NO ONE WOULD EXPECT A GUY OF HIS PROCLIVITIES TO SEE ANYTHING WRONG WITH WHAT POLANSKI DID...:

A Conversation With Gore Vidal: The American literary and cultural icon speaks out on the Polanski scandal, the Obama Presidency, the sexual exploits of Bill Clinton, and more. (John Meroney, 10/29/09, The Atlantic)

In September, director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland for leaving the U.S. in 1978 before being sentenced to prison for raping a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson’s house in Hollywood. During the time of the original incident, you were working in the industry, and you and Polanski had a common friend in theater critic and producer Kenneth Tynan. So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?

I really don’t give a [****]. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?

I’ve certainly never heard that take on the story before.

First, I was in the middle of all that. Back then, we all were. Everybody knew everybody else. There was a totally different story at the time that doesn’t resemble anything that we’re now being told.

What do you mean?

The media can’t get anything straight. Plus, there’s usually an anti-Semitic and anti-fag thing going on with the press – lots of crazy things. 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.

...but what's Jewish about raping a child?

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 29, 2009 4:51 PM