Actually, everybody, big names from left to right of the politically "clean" spectrum, jump in defense of this guy. Even the head of the French green party that did a good score for the European elections, Daniel Cohn Bendit. There's a video about him from the 70s where you see him adulating pedophilia on a mainstream TV show, and implying that people are just too stuck up to talk openly (about kids unzipping an old's man trousers and starting to fiddle with his penis, which gave him a boner).
I think the politics are rather disgusting --although I reckon that there's very few real and mature debates about pedophilia.
Polanski got equal support from the actual Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand (
1), who once put down in a book how he paid for Thai young men.
By saving Polanski, they're saving their sorry asses the same way.
If Polanski was clearly proven guilty, then serves him right.
On the other hand, there's hypocrisy in the air. We are all self-appointed judges of moral and virtue, but we're just glad we don't have those kind of drives.
Over time, I started to see such stories of sexual intercourse with minors --often above 11 years old though-- to be the expression of a drive defined by the taking of such young flesh, the forbidden fruit. The psychic arousal defined by being an authority in giving the virgin creature his or her first sexual experience, both spoiling the body with depravation, breaking the seal of purity, and the pride of disclosing the reality of an act defined as repugnable by the low people of the society, as a mentor leading his or her student through a repetitive trial into adulthood, while gaining a form of control over the subject, which adds a whole greater degree of psychological gratification over the mere physical orgasm.
There's clearly a form of predation there, but I think it's also much more complex.
How many pedophiles are there, and then how many of them are there but we don't know?
I still wonder if there's not some form of political message in that. Switzerland is under extreme pressure from the European countries (among other powers) and it's possible that the message is that Helvetic justice shall know no compromise for pedophiles and rapists. Any occasion to affirm strong independence and pride is good to pick.
Perhaps there's some planned bargain between the US and Switzerland (US government pressured by its citizens for justice, Switzerland then getting something in exchange behind the curtain), while letting Switzerland also giving Europe the finger?
I'll also note that this didn't necessarily make big news in all western medias.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/po ... over1.html