Polanski's Life Achievement Award

Sometimes people start to believe their own propaganda, I think, and that's when they're headed for a fall.

Thus it is with this Polanski fellow, who fled California in 1977 ahead of sentencing for raping and sodomizing a thirteen year old girl after he'd plied her with quaalude. Since then he's been hiding out in France and has avoided a number of different places for fear of extradition.

Well. It appears that those fears were well founded, as Polanski decided to go to Switzerland to receive a Life Achievement award or something of an equally trivial nature.

Polanski forgot the First Lesson of Fugitives: sooner or later, you're going to let your guard down, and then you will be caught up by the law.

Shocking, they say. Raping a child is shocking, too-even in France.

I guess Polanski got his life achievement award, in the form of a Swiss jail cell.

The argument seems to be, Sparky, that he's been on the lam so long it'd be silly for him to be prosecuted, there's a new documentary that indicates that the judge was corrupt, the trial was a sham, the entire process was flawed, he's a great artist, the Americans are a bunch of prudes, he's 76 years old, and so on. All of these apologists seem to ignore one thing.

There is nothing funny or trivial about raping and sodomizing a child and using drugs to accomplish it .

I don't care who this guy is. Let him serve his time in a California prison and then deport him.

Photo courtesy of AP.