Gore Vidal: Polanski is a persecuted Jew

[applecorped]

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/19480/gore-vidal-polanski-is-a-persecuted-jew/

So why is Roman Polanski in a Swiss prison cell? To hear author, intellectual, and seasoned provocateur Gore Vidal tell it, the famed director’s troubles have little to do with having drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl all those years ago. Polanski, Vidal tells The Atlantic in an interview published online yesterday, is being hounded because he’s Jewish. He cites “[t]he 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,” Vidal said, adding decisively that “anti-Semitism got poor Polanski.”

 

[Lisa Simpson]

Oy vey.

 

[Arcade22]

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/19480/gore-vidal-polanski-is-a-persecuted-jew/

So why is Roman Polanski in a Swiss prison cell? To hear author, intellectual, and seasoned provocateur Gore Vidal tell it, the famed director’s troubles have little to do with having drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl all those years ago. Polanski, Vidal tells The Atlantic in an interview published online yesterday, is being hounded because he’s Jewish. He cites “[t]he 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,” Vidal said, adding decisively that “anti-Semitism got poor Polanski.”

Yes, all because he's Jewish...

 

[dudalb]

And what little creditbility Vidal has left vanishes.......
Let's face it, Gore Vidal has been deep in crackpot territory for some time.

 

[Drudgewire]

...this awful Jew, Polacko—that’s what people were calling him”

Is he talking about people who call him a rapist or people who sat through "Pirates" and "The Ninth Gate?"

 

[Skeptic]

Vidal doesn't seem to realize people publish or read his interviews nowadays for the same reason people used to set up or visit freak shows.

 

[Cleon]

And now I find myself in a philosophical quandary. Is this statement full of stupid, or full of crazy? Decisions, decisions...In the end, though, it's still 100% crap.

**** you, Vidal.

 

[Eddie Dane]

Jesus, what happened to this guy?
Is it age, or was he always a bit bizarre?

I remember seeing an interview with him and quite liking him.

Has he gone woo in other departments?

 

[NoZed Avenger]

(from the quoted article):
He cites “[t]he 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,” Vidal said, adding decisively that “anti-Semitism got poor Polanski.”

That 13 year old hussy!!

Polanski was helpless before her criminal wiles.

 

[Slayhamlet]

Jesus, what happened to this guy?
Is it age, or was he always a bit bizarre?

I remember seeing an interview with him and quite liking him.

Has he gone woo in other departments?

He's always been a bit eccentric. He flirted with Trutherism, but ended up resigning himself to belief in a LIHOP scenario, saying MIHOP was too impractical.

 

[Ziggurat]

And now I find myself in a philosophical quandary. Is this statement full of stupid, or full of crazy?

I believe the two are mutually soluble. Which makes this a scientific quandary, the correct answer to which is "both".

 

[gtc]

Jesus, what happened to this guy?
Is it age, or was he always a bit bizarre?

I remember seeing an interview with him and quite liking him.

Has he gone woo in other departments?

I agreed with a lot of the rest of his interview, so he seems selectively weird.

 

[Perfume V]

“[t]he idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel all in white, being raped by this awful Jew...”

An "idea" that I haven't heard much of, frankly. What I have been hearing, pretty much incessantly, is the idea that this degenerate 13-year-old slut was so brazen and immoral that poor old Roman was simply forced to drug her and penetrate her despite her repeated protestations that he stop.

Really, it is terrible that Roman is a concentration camp survivor, but there are plenty of people who were interned in concentration camps who have somehow managed not to rape underage girls.

 

[Cleon]

Really, it is terrible that Roman is a concentration camp survivor, but there are plenty of people who were interned in concentration camps who have somehow managed not to rape underage girls.

Roman is not a camp survivor. His father survived Mathausen, his mother died in Auschwitz, but he escaped the Krakow ghetto and spent the rest of the war being hidden by Catholics.

 

[dudalb]

Roman is not a camp survivor. His father survived Mathausen, his mother died in Auschwitz, but he escaped the Krakow ghetto and spent the rest of the war being hidden by Catholics.

Which makes Vidal's nasty little jab at the Catholic Church all the more Ironic.

 

[dudalb]

He's always been a bit eccentric. He flirted with Trutherism, but ended up resigning himself to belief in a LIHOP scenario, saying MIHOP was too impractical.

Agreed, but in the past few years he hass gone from eccentric to batcrap crazy...like his obssesion that New England should suceed from the Union and for a "true" Republic.

 

[Alan]

I don't follow this Polanski case in particular detail. I didn't know that she was wearing a communion dress. I didn't know she is white, either. Before now, I don't think I've thought about Polanski being jewish in relation to anything he's done other than what I learned in the special features of The Pianist.

Lo and behold, I still think that he shouldn't have raped that girl.

[Meroney:] 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?

[Vidal:] 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?

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200910u/gore-vidal

I expect a "clarification" to come at a later date regarding his views.

 

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

An "idea" that I haven't heard much of, frankly. What I have been hearing, pretty much incessantly, is the idea that this degenerate 13-year-old slut was so brazen and immoral that poor old Roman was simply forced to drug her and penetrate her despite her repeated protestations that he stop.

My mother, who is usually a mostly sane human being, said this to me.

Mom: "She was 13 and she wasn't a virgin?! In 1977? In today's world, I'd believe that but in 1977? And her mother let her alone with a man who was known to be a notorious womanizer? I'm telling you, this was a set up! By either her cause she wanted to get famous or her greedy mother or someone else who wanted to get Polanski."

Me: "Her virginity or lack of had nothing to do with what he did! He would have done it regardless of whether she was or wasn't."

Mom: "She was 13 and she already had sex!"

Me: "I agree, that's shocking but it had nothing to do with what he did. And she said it was only twice."

Mom: "It had a lot to do with it! This doesn't happen to good normal girls! I'm telling you, they must have known it would happen. Her mother let her alone with him! Why was a child posing for an adult magazine like Vogue anyway? I bet she slept with every old man in Hollywood! Why didn't she tell him no?! Why didn't she call her mother?! Why didn't she just leave?! I'm telling you, these things don't happen to regular girls!"

Me: "You can't blame the victim for what he did. Even if the victim behaves stupidly or carelessly, it's a hundred percent the fault of the person who did it. Her mother didn't rape her, Polanski did! And she said it did start out as a normal photo session and then it got weird. And she did try to go back home and did call her mother from the house and did beg him to stop multiple times and said she was scared of him. And she did ask him to take her home but he ignored her or said "ok, fine, sure" and then didn't do it!"

Mom: "She was drinking! And taking drugs!"

Me: "Cause he gave them to her!"

Mom: "I'm telling you, this wouldn't have happened if she and her mother hadn't wanted it to happen! Or someone else wanted to get Polanski! She was no innocent!"

Me: "That has nothing to do with it!

Mom: "You don't understand what I'm saying!"

And on and on in circles.

 

[desertgal]

I seem to recall reading that in one of the JFK biographies that Vidal was a patient of Max "Dr. Feelgood" Jacobsen. Perhaps he had one too many of those...ahem...vitamin injections.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Let me see if I get Gore Vidal's point: it's illegal for everyone, but a Jewish movie director, to have sex with a 13 year old girl who he got drunk one night. Gore would have us believe that Roman's Jewishness provides a Protection from Prosecution and Application of the Law Everyone Else Has To Follow, ten foot radius.

My word, why not just give prisonplanet and stormfront money and have done with it, Gore?

It's not all about Jew, Mister Vidal.

DR