zonkered.net

The whole Roman Polanski bullshit is giving me a splitting headache, and it gets worse the more and more names of actors and writers and directors are added to the goddamned petition to leave poor Mr. Polanski alone. I mean, he totally couldn’t pick up his Oscar in person! Hasn’t he been punished enough?

What the hell-ass, people. Kate Harding says it more eloquently than I could, but let’s take a look at the facts:

1. Roman Polanski drugged and raped a thirteen year old child both vaginally and anally.
2. She testified that despite being drugged, she said no several times.
3. He pled guilty and then fled the country.
4. Roman Polanski drugged and raped a child. Oh, did I say that already?

Frankly, I don’t give a shit that the man is an acclaimed director. I thought The Pianist was good too, people. I think he’s done some good work artistically. I also think his crimes are inexcusable, and I’m disgusted by the tide of public opinion in his favor.

I have to wonder: how many of these artists would feel the same way if this had happened to their teenaged son or daughter? Would it be all good because the rapist was an artiste? Somehow I doubt that.

My mother called me this morning, and she was pissed.  She’d just gotten off the phone with one of my aunts in California, who voted for John McCain and Proposition 8 and is absolutely convinced that Barack Obama is going to destroy the budget and rack up the national debt and turn us into Soviet Russia.  Oh, and by the way? Climate change doesn’t exist.

Nevermind the last balanced budget was under Bill Clinton’s administration, and the national debt first went out of control in the Reagan years.

My brother is an accountant, and he probably voted Republican too.  My sister is apathetic and didn’t vote at all.  My uncle, Dad’s brother, also voted Republican and has nothing but snide comments for people who work off the “taxpayer’s back” like my parents, who have spent their lives working for pennies in the public education system.  It should be noted that Uncle Don works for a company that gets the majority of its income from government contracts.

(This isn’t the same, apparently.  He’s performing a service. Unlike teachers, who are after all only educating future generations.)

Mom said to me this morning that my parents and I are probably the only liberals in the family, she didn’t understand what was wrong with people, and then we hung up.  I had to do laundry.

I called her back 20 minutes later, after I arrived at the laundromat and put my laundry in to let her know that here, in a working class neighborhood in godless liberal New Jersey, we were watching Obama’s acceptance speech again.

It made her feel a little better.

Sarah Palin’s already produced a huge steaming pile of bullshit since she accepted the nomination, but this latest thing annoys the shit out of me.  Ah, yes.  Real America.  Defined as any part of the United States not on either of the coasts, not near a major city, not emphatically liberal.  Typical Republican shit, really.  New York, for instance?  Is never “Real America,” unless the GOP needs to use 9/11 to shore up some support for their more draconian terrorism properties.

I didn’t live in New York during 9/11, but this still pisses me off.  And being  characterized as a pinko commie because I live about a mile from the island of Manhattan pisses me off to.

That’s why I sent my own paragraph here: Are You A Real American?   I’d like to encourage anyone else reading this to do the same thing.

(I’m pretty sure you can guess which one is me.)

What I find hardest to swallow about the whole Misha hoax is that so many people believed it.  A four year old girl raised by wolves and trekking 1900 miles to find her parents?  And no one wondered if maybe it was fiction?

Sometimes I wonder.