Chapter 8. Delusions vs. Sanity

So, what do we have as a bottom line?

If we keep strictly to the facts, that’s how it all sounds:

A man committed an unlawful sexual intercourse with a precocious teenager, not a virgin, described as “adult female” by her examining doctors, who didn’t find any traces, let alone of forcible penetration; the female didn’t put up any resistance, claims he wasn’t “forceful” but was “persuasive”, and was perfectly satisfied with a probation sentence for him; later on she filed a lawsuit and got a considerable amount of money. The man fulfilled all his obligations, did the agreed-upon time, was faced with grave judicial misconduct and, prompted by his own attorney, left the country; the three main lawyers on the case (defense, prosecution, and Ms.Geimer’s attorney) openly state it was the right thing to do under the circumstances, since the corrupt court and DA’s office deprived him of any hope for fair trial.

That’s all. I won’t even dwell once again on the corrupt evidence and my strong conviction that it was a premeditated set-up, or on Ms.Gailey’s being a blatant liar, or on Polanski’s being ever since a totally decent law-abiding citizen, exemplary husband and father. Only those dry facts.

But we do not hear them in the media. Nobody bothers with the truth. And now the last thing left for our analysis is to find out the ultimate causes of that mass hysteria that has been raging all around this case.

This won’t be pleasant, but there are some important discoveries ahead.

In every article I read I can count a lot of lies, ranging from factual mistakes to direct slander. Some of the mistakes may seem innocent, like when someone says “France doesn’t extradite its citizens”, or that he spent his psyche evaluation in a “mental clinic”, or “punishment for unlawful sexual intercourse is 4 years in prison”, but there are no innocent distortions in this case, because all facts are in Polanski’s favor, hence all distortions are against him. And all they have against him is lies. Whether or not a citizen is to be extradited, tried in France or left alone is something France is entitled to decide in every particular case, and in our case they understandably didn't see any reason for either extradition or trial. The “mental clinic” was Chino prison and his term there was supposed to be his total punishment. The sentence for unlawful intercourse was undetermined, and nobody convicted of it went to prison at that time (except Polanski, of course). I’ve read there was “DNA testing” that “proved” something - although all it would have proved, should it exist at that time, was the dishonesty of the Gailey’s family. I’ve read of him being “convicted of rape”, also “confessing to rape”, which is both bullshit. And so on.

All fact twisting, even seemingly unimportant, works to perpetuate these cornerstones of slander: “pedophile”, “rape”, “sodomy”, “child”, and “flight from  justice”. We’ve already seen how none of this is true, and that is exactly why media constantly keeps distorting the basic facts of the story. If they kept to the fact, they wouldn’t have a story to tell: something as bland as consensual intercourse with a sexually experienced “adult female” isn’t good enough.

Everybody puts Whoopi Goldberg at stake for coining that “no rape-rape” phrase – I saw people at an American television show actually howling with contemptuous laughter at that – but all she said in fact was: there is difference between “statutory rape” and “forced rape”, and if you refuse to see it, you trivialize and mock the plight of those who were actually raped, not had a plain old intercourse. But, of course, the word “rape” is shorter, it is so much more alluring, so why bother with those legal intricacies?

A CNN reporter (gloating over tourist buses coming to that house on Mulholland drive) inadvertently started his speech with “… Roman Polanski, who pleaded having unlawful sex with a minor…” here he paused, feeling that he wasn’t sounding impressive enough, and emphatically added: “…a child!...” giving his audience an impression that she was prepubescent. We’ve already seen Michael Deacon, that of The Telegraph, quoting Polanski on everybody wanting to “fuck young girls”; in the next paragraph Deacon replaces “young girls” with “little girls” that were never mentioned (“Perhaps he still thinks it’s true that everyone fancies little girls, and that the press was exaggerating the enormity of his crime, and that all this somehow excuses his behaviour” – what a fantastic piece of bigotry) and makes this blatant lie the title of his article: Roman Polanski: 'Everyone else fancies little girls too'

They can’t do without lies. They have to invent them.

Eric Snider writes at his site: “It is very frustrating that Roman Polanski drugged and raped an adolescent girl and fled the U.S. justice system, yet still occasionally produces outstanding films. We don't want a man guilty of his crimes to continue achieving professional success; we want him to be imprisoned.” It is very frustrating indeed that the allegations taken from the dropped counts are stated as facts. It is equally frustrating that Snider, apparently, knows of some “crimes”, in plural, I am unaware of.

The newest articles, the ones that appear after March 10, 2011 Good Morning, America Geimer interview start with “The woman who was raped by Roman Polanski in 1977 admitted today that the justice system's decades-long pursuit of the director has harmed her more than he ever did.” Not bothering, again, with explaining that “statutory rape” is not rape: it’s intercourse to which one of the parties can’t legally consent (“it was just sex”, as Ms.Geimer aptly put it).

I could go on forever, but I hope that’s enough. The are only two kinds of statements media use when speaking of this case, and they are disguised lies or barefaced lies. As a perfect last example that crowns all the rest I will present you an outstanding piece of sick fantasy produced by a person no less than Dr. Judith Reisman (look up if you don’t know).

“I've written often about pedophile Polanski, but since he was arrested in Zurich as a fugitive fleeing the U.S. for child rape, here's a quick review,” she epically starts. I would recommend that you count her lies on your fingers, but a human being doesn’t have enough of those. “Pedophile”, of course. “Child rape”, sure. “In 1977, filmmaker Roman Polanski tricked, stripped, drugged, raped and brutally sodomized a 13-year old, 7th grade girl.” Among the old “drugged” and “raped” litany, there’s some news here: “tricked” (we’ll presently see what she means) and “brutally sodomized”. The experts can wipe themselves with the medical report, Ms.Reisman knows better. The plain fact that Gailey was a 9^th grader pales in comparison. “Convicted of these atrocities, he fled the U.S.” As we remember, he was convicted of “unlawful sexual intercourse”, without anyone, ever, mentioning any “atrocities”. “He escaped because once the judge got some additional facts, his plea bargain (to save the child additional media attack) was deemed invalid”. Did she hope none of her readers would ever have access to any information? The only “additional fact” was that the judge went off his rocker, but even then nobody deemed Polanski’s plea “invalid”, since “unlawful sexual intercourse” was the only thing that made any sense.

From this point on, she quotes freely from Thomas Kiernan (calling him “Polanski’s biographer” to trick people into believing the book he wrote is a genuine biography, although, just like most of the shit ton of Polanski’s “unauthorized” biographies it is nothing but a product of unrestrained imagination); since she accepts his delirium as God’s truth, we’ll treat them as one single entity. So, Polanski “broke open a bottle of champagne. The youngster hesitated, telling him that the last time she had drunk champagne it had made her violently ill. She was asthmatic, she said that the bubbly had brought on an asthma attack.” Do I have to remind you that nobody except Kiernan-Reisman ever heard any of this? Interesting, isn’t it, that in our free-speech society one can get away with inventing anything, and putting any words into anyone’s mouth; but even more interesting is that Kiernan-Reisman don’t seem to know that Samantha never had any asthma, and only said she faked it later in the Jacuzzi. The word “asthma” heard somewhere set off a whole wonderful fireworks of fantasies, the sickest of which are still ahead. I’ll stop commenting now. You know the facts, so now I’ll let you alone with the Kiernan-Reisman delusions:

“Polanski tells her French champagne "could never hurt you." She drinks a glass to placate him. Soon "she felt her lungs beginning to constrict." Polanski says "jump in hot tub It make you feel better."  

"I really don't feel good," she says, "Shouldn't've had champagne. She complained again about her dizziness and shortness of breath. He gave her a tablet and told her to take it, assuring her that it would counter the effects of the champagne."

The police report continues. "Dutifully, the girl swallowed the tablet. He didn't tell her that the tablet was not an antiasthma pill but a high-potency illegal Quaalude from his own pocket. The girl was in a deep champagne-Quaalude daze slipping into unconsciousness."

She was shivering and ashen and weeping. “I'm sick," she mumbled drunkenly. “I want to go home” gasping for breath in shrill, raspy heaves. Mucus spilled from her nostrils.

She lost bladder control and is feverish. Polanski worries that he might be stuck with a "naked American teenager in the throes of a potentially fatal seizure." He "wondered whether he should call an ambulance or the police. He decided to wait."

Why no ambulance!! In a film, should she die, his Hollywood friends might help dump the body.

Still, not to waste a rape opportunity, Polanski painfully sodomized and raped the half unconscious child. "With her breathing still impaired by the effects of the Quaalude and champagne, she immediately gagged and retched. She tried to scream but couldn't produce a sound."

Eventually, she revived. He drove the child home, leaving her at the front door.”

This masterpiece is truly unique, because, while liars usually mix the lies with some truth for the sake of plausibility, or can’t prevent some truth from seeping in, she managed to concoct a text without a single true word! Even Gailey, in her self-contradictory testimony, never said anything that would remotely remind of this drivel, where every detail, even minute ones, contradicts every known fact, whether documented or stated by anyone (did you pay attention to that “police report continues” gag? It is inserted there without any connection to the text, to give one a vague feeling any of this was taken from some mythical “source”). I understand that anything can be used against someone who won’t strike back, but…

… but what? If she is not insane, it is impossible that she doesn’t know she is lying in every word. What can I say – that I shudder to think what she sees in her eyes every time she looks in the mirror? But I refer to conscience here, and she obviously has none. She says, “those who have followed Roman know he regularly rapes, well, sodomizes, children” (I will try to find out how I, as a private person with no relation to Polanski family, can sue her; too much is too much), goes on to rant about the Manson murders (more preposterous lies that are an insult to any honest reader; I’m beginning to wonder if she is a postmodernist genius who contrived to make an Absolute text, with no connection with reality whatsoever), and triumphantly concludes:

“Recapping. In 1977, filmmaker Roman Polanski, an infamous Hollywood pedophile, got caught. He'd done nothing more than drug, rape, sodomize and almost kill a 7th-grade (again) child. Based on his sadistic sexual history (eh?), there was nothing new in that, so he was outraged by his arrest.

Convicted of his ruthless near sadosexual murder (lady, you’re seriously disturbed), the mean judge told Polanski he could get 50 years -- but he'd be paroled certainly.

Thus did Roman flee to France to continue being a lionized pedophile filmmaker.

The Swiss arrested him recently as a fugitive from the U.S. If he is returned to California and sent to the clink -- with all those big, mean guys for his remaining years -- well, that actually starts to sound like justice.”

At last! At last she said that. Now we finally see the whole article for what it really is – drooling. All this piece is nothing but the lady’s indulging in her own unhealthy sexual fantasies, where unconscious feverish girls are losing bladder control in the throes of potentially fatal seizures and get brutally sodomized, while old men are thrown in prisons for “big, mean guys” to do as they please.

I could dismiss her as a sexually frustrated psycho, but unfortunately, with her murderous lies spread all over the Net (while documents are extremely hard to find), many believe her. Worse, her delirium is only the epitome of what all Polanski accusers say. They put it differently, but the essence is always dangerously close to this piece of psychopathic nonsense. This case does breed unhealthy sexual fantasies, that’s the trouble. Hence “rape”, “sodomy” and “child” repeated in every article, by everyone.

This is only one of the reasons why “that side” is so deaf to all arguments. I won’t, however, behave like them and imply that they are all acting out their secret perversion (though some, like Kiernan-Reisman, obviously do); no, there’s more, and far more interesting.

I’ve already mentioned that the words “pedophile” and “child rape” work on visceral level; indeed, they hypnotize people, so effectively that even people who profess “never believing what media feed them” make exception for this particular case. When you’re faced with a pedophile rapist, it’s only natural that you don’t want to look into this any further. You close your eyes and ears, and you close your mind. It puts an end to all kinds of reasoning, because you just don’t want to know. A man rants that molesting an innocent child is worse than murder, because it “kills the soul”, and calls Polanski a “child murderer”; do you think he will hear us if we say that Geimer was experienced and refers to her “murder” as “just sex”? Never.

Whatever arguments, documents or evidence we give, they are not heard. One of my opponents said a precious thing that I have always remembered since. At a loss for arguments against mine, he cut off all possible development of the discussion, saying: what he did is unforgivable regardless of the circumstances. I’d never heard a sane person arguing in such way, not on any other subject; but this subject takes people beyond the realm of sanity and common sense.

Another reason is that condemning Polanski people feel that they actually do something for “women and children”. I’ve had these “countless abused and raped children in the whole world” thrown at me, and asking what the hell do they have to do with Polanski is no use.

Condemning him is a safe bet. If tomorrow Geimer finally comes completely clean and confesses the sex was consensual (at which she has been hinting more and more explicitly over the years), those who are screaming bloody child rape won’t lose anything. After all, they were only defending rape victims, right? No, wrong. Wrong on so many levels. You don’t defend any genuine victims by joining in slandering an innocent man: you perpetuate your self-righteousness at his expense, is all. All you do is harming a man who was chosen as a target by someone’s political ambitions and a desire to drown many a legal misconduct in this bloodthirsty outcry. Taking part in this is just plain indecent, and no amount of victim-defending rhetoric will change it. He is singled out to answer for all real crimes committed by others, to personalize all rapists, pedophiles, molesters, child abusers, having never been any of these. Generations have been raised in this delusion, taught to hate him, a man who has been burdened with the crimes he never committed, personifying them in the eyes of the ignorant. But it is wrong, and doing this to him is a crime. Even if you have been accustomed to this wrong idea of Polanski, have lived with it through all your life, have been used to respecting yourself for it (as if hating him you were actually doing something to righten the wrongs of our world),  it is never late to reconsider.

But the level of rage lynch mobs work themselves up into is such that yet another thing come to mind. The constant calls for stoning him reeks of archaic magic, and thus the picture I see is really very disturbing. It stems in the Old Testament concept of scapegoat: if we find someone who can be burdened with all the sins of the world, we’ll all be safe. In the former Soviet Union, under Stalinism, whenever someone was “repressed” – that is, arrested and subsequently killed – everyone, whether or not they were related to him in any way, was supposed to condemn him; and so they did, with a vengeance, calling him all possible names and inventing more and more crimes to accuse him of. These declarations were really inspired, and they have no rational explanation. One might argue that doing so people hoped to make the regime believe they were loyal and thus secure their own position; but everybody knew there was no security for anyone, and no logic to the repressions. It was just primitive magic, irrational feeling that ritual incantations will keep the disaster at bay for at least a little while longer.

This is what I believe is happening now. Nobody feels safe in today’s world, not with this knowledge that anyone, at any moment, can be accused of any kind of sexual crime, ranging from “harassment” to “forcible rape”, and even in the absence of all evidence they will be - at best - dragged through the mud, lose their reputation and see their destiny collapse; at worst, be put behind the bars with the “big, mean guys” Reisman (and others) so gloatingly invokes, on a bare unsubstantiated word of a dishonest or mercenary female. You can look up the statistics of false rape accusations, and men whose lives have been ruined (see Novalis Lore on this); with the laws being what they are now in the USA, and the public opinion conditioned accordingly, no man is safe. And subconsciously, every man knows it. Thus their rage: it’s a helpless ritualistic, magical effort to make the disaster go by.

I’ve had a discussion with a blogger who declared he intended to “keep to the facts”; thus he presumably couldn’t argue “regardless of the circumstances”, and I didn’t give him up as hopeless right away. I presented to him the facts he didn’t know, and linked him to the sources. His final reply was, he was not going to study the sources or recheck my facts, because he was sure I made them up and none of this was happening.

This is a big step ahead into the realm of self-delusion, and it exposes such visceral fear, and such subconscious feeling that everything is deeply wrong with the world that I could only step aside in awe.

And this is the last reason why the mass hysteria reached such an unprecedented level. Why people do not want to learn the truth. Why they dismiss all the facts that don’t fit into the cherished “raped a child and fled justice” picture. They feel that actual learning the facts will shatter the cozy world they’re living in – and they are afraid because they subconsciously know the world is not cozy. It is very unsafe, and their own well-being can be jeopardized at any moment, by a false accusation and/or by a corrupt court.

All this should be too much for us to fight… but I still do not lose hope.

Well yes, I do sometimes, when I realize, once again, that all means are acceptable for their side, and there’s nothing they won’t stoop to.

They say, so what the case is old or Polanski is old (as if it was our argument)? We do extradite Nazi criminals, don’t we? I heard it on YouTube, an extract from an American TV program. It was greeted by a hearty applause, and nobody said, people, don’t you ever realize there are things that one can’t say and remain human? No. Everything is allowed.

Larry King interviews Debra Tate. He asks her if she has ever talked with Polanski, and proceeds, “How can you have a civil conversation with someone who so brutally murdered your sister?” She manages a shocked, “Roman didn’t murder my sister.” He is unabashed: “I’m sorry. When the fact that he would have this terrible thing happen to him after the death of your sister, to once again focus you into the public light. That’s what I meant.” A slip of the tongue? Wouldn’t that be stretching the concept of “slip of the tongue” beyond probable? Wouldn’t anyone lose his career after such a “slip”, and be made to apologize? No, not in this case. Everything is allowed.

Cokie Roberts, an American Emmy Award-winning journalist, declares on TV the solution to Polanski controversy is very simple: “Take him out and shoot him!” Everybody laughs a hearty approval. Everything is allowed.

The usual inanities are mild in comparison. “What if it happened to your 13-old-daughter?” Sorry, if what exactly happened? If she had lost her virginity by that time, had been introduced to alcohol and drugs, all this condoned by me as her parent? Well, I believe in this case I might pick a famous man, see to it that they are alone undisturbed, cry rape and subsequently sue him for money; that’s precisely what “happened”.

Another oft-repeated piece of nonsense is that he “escaped justice” for so long, and was not extradited to the US, because he is “rich and famous”, or “part of the elite”. If he were “just an ordinary citizen”, they say, he would be jailed/extradited/executed/whatever. I think we’ve seen enough to clearly realize that it’s exactly the other way round. Were he someone different, the case would have been over there and then. He would have been given his probation, and that would be it (or, as I view it, there would have been no use for a set-up to begin with). The magnitude of his personality fits the scale of persecution: he was made an example of then, and he is being made an example of now.

The "multi-million palace"

The wish to say something – anything - hurtful is so big that they, exhausting all usual set of slander and lacking anything in his life to find fault with, constantly mock his height, or what they call his “perpetual smirk”; or dismiss his latest ordeal of both prison and house arrest as a luxury vacation (Roman Holiday, it has been called). There’s been not a single article or post that didn’t use the adjective “luxurious” when speaking of his chalet (some called it “a palace”, confusing “chalet” with “chateau”), in fact a modest wooden house, and many stooped so low as to deride his wife’s saying afterwards, “the nightmare is over”. Why, the unspeakable nightmare (that’s how an article put it) of staying in your own luxury house! I leave it to their conscience. I don’t believe they really don’t understand what it was, not being able to take a step outside or even come to the window; in the middle of unprecedented witch-hunt, being called all foul names a sick imagination can come up with, every day waiting for extradition at the mercy of the career-mad Cooley and those “big, mean guys” who make Reisman and her partisans drool.

I’ve seen many a time the word genius, applied to Polanski, put inside the skeptical quote marks, - why the hell? It’s very much like Soviet propaganda. Let’s mock everything he does, is, and has; all means are good to this end. They try to ascribe to our side the argument that “genius should be above the law”, which we never use. The title of an article in The Observer (July 18, 2010) says: Polanski's 'genius' is only a defense to the morally vacuous. Of course it would be, should the circumstances be as you’re trying to present them! But they are not, so the “morally vacuous” (who miraculously include most artists and intellectuals, many of them respectable and with unshakable reputation, much as The Observer wants us to believe the opposite) are nothing but “informed”. “The apologists for the film director,” the article goes on, “like those for Raoul Moat, are guilty of putting loyalty before humanity”. This is criminal demagogy, with its elegant Moat comparison that is intended to give people a feeling Polanski actually committed a murder. Likewise, In Inland Valley Daily Bulletin a reporter gloats over the way Polanski was treated by insane criminals in Chino and concludes, “I think the prisoners had more of a moral sense than some of Polanski's defenders”. Doesn’t it cross his minds that the “defenders” know him better and/or bothered to look into the facts of the case? No. They are all pedophiles, of course.

Whenever anyone opens his/her mouth to utter a word of truth, s/he is immediately gagged with “pedophile!” thrown in his/her face, an accusation that has never ever had even remote relation to any reality, not in connection with a man who’s never touched anyone who wouldn’t be fully mature and is, for God’s sake, medically certified as totally normal! The irony of the present situation is that the man who was officially declared not a pedophile is now chosen to represent them all in the eyes of the mob. Sorry, I won’t quote this time, but I am sure you’ve seen enough of this idiocy around (the deluded Reisman woman invented a whole “international pedophile movement”... I could pity her if she wasn’t so dangerous in her insanity); the most innocent example is this widespread witticism: now that we’ve seen who signed his petition, we have a list of all pedophiles in Hollywood. The simple idea that it is a matter of people’s honor to stand for the slandered never crosses their minds; but, of course, one must have a concept of honor to understand.

They go as far as to obliterate one of the main democratic achievements, free speech. Everyone who tried to post factual information (and, as I said before, all facts exonerate Polanski) on a newspaper site, knows that in most cases it is impossible. Our comments either do not get past the stage of “awaiting moderation”, or mysteriously disappear after posting, while murderous rant faces no obstacles; the same happens when someone tries to add relevant details to Wikipedia, whose article gives the same old distorted account. We already know why it happens: they are afraid of facts because all facts work towards exonerating Polanski and thus ruin the picture that should be maintained at all cost, even at the expense of democracy.

Now, there’s one simple test. Of course, it wouldn’t mean anything if not for all the other arguments I’ve put here on display for you to contemplate… though, on the other hand… no wait, I’ll come back to this later; first the test.

Spend some time reading what “our side” posts, and what “their side” does. Pay attention to the tone, the argumentation, the vocabulary and the level of information you can see on the “other side”, and especially mark how they are not averse to any degree of hatred, of illiteracy, what are the personal (racist including) slurs they allow themselves, their sadistic blood lust they make no effort to conceal, the hysteria, the insults, the labeling, - I am not even saying the libeling; having spoken enough of the essence, I am now talking only about the form.

I said, “it wouldn’t mean anything”… but it’s putting the cart before the horse. I began my blog by saying, the attitude depends entirely on the information. The unwillingness to be informed, the eagerness to let oneself be manipulated, is a distinguishing mark of lynch mob, so no wonder the more illiterate, ill-informed, ignorant a post or a comment, the more disgusting, hateful, murderous the rhetoric used.

They say, his daughter should be raped. They say, hey, if he is so depressed, I want to be on his suicidal watch, give me popcorn! They say, his wife condoned a lot of other baby rapes, of course, look at that guy in Belgium who kept little girls in his cellar! They say, so what if he is a Holocaust survivor, bwa ha ha, many dangerous maniacs had difficult childhood!

I have read it all in various places, and more. To me, this is really disturbing. I would have believed the world has gone mad – the comments like I mentioned above deprive it of all hope – but luckily, these inhuman beings are not the only ones left in the world.

There’s Guillermo del Toro and Jeanne Moreau; Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, and many many others who signed the Petition. There is the whole of French Academy des Beaux-Arts. There is Emmanuelle, their children, and their numerous true friends. There are colleagues, actors, authors, artists, technicians and other professionals who have or haven’t had the honor to work with him, but who never betrayed the one to whom Brosnan referred, right in the middle of hysteria, as “this great man”.

There is Novalis Lore, Samskara and many others who try to make the voice of reason and truth be heard to public. There are many, oh thank God so many people who commented on Novalis’s blog, confirming that this voice is heard.

And on this note, I rest my case.

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