Colleen Claes posted on Tuesday about the Roman Polanski case.  I posted what I considered a contrarian comment. (Let me note that none of this is directed at Colleen, whose post was well-written, and who was welcoming of dissenting views.)   I’m often reluctant to post opposing views on hot topics, not because I’m unwilling to defend my views, but because too often in modern America, a lynch mob mentality takes hold, and if you’re unwilling to pick up the pitchfork and torch, you’re accused of not taking things seriously.  (I find moral outrage exhausting and prefer to save it for things that occurred in the current century.)  Too often, if you try to take a temperate, moderate tone and find a middle ground, you’re accused of being cowardly. Emotional, inflammatory positions offend my sense that issues should be addressed in a reasoned, logical fashion.  This often feels like a minority opinion.

So I’ve decided to take my comment from Colleen’s blog, print it here and then expand upon it.  This may be a fool’s errand.  It might anger people who have previously thought kindly of me. So be it.  Some people might absurdly think that I don’t believe Polanski is a deviate and a scumbag because I’m not anxious to toss him in a prison cell and throw away the key. (In California’s grossly overcrowded prisons, there aren’t that many keys to throw away.)   But if I don’t feel free to print honest, thought-out opinions about a controversial issue because I’m afraid someone might call me a name, then there is no sense in my even having an opinion.

This is the comment I posted on Colleen’s blog:

Allow me to post a slightly contrary comment. I offer no defense for Polanski, though I see no point in tossing a 77-year old man in jail for something he did 33 years ago and for which he has been forgiven by the victim. If I was asked to play King Solomon on this case, I would haul him back to the U.S. courts, sentence him to time served (the original plea bargain), then deport him and banish him permanently as an undesirable alien. If anyone demands harsher punishment, I won’t argue.  

However, I am troubled by two things that make me wonder if the outrage against Polanski is selective:  

1) At the very time Polanski was being arrested in Europe, R. Kelly was bumping and grinding his way through a tour stop in my neck of the woods. Kelly’s proclivity for underage girls is well-established. He was tried once (yes, he was acquitted, so was O.J.), he has reportedly videotaped several sessions that include behavior I can’t name without getting nauseous, and he had a marriage to 15-year-old Aaliyah annulled. Yet nobody seemed to raise a peep that this pervert is still able to make a lucrative living. Please don’t tell me it’s because Kelly’s acts were “consensual;” the law does not see it that way. I also have the uncomfortable feeling that race is part of the reason for the different response. I sure hope someone can convince me otherwise.  

2) If anyone on the pages of Salon had a bad word to say about Ted Kennedy when he passed away, I confess that I missed it. It seemed rude that Rush Limbaugh’s moronic dittoheads brought up Chappaquiddick at that time, but let’s be honest. Kennedy was responsible for the death of a young woman through moral cowardice and political ambition. No, he did not physically assault Mary Jo Kopechne, but ask her mother which scenario she would have preferred. Does Kennedy’s life of good work, especially on women’s issues, compel us to look the other way? I’m not sure we should.   

I would be remiss if I didn’t say that I agreed with Colleen’s central point: that Polanski must have a brass set to claim victimhood.  Whatever judicial misconduct took place is more than overwhelmed by the fact Polanski gave Quaaludes to a 13-year-old girl, committed sodomy upon her against her will and then became a fugitive from justice.  There is only one victim in this case, and it ain’t him.

I would also be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that many of the arguments in Polanski's defense are ridiculous.  The fact that he is an Academy Award-winning director should not give him one iota more standing in court than the neighborhood crack dealer.  Any argument that the girl was at all complicit in what happened is abhorrent and repellent. Any discussion of the girl’s mother is irrelevant.

As a father, I know that if Polanski had done this to my daughter, my vengeance would have been the act of a very incompetent mohel.  But I also know that if my daughter had insisted on disposing of the case, I would have fought for her there too.  Therefore, I am dismayed by much of the enmity against the victim because of her wish to drop the charges.  She claims that the constant replaying of the gory details in the press feels like an additional assault.  Yet some of the writers yelling for Polanski’s scalp seem to relish trumpeting those details.  When someone who claims to be fighting for female victims tramples on the wishes of a female victim, I’m wondering where the priorities truly lie. 

Sadly, I’m old enough to have been an adult when Polanski was originally charged in 1977.  It was big news, of course, but I don’t recall the ferocity of the emotions that seem to be in the air now.  I believe it’s partly because attitudes toward sex crimes have evolved – Polanski’s original plea bargain seems laughably weak today.  I also believe it’s partly because we seemed to be less celebrity-centric then; we saved our outrage for matters like war. 

But I also believe it’s the blogosphere, where everyone can freely yell and scream from their keyboard and inflame the anger of like-minded people.  I feel this power too.  I’ve gotten involved in some online arguments, here and elsewhere, where I’ve found myself angrily defending a position that I never held too deeply, simply because the other person had questioned my intelligence or morality.  This is not a healthy way to discuss matters.  (One of the commenters on Colleen’s post, for example, basically said: if you forgive Polanski because he’s an artist, you might as well forgive Hitler too because he was an artist; I assume reasoned discussion is not an option.)

Because I consider myself a temperate person, I cringe when anger seeps into the justice system.  This isn’t relevant to Polanski’s case, since his guilt is unquestioned, but I wonder how many of the men and women we see leaving prison after being exonerated by DNA testing would not have been there in the first place if we had kept our senses.  As a life-long resident of the New York metropolitan area, I can attest that no case stirred people’s outrage like the rape of the Central Park jogger in 1989.  The city tabloids whipped up a righteous anger, and soon five young African-Americans were rounded up, coerced into confessions and convicted, despite not one bit of forensic evidence implicating them.  A decade later, DNA testing cleared them and the city is still defending a lawsuit over the misbegotten prosecution.  Like I said, this is not relevant to Polanski, but it is relevant to the way that anger warps our perspective.

My point about Ted Kennedy was this: he allowed a young woman to drown to save his own political hide, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s a worse sin than Polanski’s.  (If you don’t agree with me, ask Mary Jo Kopechne’s family what they think.)  Yet we chose to, if not forgive, at least look the other way, because we liked the Kennedys and the good work they did on social issues that mattered to us.  (Oh yeah, he faced justice – he got his driver’s license suspended.  That must have hurt.)  In light of the outage expressed at Polanski, the celebration of Kennedy and the reluctance to discuss his sin publicly seem bewilderingly hypocritical.

I am particularly uncomfortable with my reference to R. Kelly, which is why I think it important to address.  One of Colleen’s commenters didn’t seem to understand Kelly’s history.  He is widely known to have a history of unlawful relationships with underage women, often videotaped.  He settled with one young woman out of court; he was tried on child pornography charges for possessing a tape that appeared to show him having sex with a 14-year-old girl (he was acquitted); he was arrested on another occasion for possessing additional tapes, but the charges were dropped because the search took place without a warrant.

My point was this: we shake the iron fist at Polanski, whose crime was committed 33 years ago, yet we treat Kelly with kid gloves, even though his acts have reportedly continued into the most recent decade.  My only conclusion for this different treatment is race.  Let me bring in another example.  Ben Roethlisberger is the first athlete to get punished by his league for sexual misconduct – Kobe Bryant, who was actually charged with rape, didn’t miss a game.  The sports leagues are full of men who have abused and mistreated women.  Are Polanski and Roethlisberger safe targets for our outrage because they are white?  Are we being condescending by refusing to hold an African-American R&B singer to the same moral standards?  Are we being condescending if we are more concerned when a white college student gets assaulted than we are when an African-American woman is assaulted by the man with whom she lives?   I am troubled   expressing this.  I wish someone could convince me that my feelings that race is a factor are unfounded.  I’m not holding my breath. 

Have I touched enough sensitive subjects for one day?  I’m sure there will be comments, not all of them agreeing with me, which is fine.  I just hope that the comments can take the same calm tone I’ve tried to exhibit here.  I always believe that where yelling begins, discussion ends.  But also feel free to confirm my biggest fear: that I have taken a fatal, face-first dive onto a third rail.