Pedophile Rapist Defended by Hollywood – No Surprise There

Something wildly unexpected happened the other day: Film director Roman Polanski was taken into custody in Switzerland for his rape of a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson's house in 1977. The grand jury transcript is stomach-turning. His victim, Samantha Gailey, said the director plied her with champagne and drugs and asked her to remove her clothes for pictures in a hot tub. Polanski then had sex with her despite her resistance and requests to be taken home. He pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of sex with a minor, but fearing a prison term, he fled the country.

Now something utterly expected is happening: Morally bankrupt libertines in Hollywood and other artistic banana republics are rushing to Polanski's defense.

Welcome to the world of Roman Polanski, Child Rapist/Victim.

Has-been actress Debra Winger joined the first line of ludicrous defense, since she was president of the jury of the Zurich Film Festival, where Polanski was headed to receive a lifetime achievement award when he was apprehended. Let's hope Winger is never allowed to serve on a real jury. She simply doesn't care about Polanski's guilt. He is a filmmaker and an artist, and for this crowd anything and everything goes.

An even bigger lout is Miramax studio boss Harvey Weinstein, who organized a petition of filmmakers to demand freedom for Polanski:

Weinstein compounded the foolishness by circulating a petition of famous directors who've joined the protest. Amazingly, the list includes Woody Allen, another famous dirty old man in Hollywood, who scandalously carried on a sexual relationship with an adopted stepdaughter 34 years his junior, and then married her.

Then there's Whoopi Goldberg, whose defense of Polanski on ABC's "The View" was that "it wasn't rape-rape," since he pleaded guilty to sex with a minor. Earth to Whoopi: It was statutory rape. It was non-consensual.

But as more than one Catholic leader has observed, what if his name were Father Roman Polanski? Oh, then they'd all be singing a different tune, wouldn't they? Hypocrites.