Conversation | 10/09/2009 3:30 pm

The wOw Conversation: The Predicament of Polanski? (Audio)

In this audio presentation, Liz Smith, Joan Juliet Buck and Julia Reed debate the debacle of Polanski’s predicament.

With Joan Juliet Buck, Julia Reed and Liz Smith

Image: PR Photos

wOw recently asked its community and Contributors: Do you think Roman Polanski should go to prison? The passion behind the arguments was evident, and so we invited a few of our wOw women to continue the discussion.

Liz Smith, Joan Juliet Buck and Julia Reed’s discussion follows. Click the play button to begin:

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JULIA: "And I think Liz’s point about the fact that in this country, and every country, you’ve got privileged people having a different set of rules. And, like you say, if this were … I mean, for a long time Catholic priests could get away with this kind of stuff."

JOAN: "This particular chick in the case that happened back in the ‘70s; the girl who Roman Polanski photographed for French Vogue. The assignment was for French Vogue. And this girl was not a random chick. She was a little girl around town in the hot pants who was used to doing qualudes. He was not the first man she’d had sex with … Now I’m not saying bad things about this kid, but I’m saying that this was not a 13-year-old schoolgirl in a uniform on her way back from school, got pulled into a car and raped by a strange man of 43."

LIZ: "So he went from being that rotten little joke that you heard to being somebody very distinguished. But he still broke the law and ran away and never took any chance to go back and mitigate what he had confessed."

148 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

Since you posted this twice I will respond to it twice. By what right do you all, Liz and Julia included, presume to speak for th victim when she has spoken for herself already? She is standing behind him in this. That, really, is all that needs to be said.

By Baby Snooks on 10/09/2009 10:21 pm

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SO QUIT SAYING IT!!!

By Scarlett Ohara Mitchell on 10/11/2009 12:39 pm

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HANNAH: I ABSOLUTELY AGREE, and JJB is not so educated, she grew up in Hollywood, the daughter of a producer. She apparently is no stranger to the "Old Hollywood" myth, that women have only one purpose or that women are either Madonnas or whores. Regarding "blaming the victim" (in this case, a thirteen year old) she certainly doesn’t "GET IT" .

By Lin Cercone on 10/10/2009 3:27 pm

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"So he went from being that rotten little joke that you heard to being somebody very distinguished…

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Such venom. He was distinguished before this happened. Before he became, as you put it, a rotten little joke. Really uncalled for. And beneath you. Or beneath what I expected of you.

By Baby Snooks on 10/09/2009 10:30 pm

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My only comment is she, no matter what she did, was a child in the eyes of the state and was not a consenting adult.

By Chris Broersma on 10/10/2009 12:20 am

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She was not a child. She was a minor. But it is more inflammatory to use the word child.

By Baby Snooks on 10/11/2009 6:54 am

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Until someone is 18, they are considered a child because their sense of right and wrong is often set by peers or someone they admire. Our own society sees that in the way we use to look at child murderers. When we began breaking up children into teens and young adults we tended to see them more as adults and responsible for their own actions. Even the psychological community today has come to understand that the brain is not developed fully to make good decisions and judgments until those later years after 18 years of age.

By Chris Broersma on 10/11/2009 5:59 pm

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By the way. This was utterly and completely disgusting:

"…this girl was not a random chick. She was a little girl around town in the hot pants who was used to doing qualudes. He was not the first man she’d had sex with…"

I don’t care if she’d had sex with an entire football team. She was a kid. Raping a kid isn’t okay. It’s evil.

By Tanya Brown on 10/10/2009 1:26 am

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TANYA: I couldn’t agree more, this was utterly and completely disgusting.

It’s so hard for me to imagine that, ANY rational, reasonably intelligent adult would even consider that the child was responsible or at fault in any way.

Its the old Hollywood myth "the poor old man just couldn’t help himself, ’that vixen child’ seduced him."

Except the "that vixon child", didn’t administer drugs and alcohol to this dirty old man to make him more compliant.

By Lin Cercone on 10/10/2009 3:47 pm

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Raping a kid isn’t okay. It’s evil.

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Again, can you all read? The prosecutors dropped the rape charges. He pleaded guilty to statutory rape. The reason? They determined it to be consensual. Some of the acts may not have been consensual. But the sexual intercourse was. There were too many other things she didn’t say no to. Including the quaalude. The law, and life, is not black and white but varying shades of gray. Ask most attorneys, the ones without agendas, and they will tell you that statutory rape, as Whoopi Goldberg and so many others have put it, is not really "rape rape" but merely consensual sex with a minor. And that in this case was another "gray area" since she was only weeks ago from not being a minor under the law at that time. And prosecutors do look at those "gray areas" because the law itself requires them to.

Again, the victim has spoken. No one cares about the victim? Appalling.

By Baby Snooks on 10/10/2009 5:35 am

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What I really don’t like about this is that much of this was fueled by Whoopi Goldberg’s comment. She should have been part of this "conversation" and instead was told she was a bad girl and told she should go to her room and keep her mouth shut.

By Baby Snooks on 10/10/2009 5:57 am

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And this is a witch hunt with everyone looking for a witch to burn and reflective of a really nasty side of the American psyche which manifests itself in this curiosity called "trial by media" in which a "witch" is declared a "witch" by the media before the jury is given an opportunity to look at the facts which are forever tainted by the innuendo all the jurors have been assaulted with for months prior to an actual trial.

It was the innuendo that convicted Leona Helmsley on charges of tax evasion despite the fact that during the period she was convicted of tax evasion she had actually overpaid her taxes and it was the innuendo that convicted Anthony Marshall on various charges of fraud and grand larceny despite the fact that he was the first person ever charged with ripping himself off. In both cases, it was about agenda. Not justice.

Schadenfreude belongs in gossip columns. Not in courtrooms.

By Baby Snooks on 10/10/2009 6:24 am

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referring to a rape(STATUTORY, DRUGGED, OR drunk) survivor as ‘chick’ is a highly dismissive term, remininiscent of the 70’s. an archaic attitude exempting powerful men from responsibility for controlling their genitals, the fact that a powerful woman, such as joan could use this term regarding a 13 y.o. girl is an effort to DEhumanize a young girl to separate her from the powerful as less deserving of protection than the elite who attempt to avoid consequences. SHAME, SHAME, SHAME.

this particular segment of the elite seem to think that polanski’s ‘contributions’ should exempt HIM. contributions??? where’s the charity??? he made some movies!!! he got paid!!! it’s a job, not a sacrament!!! SEND HIM TO JAIL!!! add on consequences for leaving with his sentence half served. if age didn’t serve to protect a 13 y.o., why should it protect a 72 y.o.?

By carol grzonka on 10/10/2009 7:39 am

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SEND HIM TO JAIL!!! add on consequences for leaving with his sentence half served.

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I need to be more generous to the literacy organizations. Can any of you, again, read? He was sentenced to 90 days at Chino State Prison for psychiatric evaluation and it was the psychiatrists, not the judge, who had the right to release him early. The psychiatrists determined he was not a pedophile and not a threat to anyone.

By Baby Snooks on 10/10/2009 8:47 am

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Snooks, at this point I wouldn’t even bother with repeating yourself. No one really is paying any attention. They have their minds made up based on what a biased media tells them. No one does research or pays attention to minor details now. They simply let the news tell them what their opinions "should be". They are more interested in seeing their names up on a website where people like, Judith, Juliet, Whoopi, et. al. post stories and hop down into the comment section. Then actually reading any intelligently worded or thought out opinion.

By Raquel Miller on 10/10/2009 9:48 am