Are You Kidding Me?

French pseudo-intellectual Bernard Henri-Levi, in HuffPo:

The decision to free Roman Polanski is a wise decision...  At this very moment, I am thinking about Emmanuelle, his wife. I am thinking about his two kids who saw their dad's name ignominiously dragged through the mud. I am mostly thinking about him: Roman Polanski whom I don't know but whose fate has moved me so much. Nothing will repair the days he has spent in prison. Nothing will erase the immense, unbelievable injustice he has been subjected to. Nothing will take away the hysteria of those ones who have never stopped pouring contempt upon him, hounding him through hatred and asking for his punishment as if we were living the darkest and most ferocious hours of the McCarthysm era all over again. (Emph Mine)

Bizarrely enough, this isn't a parody. It didn't appear in The Onion. This is something someone actually wrote.  What's so weird about it is that it assumes agreement on the part of the reader, as if all decent, like-minded men and women know that being forced to serve out your sentence after drugging and anally raping a child is an "immense, unbelievable injustice".  It just seems... peculiar to me.  Are people (including your truly) perhaps a little over the top in their pilloring of Polanski?  Perhaps, but most of the time (at least on my part) it's a reaction to his defenders, who say completely ludicrous things like the above.

The last sentence is particularly eggregious. Polansky isn't being arrested for anything having to do with his art. Nor is he being arrested for any political beliefs. McCarthy has nothing to do with it. He raped a child and then fled a very brief prison sentence.

Comments

[Dorothy]

Ha ha ha, why are you even quoting this guy?
He is the worst ring winger pseudo philosopher France has ever had. He is an embarrassment to my people...
:)