Roman Polanski declined the opportunity to clear his name of the more graphic charges in court and pled guilty to a single charge of unlawful sex with a minor. This has led Whoopi Goldberg and others to claim (despite grand jury testimony otherwise) that it wasn’t “rape rape.”

If it wasn’t “rape rape” Michael Vick simply “conspired to …  sponsor a dog in an animal fighting venture.” No animals were actually harmed. And Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson, of course, didn’t do anything. (squashed)

Well, the elliptical points you make about Michael Jackson and OJ Simpson don’t really hold up because they were never convicted of crimes in a criminal court. Vick—like Polanski—was, and I think that’s the apt comparison.

People are so (fucking) quick to (fucking) condemn Michael Vick for animal abuse. Rape stands, drowning, choking—yes, he did horrible horrible things. It was criminal animal abuse. No one ever said it wasn’t “abuse abuse,” even though the abuse was as much a product of Vick’s social milieu and upbringing as it was of criminal intent and moral depravity. I believe that Polanksi’s crime is similarly of social milieu and upbringing. Of course, such ideation and etiology is irrelevant to the legal situation. The interesting thing is the social/moral double standard of athletes-versus-auteurs and blacks-versus-whites that is brought into (but not so much since who wants to call himself a bigot?) light by the Polanksi-Vick comparison.

With Vick, there’s someone who (promptly) brought himself to the authorities and served his ridiculously overblown sentence and who’s now trying to atone socially, morally, and fiscally for his crimes. Polanksi on the other hand—why is anyone sticking up for this bastard?