this many years later?
I
really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a
young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?
I’ve certainly never heard that take on the story before.
First,
I was in the middle of all that. Back then, we all were. Everybody knew
everybody else. There was a totally different story at the time that
doesn’t resemble anything that we’re now being told.
What do you mean?
The
media can’t get anything straight. Plus, there’s usually an
anti-Semitic and anti-fag thing going on with the press – lots of crazy
things. The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little
angel all in white, being raped by this awful Jew, Polacko – that’s
what people were calling him – well, the story is totally different now
from what it was then..
Indeed. Today, the "story" that
Polanski's been peddling for the last 30 years with some success is
that the 13-year-old he plied with liquor and drugs and then forcibly
raped orally, vaginally and anally was being "pushed" on him by her
stage-mother, whose permission for a photo shoot Polanski had to
procure with some persuasion. He is also keen to claim that he obtained
consent from the drugged 13-year-old girl who testified that she
repeatedly told Polanski "No!"--testimony Polanski never opposed.
Polanski is also keen to portray himself as the victim of a corrupt
legal system as a way of explaining his unwillingness to return to
America to face sentencing on the lone charge of statutory rape the
prosecutors allowed him to plead to at his victim's request.
Or,
if you're Gore Vidal, the victim's a whore, Polanski is gay and those
of us who think a rapist should face prosecution are just anti-Semites.
Guess he should have stuck to fiction-writing, as non-fiction doesn't
seem to be his speed.