Sky News
October 9, 2009
http://blogs.news.sky.com/foreignmatters/Post:cb5a7414-6ea8-4a8c-a56a-504db188c649
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| Roman Polanski |
The moral maze in which Roman Polanski's defenders have lost themselves may claim the career of a French Cabinet minister.
He is Frederic Mitterrand, culture minister of France, nephew of the late President Mitterrand, and late night visitor of Thai brothels where he bought young boys for sex.
Polanski's story is well known; he has sex with a 13 year old girl, flees America, hides from justice for 30 years, is arrested in Switzerland, faces extradition, whereupon his act of paedophilia is again defended by people whose logic appears to be that sex , plus a 13 year old, minus being a famous artist, equals 'oh come on it was all a long time ago'.
Less well known are the antics of the Minister for Culture. In his 2005 autobiography, My Bad Life, the former TV presenter, intellectual and all round national treasure, describes in sweaty detail how he 'got into the habit of paying for boys ...The profusion of young, very attractive and immediately available boys put me in a state of desire that I no longer needed to restrain or hide'.
Indeed why hide when you can write about it - and then be appointed Minister of State in one of the world's leading powers? That allows you to find the arrest of Polanski "absolutely horrifying". Why he asked, should Polanski be arrested 'over ancient history'.
This attitude was prevalent across the French intellectual elite. Normally silent on issues of say, obscure van drivers being arrested for old paedophile related offences, they closed ranks on Polanski. Most of those defending him fall back on the argument of Polanski's artistic brilliance and the passage of time.
Even Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, a man with an impeccable history of standing up for the defenceless thought the arrest 'sinister', arresting a man 'of such talent, this is not nice at all'.
This is not an argument normally employed by the French elite for cases involving, say, Nazi war criminals, but their moral statue of limitations appears short for an 'artistic genius'.
Hollywood led the field in incredible Polanski statements. Drugging and buggering a 13 year old girl was 'an error of judgement', and 'a little mistake'. Whoopi Goldberg said it 'wasn't rape, rape'. But it was Mitterrand who was the first senior politician to weigh in.
What has changed is that Mitterrand has been called on his fatuous logic. Alas, it has taken a verbal barrage from the leader of the fascistic Front Nationale to bring calls for his resignation to national attention. With the intellectual dyke breached, some on the left are joining calls for Mitterrand to go.
Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean Marie, was involved in a fierce debate on French television this week. With the presenter and the panel of the great and the good shaking their brain heavy heads in dismay, she tore into Mitterrand.
When they tried to silence her she read out extracts from the autobiography. "All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excited me enormously".
How the slave remark fits with the French policy on combating the slave trade in the sex market is a conundrum for the man who, just three months ago, appointed Mitterrand to his post - President Sarkozy.
Mitterrand is the first openly gay, senior, French Cabinet minister and is part of Sarkozy's 'Rainbow Coalition'. His defence of his proclivity for Thai brothels is that his term 'young boys', and 'youths' did not mean the people he bought for sex were underage. He says homosexuals call all men 'boys'. Vraiment?
Either way he has now defended a man accused of child rape, criticised the legal system of a friendly country, and written about buying young boys in the sex industry. And he' s still in his job.
What lies behind this extraordinary state of events appears to be the French penchant, shared by artistic 'intellectuals' across the Western world, to believe that crimes committed by their peers ,are somehow lesser than crimes committed by other less brilliant people.
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