Gore Vidal, Aged Prick
The current issue of The Atlantic contains an, ugh, interesting Q&A with withered scribe Gore Vidal. When asked for his thoughts on the case of Roman Polanski, who drugged and ass-raped a 13 year-old girl at Jack Nicholson’s house and then fled to Europe out of fear of being sent to prison, Vidal said the following to interviewer John Meroney:
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?…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.
I’m trying hard to forgive these comments by reminding myself that Gore Vidal is older than the cheeseburger, but I’m finding it difficult.
Editor-in-Chief:
These posts where you rant about Roman Polanski are way too dogmatic. Research this case a little more. Maybe start with the documentary that came out a year or two back. From what I remember, the consensus of opinion was that this girl was a drugged out party girl who everyone knew and had slept with half of Hollywood and routinely lied about her age. I think her Dad found out about her hard partying and confronted her at which point she framed things to make herself look more like a victim. Dad went to the police with the Polanski story and a fame-hungry judge saw his shot at the spotlight, got the case transferred to him and began holding witch-hunt press conferences. I believe the girl (as an adult) is on record as absolving Polanski of any wrong doing. Yes adults are supposed to take care of kids because kids sometimes cannot take care of themselves and yes, i know your dogmatic tone is partially for effect but things are rarely as simple as you're making it out to be and this is the second or third time these rants have undermined the rest of the stuff you and everyone else is doing here at Animal.
To be clear, I'm not trying to blame the girl or excuse the behavior at the heart of the allegations. I don't know exactly what happened. It is, however, well documented that Polanski did not get anything close to a fair trial. The assistant DA on the case has been an outspoken critic of the presiding judge, as has the victim.
the girl is not on record as absolving polanski of wrong doing.
she wants charges to be dropped because, in her view, the continued media attention is extremely difficult for her.
100% different.