It's been all over the news lately. Roman Polanski was arrested for raping a 13 year old back in 1977. Why so long to arrest him? Well, he kinda fled the country in 1978. Yeah.
So anyway, today I read online that there had been a discussion of it on ABC's "The View". And that discussion didn't put co-host Whoopi Goldberg in a very good light. Apparently, she defended Polanski by saying "it wasn't 'rape-rape'".
HUH?!
Not just wanting to take this tidbit on faith, I wound up on YouTube searching for the clip. I found it.
My head is still spinning. HOW could ANYONE with any sense of right and wrong try to downplay the severity of DRUGGING AND RAPING A 13 YEAR OLD CHILD?!?!
Am I overreacting here? I mean, would she struggle this hard to defend the rapist if he was some unknown, overweight dude finally found decades after his initial arrest for drugging and raping a child?
And it's not just Whoopi, folks. No, it seems that Hollywood embraces Roman Polanski, too.
I get that he had a horrible childhood, losing his mother at Auschwitz. I get that he had to deal with the horror of his wife Sharon Tate being butchered by the Charles Manson clan. I'm not intending to downplay those horrors AT ALL. He's a gifted director, and I'm not discounting that, either.
What I AM saying, though, is that plenty of people survived the Holocaust without becoming child rapists. Many, many people have lost a spouse to senseless, terrible murder without becoming child rapists. And I'd be willing to bet that there are lots of other gifted directors who didn't make the choice to drug and rape a child. NOTHING, not his bad times nor his gifts, makes it acceptable to do what he did way back in 1977. NOTHING makes it okay to evade the law for such a heinous crime for decades.
Shame on you, Whoopi Goldberg. Shame on you, Polanski supporters - in Hollywood and around the globe. Shame on you.
Shame on them both is right. Whoopi's words drag women back to the dark ages where we "asked for it" when we got raped.
ReplyDeleteAnd Polanski's been enjoying his French-sponsored freedom for far too long. Time to face the consequence he more than earned.
There was also a "blame the victim" mentality when they were talking about the mother leaving her daughter there. This was in the 70s, when people still felt they could trust others. Hell, I know people whose mother put them in a car with a virtual stranger to go visit their father in another state because she couldn't afford bus fare, and hey, who'd do something bad to a couple of kids when he'd already met their mom?
ReplyDeleteThat bit reminded me of the days of the Michael Jackson scandals, where people would blame the parent for leaving their child with him, which essentially took the focus off the person actually HARMING the child! UGH! Drives me nuts!