Roman Polanski-Wanted And Detained

Roman Polanski, the Polsih film director responsible for such movies as The Pianist, Rosemary's Baby, MacBeth, and The China Syndrome, and who was himself the subject of a recent documentary, Wanted And Desired, has been arrested on an old US warrant-in Switzerland, of all places. Polanski was due to appear at the Zurich Film Festival to attend a retrospective of his work and receive a Lifetime Achievement Award. Instead, he had no sooner crossed the border when he was detained by the Swiss authorities.

This is bad-I mean real bad. I've been hearing for months about how Obama's supporters have tried to create a cult of personality around our current President, and they've even encouraged US schoolchildren to sing his praises. But who among even his most vociferous detractors would have ever dreamed that he would be elevated to the status of Pope?

It's even worse than that, though. At least the Swiss Guards are not, so far as I know, an official arm of the Swiss government. Now, it would seem that the most admirably independent nation of Europe is just another European nation. But it's not even that good. Hell, so far as I know, no other country, including France, where Polanski has lived for decades, has ever lifted a hand to honor the US warrant. Now, Switzerland, the one country that has for centuries maintained a fierce stance of political non-alignment in the affairs of foreign nations, does this?

The festival itself is in somewhat of an uproar over this, but has maintained that it will continue with the scheduled retrospective of Polanski's work.

As for Polanski himself, I have mixed feelings. The man broke the law, and then fled before his sentence was imposed following what he alleged was a plea deal which he claims the judge reneged on. He has unsuccessfully appealed to have his conviction overturned on those grounds. All things considered, it looks like he might well now spend the rest of his life behind bars. Remember, he now faces time on two charges-for the initial statutory rape of a thirteen year old girl with whom he alegedly seduced at the home of actor Jack Nicholson, and now an evident slam dunk case of fleeing the US to avoid sentencing.

He probably deserves what he's got coming on both charges, and I'm sure he'll get the max. There will probably be a round of appeals of course, bolstered by some in the Hollywood community and others who will lobby on his behalf, but it looks pretty grim for the Polish born director. Obama would not dare commute his sentence, unless it was as a good fuck you to the conservative movement in the event he is defeated for re-election in 2012. By 2016, in the event Obama wins re-election, Polanski, if still alive, will be too old, and feeble, to care, if he even by then knows who, or where, he is.

It would be really ironic were he to end up in the same prison as Charles Manson.