Bill Cosby versus Roman Polanski

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@dana-edwards had a post yesterday about whether Bill Cosby was guilty of rape or not, and in the process of trying to find out whether there has been any objective proof offered to support the idea other than the accusations by alleged victims, I happened upon an interesting contrast in the way Hollywood treats celebrities who get involved in problems involving sexual misconduct.

So let's compare Roman Polanski and Bill Cosby.

In 1977 the filmmaker Roman Polanski asked the mother (herself an aspiring actress) of 13 year old Samantha Gailey if he could photograph her for Vogue magazine. The first shoot involved taking topless pictures. The second shoot, without the mother present, occurred at the empty home of Jack Nicholson, who was away on a ski vacation. Gailey testified that Polanski gave her champagne and part of a quaalude, and then performed oral, vaginal, and anal sex acts on her despite her protests. One of the "findings" of the investigators that influenced the case (remember this was 1977) was that the girl was physically mature and possibly willing.

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Gailey (who now goes by Geimer) did an interview with Emma Brockes in 2013 about a book she finally wrote about the experience, called "The Girl." In this article, Brockes writes:

It is a frank, convincing book, more shocking in its straightforwardness and apparent good humour than a more obviously manipulative account. That day in Los Angeles in 1977 when Polanski picked her up in his car for a photo shoot he said he was doing for French Vogue, she wasn't wearing a bra, she writes, because she was built like a child (she still wore vests). She was eager to please, because she was a child. She did as she was told – took the Quaalude, drank the champagne, got into the Jacuzzi – because she was a child. She took her clothes off when he asked, because she was a child and, without even factoring in his celebrity, went along with his demands in drugged acquiescence, because he was an adult and she was a child. At one point she asked to go home, but her request was denied. "I didn't want to have sex," says Geimer with brittle levity. "But apparently that is what was going to happen."

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Polanski plead guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor in order to avoid more serious charges, was convicted, and served part of his time at Chino state prison. There were some threats at that point about changing his sentence to jail time and deportation, and in order to avoid jail time, he fled first to England and then to France, who has ever since steadfastly refused to extradite him.

Since then, he refuses to travel to countries that the United States can request extradition from.

Polanski gave an interview in 1979, in which he said:

If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls. Everyone wants to fuck young girls!

So in essence -- I did something that everyone else wants to do, which is why it gets so much attention. It's not that it was wrong -- it's that everyone else wishes they could do it but can't, so they are jealous.

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He was given a standing ovation by celebrities including Meryl Streep at the 2003 Oscars for his movie The Piano. He was detained once in 2009 in Zurich while trying to travel to get a lifetime achievement award because Interpol still had a warrant out for him related to his 1977 California conviction. More than 100 Hollywood celebrities, including Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, signed a petition demanding his release, based on the idea that his arrest was somehow going to squelch "freedom of expression."

He has generally been protected by Hollywood -- Whoopi Goldberg famously stating in 2009 that what he did wasn't "rape-rape."

So a convicted pedophile and quite possibly child rapist who used alcohol and drugs to seduce a 13 year old girl and then fled the consequences has become a cause celebre for Hollywood, who see in this case nothing more than a man who exercised his understandable and excusable manly instincts and was unconscionably crucified by an overzealous legal system. Leave the poor man alone -- she was physically mature, for goodness sake!

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But Bill Cosby? Bill was foolish enough to bite the hand that feeds him, to openly admit to being a (Gasp!) dreaded Conservative with a capital C, to suggest that African American males need to take responsibility for their children, to stop blaming others for their problems, and to get a job. In one speech, given in 2004 at an NAACP event commemorating the 50 year anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Bill pushed back against the tendency to equate the common criminals in jail today with the jailing of political activists during the Civil Rights Movement. Pertinent sections from that speech include:

Ladies and gentlemen, these people set -- they opened the doors, they gave us the right, and today, ladies and gentlemen, in our cities and public schools we have 50% drop out. In our own neighborhood, we have men in prison. No longer is a person embarrassed because they’re pregnant without a husband. No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child.

Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic and lower middle economic people are not holding their end in this deal. In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. In the old days, you couldn’t hooky school because every drawn shade was an eye. And before your mother got off the bus and to the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had one and where you got it from. Parents don’t know that today.

I’m talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two? Where were you when he was twelve? Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you don’t know he had a pistol? And where is his father, and why don’t you know where he is? And why doesn’t the father show up to talk to this boy?

Fifty percent drop out rate, I’m telling you, and people in jail, and women having children by five, six different men. Under what excuse? I want somebody to love me. And as soon as you have it, you forget to parent. Grandmother, mother, and great grandmother in the same room, raising children, and the child knows nothing about love or respect of any one of the three of them. All this child knows is “gimme, gimme, gimme.” These people want to buy the friendship of a child, and the child couldn’t care less. Those of us sitting out here who have gone on to some college or whatever we’ve done, we still fear our parents. And these people are not parenting. They’re buying things for the kid -- $500 sneakers -- for what? They won’t buy or spend $250 on Hooked on Phonics.

Kenneth Clark, somewhere in his home in upstate New York -- just looking ahead. Thank God he doesn’t know what’s going on. Thank God. But these people -- the ones up here in the balcony fought so hard. Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! Then we all run out and are outraged: “The cops shouldn’t have shot him.” What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else. And I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said if you get caught with it you’re going to embarrass your mother." Not, "You’re going to get your butt kicked." No. "You’re going to embarrass your mother." "You’re going to embarrass your family." If you knock that girl up, you’re going to have to run away because it’s going to be too embarrassing for your family. In the old days, a girl getting pregnant had to go down South, and then her mother would go down to get her. But the mother had the baby. I said the mother had the baby. The girl didn’t have a baby. The mother had the baby in two weeks. We are not parenting.

Ladies and gentlemen, listen to these people. They are showing you what’s wrong. People putting their clothes on backwards. Isn’t that a sign of something going on wrong? Are you not paying attention? People with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack. Isn’t that a sign of something or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn’t it a sign of something when she’s got her dress all the way up to the crack -- and got all kinds of needles and things going through her body. What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don’t know a damned thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all that crap and all of them are in jail. (When we give these kinds names to our children, we give them the strength and inspiration in the meaning of those names. What’s the point of giving them strong names if there is not parenting and values backing it up).

Brown versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person’s problem. We’ve got to take the neighborhood back. We’ve got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It’s right around the corner. It’s standing on the corner. It can’t speak English. It doesn’t want to speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk: “Why you ain’t where you is go ra?” I don’t know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t land a plane with, “Why you ain’t…” You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they’re moving ahead on this. Well, they know they’re not; they’re just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you’re just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out.

Now, look, I’m telling you. It’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing. 50 percent drop out. Look, we’re raising our own ingrown immigrants. These people are fighting hard to be ignorant. There’s no English being spoken, and they’re walking and they’re angry. Oh God, they’re angry and they have pistols and they shoot and they do stupid things. And after they kill somebody, they don’t have a plan. Just murder somebody. Boom. Over what? A pizza? And then run to the poor cousin’s house.

I’m telling you Christians, what’s wrong with you? Why can’t you hit the streets? Why can’t you clean it out yourselves? It’s our time now, ladies and gentlemen. It is our time. And I’ve got good news for you. It’s not about money. It’s about you doing something ordinarily that we do -- get in somebody else’s business. It’s time for you to not accept the language that these people are speaking, which will take them nowhere. What the hell good is Brown v. Board of Education if nobody wants it?

So, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for the award -- and giving me an opportunity to speak because, I mean, this is the future, and all of these people who lined up and done -- they’ve got to be wondering what the hell happened. Brown V. Board of Education -- these people who marched and were hit in the face with rocks and punched in the face to get an education and we got these knuckleheads walking around who don’t want to learn English. I know that you all know it. I just want to get you as angry that you ought to be. When you walk around the neighborhood and you see this stuff, that stuff’s not funny. These people are not funny anymore. And that‘s not my brother. And that’s not my sister. They’re faking and they’re dragging me way down because the state, the city, and all these people have to pick up the tab on them because they don’t want to accept that they have to study to get an education.

Therefore, you have the pile up of these sweet beautiful things born by nature -- raised by no one. Give them presents. You’re raising pimps. That’s what a pimp is. A pimp will act nasty to you so you have to go out and get them something. And then you bring it back and maybe he or she hugs you. And that’s why pimp is so famous. They’ve got a drink called the “Pimp-something.” You all wonder what that’s about, don’t you? Well, you’re probably going to let Jesus figure it out for you. Well, I’ve got something to tell you about Jesus. When you go to the church, look at the stained glass things of Jesus. Look at them. Is Jesus smiling? Not in one picture. So, tell your friends. Let’s try to do something. Let’s try to make Jesus smile. Let’s start parenting. Thank you, thank you.

Bill crossed the line. And a few months after that, the finger pointing began. Andrea Constand accused him of using Quaaludes to drug and then have sex with her. The criminal case was dropped because there was no evidence that the quaaludes weren't willingly ingested and that the sex wasn't consensual, and Cosby admitted to a long history of casual sex during which quaaludes were willingly ingested by both parties. Constand also continued to have occasional voluntary interactions with Cosby after the initial January 2004 incident and introduced her parents to him at a show later that year.

After the criminal complaint was dropped for lack of evidence, Constand filed a civil suit, which Cosby settled for an undisclosed amount. After that, there was blood in the water and the sharks began to circle. The allegations began, first a trickle, then a flood, then a tsunami, with some current allegations going all the way back to the 60s.

I honestly don't know the truth about whether Cosby is innocent or guilty. I would be interested in proof if there is any. But I do find it interesting that Hollywood defends Polanski against using drugs to facilitate pedophilia and statutory rape that he admits to, but crucifies Cosby for using drugs to facilitate sex with adults that he mostly denies.