Op-Ed: Polanski and Neo-Puritanism

Gstaad - What are the motives and who is behind the persecution of the world-famous film director Roman Polanski for his past alleged sex crime?

Sorry to bore you with an intimate matter just now, but the only instance, I ever slept with an underage partner, was when we did "it" for the first time about 25 years ago. She was 17 (or so she claimed) and I had just hit 20. It happened in an Austrian ski resort and not on U.S soil thankfully for me, and the female in question was French and in France the age of consenting sex is (I have since then checked, to be safe, this with my lawyer), 16 . For the record, just in case of my potential prosecution, arrest or conviction long after the fact, we were both willing at the time (and the not so young lady today , can attest to this) when we committed our lewd and lascivious act. Now that my private experiences are public, permit me to comment about the on-going "house- arrest" of a far more interesting personality than myself, like the legendary in his own life-time, movie-maker Roman Polanski. What he did back then was vile. I mean the alleged rape and rest of it which we all know by now, in every minute, lurid, and now somewhat tiresome, detail. But is this lustful act punishable over thirty years after the fact? It is not in my view. Didn’t the man who lost a pregnant wife ( the American actress Sharon Tate) in a brutal and bloody way due to a crime committed by a crazed murderer named Charles Manson, and then who was forced to flee for France (into permanent exile) and whose brilliant career was cut short in Hollywood at the height of its glory, not pay enough for his crimes already? No, it seems not. The U.S justice system relentlessly has hounded him for decades to this day. Has Polanski not been punished plenty for his past sins ? He remains a prisoner in his own Swiss chalet. He's sequestered like some-kind of a pariah dog. This man served several months in a Swiss prison already. The Inquisitors of the 21st century want “justice” served Who are these holy and hypocritical people calling for his extradition? And just what is their agenda? Why are they so hungry for justice now? There is much speculation that the Swiss government has an interest in all this as well. Protecting what remains of its once vaunted banking secrecy is what it is all about. The usually neutral state, whose government is under huge pressure to disclose all the names of its American banking clients, has suddenly, although not surprisingly, opted to cooperate with the U.S by handing over the names of U.S citizens which once held secret bank accounts in that Alpine country and it appears, Polanski is part of the package deal made with Washington. And as Bern is considering going the "Full Monty" and handing over even more information to the U.S tax-man, who is hungry for assets hidden abroad to pay for the record domestic budget deficit, Polanski comes into the picture. Sex and Banks The Financial Times (1) hinted a while back, (not exactly a check- out counter rag or a trashy tabloid) that the Swiss may have nabbed Polanski and intend to handover the filmmaker in the slim hope of a less aggressive stance towards those remaining U.S passport and foreign account holders, who are still sought after, by the American government for tax evasion. A classic diplomatic quid pro quo. If this is the case, then the Swiss government is catering to U.S interest in a scurrilous and perfidious manner. Bern is apparently on "probation" in Washington and in order not to get "blacklisted" by Uncle Sam, it seems willing to cow-tow to those, whose puritanical zeal has driven the persecution and prosecution and even possible extradition to the U.S. of Roman Polanski. Yet on a purely social level there is an ugly and virulent strain of new Puritanism which is running amok in America. Regrettably, it is infecting the rest of the western world. The pillorying of politicians and high profile personalities has become the latest manifestation of these abject inquisitions. Late last year, the French cultural minister Frederic Mitterrand, who has come out in support of the filmmaker, has been under attack for allegedly having paid for sex with minors abroad. In another example of these public verbal lynchings , the famous U.S talk show host David Letterman, was derided and much-maligned for his (now self -confessed) dalliances with co -workers and staff production members. This has all gone too far. The puritanical “witch-hunt" ( worthy of the classic Polanski horror flick," Rosemary's Baby") now underway is a saga as obscene as the alleged and perpetrated sex crimes committed by those concerned. A nation consumed by unrelenting gun violence at home and engaged in the blood soaked battlefield of two wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and where reported and unreported rapes and killings of women and children by occupying troops no longer even get the media’s attention because they are so common, has little to be sanctimonious about these days. Polanski deserves harsh words for his action and has been subjected to plenty of humiliation since his imprisonment. Enough is enough! These insidious inquisitions must end. The condemnation, prosecution and jail terms should be reserved for those who tortured others, molested young kids after church services, or sent young men to be slaughtered under false pretences and engaged in mass murder in the name of democratic freedoms. Polanski must be set free at once and then pardoned. And afterwards he should be left in peace, to live with his own moral guilt about this incident, until the end of his days. Let those with blood dripping from their hands and abject crimes on their conscience in the present, not judge others for lesser wrongs from the past. (1) “Switzerland under diplomatic Fire on Polanski”, (09/28/09)