Polanski arrest sets off hypocrisy tsunami

The deeper the world’s elites sink into criminality, the more outrageous the hypocrisy, and as usual the US leads the parade

BY JOHN STEPPLING   [print_link]

The response in the US to Roman Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland … as he was on his way to receive an award………is typical of a resentful, angry, and most significantly, a puritanical society.

From Eve Ensler (a truly dim woman) to Arianna Huffington ( a truly…..oh, never mind) to LA Times writers like Steve Lopez, to former loser VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro, the outcry is awash in moral indignation.

Now, Polanski is 76, hasn’t done anything criminal in over thirty years, and this case itself goes back thirty years. Why are these people so intent on Polanski, as they put it, being brought to justice? Well, because this is a celebrity-addicted society. The frisson of celebrity and sex is always headline making. Would Ensler care if a plumber from Omaha was found in, well, not likely Switzerland, but say, Mexico, who was married with two kids, over seventy years old, and leading a life free of crime…and if this plumber had over thirty years ago been convicted of statutory rape with a girl of thirteen. Would anyone care? Most certainly the DA wouldn’t care.

So the moral indignation begins to feel a lot like a lynch mob, psychologically speaking. Each outcry in support of the authority structure reinforces the next, and each feels morally superior and all of them are, of course, concerned about the protection of thirteen-year-old girls. Now, let’s look at this culture and its addictions to porn, to sexual advertising and marketing campaigns, and to the targeting of young girls as consumers of sexy clothing and sexy TV and film. The fashion industry famously uses teen models, often 13,  and come to think of it, this is an age group that in many societies is ready for marriage. Americans tend to denounce such realities, and ignore the rest. Americans are sure in their righteousness, and it propels them to leap on any bandwagon espousing punishment. Americans love to pretend they care about people, and want to protect them. Never mind they usually also support brutal and sanguinary military intervetions and harsher sentencing laws.

This case is almost laughable actually, the girl was sexually mature and active, the mom an almost pimp, and the sex consensual. Oh, oh, oh, it can never be consensual with a minor. Well, this is more puritanism, and more hatred of pleasure. A society that so criminalizes, pleasure (drugs, sex, etc) and is simultaneously addicted to all forms of illicit activities….. is a very unhealthy place.

I do wonder where the outcry is about Henry Kissinger still walking around? Or Ollie North (who is gainfully employed at FOX) or any number of priests, who havent done time but were merely shuttled off to a new parish. Why no moral indignation?

Actually, I think the reason Polanski is being piled on this way is that he has never apologized. In the Oprah era of public confessional that is the modern US, *not showing remorse* is the ultimate sin.

If Roman just got on TV, let Katie Couric interview him from a cell in the Swiss jail, and if he said,*oh gosh, I’m so sorry…..*, I suspect public opinion would shift a bit for a good many of that overweight sweaty ill-educated mass of KFC-consuming ignorance that is out there passing judgement.

The question of Polanski as an artist is an interesting one, too. In the culture of the US, being an artist makes you a target of hate, unless (!) you manage to neuter yourself like a Tom Hanks or are, in fact, just a celebrity (like Hanks).  But a serious artist, the Pinters or the like, are never going to find a home in the US.  [Chaplin was hounded by the same puritanical battalions, as was Ingrid Bergman and many others). Real uncompromising artists are important people, they provide the much needed disruption in this sleepwalking culture, they provide a tacit conscience for the various cantons of encapsulated narcissism that passes for a civilized society. In the US they have always been distrusted and denounced.

Ads like these are all too common on US media.

This case is almost laughable actually, the girl was sexually mature and active, the mom an almost pimp, and the sex consensual. Oh, oh, oh, it can never be consensual with a minor. Well, this is more puritanism, and more hatred of pleasure. A society that so criminalizes, pleasure (drugs, sex, etc) and is simultaneously addicted to all forms of illicit activities….. is a very unhealthy place. Check the internet for swingers sites, and ads for tranny prostitutes, and ask yourselves how many of the people involved (and I have no issue with such activities at all) are also condemning Polanski.  The girl, the *victim* wants the case forgotten (she got her settlement) and so what is the DA of LA county doing in a cash-strapped time, having this man arrested and wanting an expensive extradition ?  One wonders, might it have to do with publicity?  Gee, ya’ think?

Spare me the moral indignation over a thirty-year-old statutory rape case and give me investigations into torture. Give me Kissinger and war criminals like Wes Clark, give me those behind Iran Contra and give me the guys still tutoring death squads for the most repressive but business friendly regimes in the world. Give me the Catholic church, a foul and rotting institution of hypocricy and duplicity, give me the whole damn church, and give me all the bad cops who routinely abuse their power (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQSv88bdsbQ).  Give me Blackwater and give me Dick Cheney.

Cut Polanski loose, the moral anger is fueled by resentment and titillation, nothing more. It’s certainly not about protecting young girls or women. If it were we would be hearing more of an outcry about sexual abuse in the military, and about the roots of international human trafficking.

In a country on the brink of total economic collapse, such tawdry morality plays provide distraction. Ok. But when a man is closing in on 80 — and one without an arrest since this original one in 1977, and who is clearly no threat to society (and if he were why wasn’t he snatched off the street a long time ago?) this absurd arrest and the even more absurd response in the media, is really a sign how bankrupt mainstream news outlets have become. I actually think there are a plenty of Americans out there who know this is all a dog-and-pony show, but the corporate media will create an atmosphere of generalized reproach, with a lot of help from those who are themselves awash in hypocricy and self hatred, both angry at and worshipping of, what they see as symbols of the ruling class, and they will sell this whole affair as a triumph of justice! Find symbolic scapegoats, batter the story with the cheap laquer of moral superiority, justify that furnace of sexual repression, and voilá, you see the attitude out there in regard to Polanski.

Free Roman for Christ’s sake. Let him be. Try to use your constipated minds on something truly important.

JOHN STEPPLING‘s last film credit was Animal Factory (directed by Steve Buscemi 2000). Expat Steppling lived until recently in Lodz with Norwegian director Gunnhild Skrodal, while teaching at the Polish National Film School.