Plenty of celebrities issued crazy statements [1] in their efforts to defend director and rapist Roman Polanski but none went as far as author Gore Vidal did when he labeled Polanski's victim a “young hooker.”
In an Oct. 28 interview [2] with The Atlantic's John Meroney about a variety of topics, Vidal claimed he didn't “give a f---” about the Polanski case. “Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she's been taken advantage of?”
Vidal claimed “there was a totally different story at the time that doesn't resemble anything that we're now being told,” and pinned the blame for the outcry against Polanski on anti-Semitism.
“The media can't get anything straight. Plus, there's usually an anti-Semitic and anti-fag thing going on with the press – lots of crazy things,” elaborated Vidal. “The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel all in white, being raped by this awful Jew, Polacko – that's what people were calling him – well, the story is totally different now from what it was then.”
Vidal also asserted that Polanski “seemed vicious and unnatural” to his “persecutors” for not “subscribing to [the] American values” of “lying and cheating.”
People didn't persecute Polanksi for his failure to lie and cheat. They persecuted him for his “vicious and unnatural” rape and sodomy of a 13-year-old girl.
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