A Poem on Polanski and a Comment by me

Poem

Deadline Poet

By Calvin Trillin

October 7, 2009

A youthful error?
Yes, perhaps.
But he's been punished for this lapse--
For decades exiled from LA
He knows, as he wakes up each day,
He'll miss the movers and the shakers.
He'll never get to see the Lakers.
For just one old and small mischance,
He has to live in Paris, France.
He's suffered slurs and other stuff.
Has he not suffered quite enough?
How can these people get so riled?
He only raped a single child.


Why make him into some Darth Vader
For sodomizing one eighth grader?
This man is brilliant, that's for sure--
Authentically, a film auteur.
He gets awards that are his due.
He knows important people, too--
Important people just like us.A
nd we know how to make a fuss.
Celebrities would just be fools
To play by little people's rules.
So Roman's banner we unfurl.
He only raped one little girl.

My Comment

Potently said by Calvin, a master of ironic understatement, here the understatement more than a bit of ironic whimsy, but, rather, barely containing his coiled fury: "He only raped one little girl."

Boy oh boy did the rapist's defenders ever impale themselves on their fatuous self righteousness and preening self importance.

I'd argue they had no moral compass to lose.

By defending him, the rapist's defenders, the poem says, have evidenced their construction and inhabitation of a inverted moral universe: "Celebrities would just be fools/ To play by little people's rules."

More than just defending the rapist, they are, in my court of moral law, complicit in the rapist's breach, guilty of being immoral accessories after the fact.

Me, I sentence them to the ignominy and self revealing ludicrousness of their perfidy.