It's A Reason, Not An Excuse

Mark Steyn nails the Hollywood Loves Paedophiles scandal in his inimitable style and also makes some insightful observations of the star of the show:

Let us stipulate that Roman Polanski has memories few of us would wish to bear. He is the only movie director to have had three generations of his immediate family murdered – his mother, by the Nazis; his wife and unborn child, by Charles Manson's acolytes. The only reason he didn't wind up with his parents in Auschwitz is that, when he was 8, his father cut a hole in the barbed wire of the Warsaw ghetto and pushed his son out.

In a movie, the father would either die or survive for a tearful reunion with his boy. But after the war Polanski's dad remarried, and the new wife didn't want young Roman around. By the age of 13, the pattern of his life was set: That hurried escape through the wire of the ghetto would be only the first of a series of hasty exits.

Steyn then goes on to skewer one of Polanski's biggest boosters:

Harvey Weinstein, the man behind the pro-Polanski petition, rejects the idea that Hollywood is "amoral": "Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion," he told an interviewer.

Let us agree that Hollywood bigshots have "compassion" for people in general, for people far away in a big crowd scene on the distant horizon, for people in a we-are-the-world-we-are-the-children sense. But Hollywood bigshots treat people in particular, little people, individuals, like garbage.

Still, the little people still get to vote - with their wallets when it comes time to choose which flick they'll plump for in the multiplex.

And while Weinstein fondly imagines his moral compass is the best in town, his business judgement is also today called into question:

Mira-Maxed Out: Disney announced today that Miramax will be undergoing a restructuring that will reduce the amount of films the studio releases per year. This year, Miramax has only released four (with one more — Everybody’s Fine — to go), so there’s not a whole lot of room for downscaling. That sound you hear is Harvey Weinstein indulging in the only thing he can afford right now: schadenfreuede.

-- Nick