But the Hollywood elite and European elites think his artistry should give him a pass on a little thing like child rape. They would not let him fall, having judged his actions no crime at all, in their eyes.
Good thing Polanski didn't go into the Gulf oil drilling platform business, eh?
So with the judgment of his peers long in that Polanski did nothing wrong that deserves punishment, who can be shocked that the Swiss let him go:
In a stunning ruling, Roman Polanski was declared a free man on Monday — no longer confined to house arrest in his Alpine villa after Swiss authorities rejected a U.S. request for his extradition because of a 32-year-old sex conviction.
The decision left the Oscar-winning director free to return to France and the life of a celebrity, albeit one unable to visit the United States.
Hours after the ruling was announced, Polanski's assistant said he had left his multimillion-dollar chalet with his family. Half-empty glasses seen on a back porch testified to a hasty exit.
"Mr. Polanski can now move freely," Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf declared. "He's a free man."
The story says we failed to show Polanski did not serve time for the crime. I can certainly believe that someone here could have screwed that up. But I also believe that had it been anybody less artistic and brilliant than Polanski is supposed to be that the judge would have found a way to hang on to the man and get that clarification.
But armed with the knowledge that all the right people judged Polanski too important to jail and would celebrate the decision to free Polanski, the judge let him go.
We're used to thinking of empires falling from barbarian invasion. But sometimes the barbarians evolve within the empire and slowly gain influence.
At what stage is the West when child rapists are considered persecuted heroes?
