Wrong is Wrong
October 4, 2009
by Monica Jean Alaniz
|This past week The New Agenda started to bring people to say that it’s not all right to take advantage of young women and girls by putting a petition up on their site asking that Roman Polanski be jailed for a crime that he committed in the ‘70s.
People that support Polanski’s charges being dropped have been arguing that it is a crime that took place so long ago that it should be forgotten. They argue that the ‘70s was a time of promiscuity and lots of illicit drug use.
Should that really matter?
I don’t think that it should. A crime, is a crime, is a crime. The man may have a tragic history, but that doesn’t erase the fact that what he did was wrong.
Just because things took place in the past doesn’t mean that they’re suddenly all right. Another example of this is a picture that has been closed off to the public in the Tate Gallery in Britain (see an article about it here). The picture, taken in 1983 shows a ten-year old Brook Shields in a bath tub wearing heavy make-up and nothing else.
This is art?
Just because the actress is an adult now does not mean that this image can be categorized as art. Just because time has passed doesn’t make this image suddenly acceptable.
Saying that what Polanski did should be forgiven or that we can now display images of sexualized, nude children and call it art leaves young girls in today’s society vulnerable. Perhaps someone somewhere thinks that they can get away with rape just like Polanski, or they can take pictures exploiting young girls and call it art.
Just because these things took place in the past and involve famous people shouldn’t make a difference. What if it was your niece, daughter, or granddaughter? Wouldn’t you want action taken then?
We need to stand up against things like this and say that it’s unacceptable.
Polanski has already been given a keep out of jail card by having a directing career over the past 30 years. It has been like being on a work furlough program where Polanski gets to keep what he makes, and make memorable films, even win an Oscar, when he should have been jailed instead.
Some people focus on what Polanski has done with his own freedom. However, not only did Polanski violate a barely teenage girl who he lured under the guise of getting photos taken for a possible modeling career, Polanski also violated her budding career.
A career achieved by denying another theirs is a career not worth protecting.
Is this the Richard Prince piece of which he inexplicably links the piece to a Ronald Reagan critique vs. child porn?
I used to intern at a gallery that represented him and I met him once. What an a$@%.
I didn’t get the confirmation email for the petition.
Denisel – the confirmation email is automatically generated from editor@thenewagenda.net. For some, this email has gone into their spam folder so check there first. If you can’t find it, we can have it regenerated if you give us a rough time of when you signed (so we can find it) and put the address in the comment (not the part that shows in the body of the comment – but in the email section.)
Hi Amy!
Per your instructions at NQ, I am letting you know that I confirm the submission from me with respect to the petition to jail that pervert, Roman Polanski. I did not receive the confirmation email and tried a second time but the email address was already taken, of course.
My entry reads like this:
Uppity Woman and Members, Blog, http://uppitywoman08.wordpress.com
I also posted the link so my members can sign personally to put that pig away where he belongs.
Thanks for the cross post Uppity Woman.
The confirm was just resent.
For any moderator interested, I think some comments end up in spam if they have a link attached to them. I cannot confirm this for sure, but I have noticed comments get held up if one adds a link on another blog I go to.
Well I’ll be. It’s not there this time either. Really strange. I checked spam and there are three other spams in there but nothing from TNA. Never had this happen before.
……slinking off, scratching head….
my daughter had an empty spam folder too. because I had chosen the option that every spam be immediately deleted. I reset it to keep spam for afew days and the confirmation email showed up.
Like I said, my spam is NOT set to delete. I have plenty of spams in there right now. I know this has to be a problem at my end, but spam deletion isn’t it.
Well I guess that if the people who are supporting Polanski think that the crime should be forgiven because it happened so long ago then they feel that the Nazi war criminals should not have been hunted down because their crimes took place long ago too?
I was not too surprised that Whoopi Goldberg defended with passion the Polanski “not rape-rape” crime! I’ll never forget how audaciously profane she was at the Oscars she hosted–especially in front of her mentor Spielberg who was dumbfounded. She was never invited back to host the Oscars. The woman may be an artistic “genious” and “liberal” but her insticts are more akin to those of a male predator’s defender. Stuff happens, eh?
Thanks to the New Agenda for inviting us to sign on the Petition to have Mr. Polanski serve his sentence for drugging, repeatedly sodomizing and raping a protesting 13-year-old girl. There was an “enabling” woman there at the Nicholson house who must have know what was occurring was a crime at the time. Why didn’t she try to help? The court transcript evidence was incredibly horrifying and shocking, surely it should have included her name, etc. And why did the victim’s mother entrust her child going to Nicholson’s house to model, anyway? But back in the 70s these things were not deemed so “serious”. And it was before Dr. Audrey Ricker’s phenomenal book “The Ultimate Betrayal”.
Please, let’s all try to make sure that this “artistic” pedophile-rapist serve his *full* sentence (they do it to war criminals, don’t they?) regardless of the misguided support he receives from his rich and famous colleagues. Shame on all of these unthinking Hollywood social imbeciles. And let’s hope they are not preparing their own kids for a modelling career….
Polanski needs to redirect his fabulous artistic energies in decorating a filthy 4 x 4 cell. Perhaps he could then entertain both his Hollywood fan club and his most eminent supporters, the French Culture Minister and Mr. Sarkozy, in the style and elegance they truly deserve.
You forget, Bes. Some of the people that the Nazis killed and tortured were men, so they matter.
The the first time I respectfully disagree with TNA’s position on the Polanski matter. It isn’t because I don’t think he’s a pig, I do. Regardless of the circumstances surrounding the incident (where was the girl’s mother???), the girl was 13, it was rape! Where my position diverts is the fact that the courts did address this, he did serve time in jail and there is no disputing the fact that the judge was, in the least, politically ambitious. At the time, unfortunately, laws and punishments for rape were more liberal but our country has improved on that. But the world knows what he is. Is he suspected in any other case? Are more 13 year olds at risk?
That brings me to this: Juvenile courts in America are FULL of sexual predators (my stint exposed me to this horrible epidemic). There are step fathers and fathers who rape their children and get away with it because there isn’t “proof.” I represented a girl who was lucky enough to have gotten pregnant by her stepfather at the age of 13 so she had the DNA evidence to put him away. Nevermind that a year earlier at the age of 12 she told her school counselor who called the police. The father was promptly removed from the home only to move back in the next day!!! The story is long and unfortunately tragic despite the father going to jail for 25 to 40 years. My point is, shouldn’t we be focusing our energies on fixing these laws and going after those who continue to harm our children???? Isn’t Polanski being singled out BECAUSE of his celebrity status? Perhaps the courts should have approached him and in exchange for giving him credit for time served, he could have agreed to produce a documentary on this horrible epidemic world wide. It just makes me sick that instead of using this to further the rights and protection of sexually abused kids it has become political.
FYI, even with liberal laws of the 70′s they progressed greatly from the 40′s. At the age of 14 my grandmother became pregnant by a 28 year old man. The religious based orphanage made them marry! She still insists to this day that SHE “flirted with and came on to him.” What kind of brain washing goes on in this country where a 14 year old insists she seduced her 28 year old rapist????
Oops! I meant to say “my stint as a GAL”…..
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