Regarding Polanski and the Rule of Law:
The Rude Pundit wasn't going to comment on Roman Polanski case because it's a ridiculously simple thing: fugitive rapists should be brought to justice. That would seem to be an absolute. As for the high profile people defending Polanski, well, shit, just because your friends like you, it doesn't mean you're not a criminal. Hell, you could probably find insane religious zealots saying that Elizabeth Smart's rapist should go free because God wanted him to rape Smart. Mostly, though, it's a waste of time, even a few people you would normally think have better sense have said dumb things along the way.

However, there's a bizarre moral equation going on among some (not all) on the right that because a petition calling for Polanski's release has been signed by a bunch of well-known movie people, it means liberals as a hegemonic whole want to just let Polanski go. For instance, because of what Whoopi Goldberg ("it's not rape-rape") and Feminist Majority founder Peg Yorkin (especially surprising) said about Polanski, Rush Limbaugh belched, "That's where the feminazis are today...Just like there was no compassion for Paula Jones, where's the compassion for that 13-year-old girl? Juanita Broaddrick, alleged rape by Bill Clinton, who said he said, 'Put some ice on your lip.' They went after Juanita Broaddrick, not Bill Clinton." Now that's a fucking leap in moral equivalency, but it's really the only exercise Limbaugh gets.

And Limbaugh might be on to something if he wasn't utterly and completely wrong. Outside of show business, virtually every feminist writer and pundit has been squarely on the side of the victim. Kate Harding in Salon, Katha Pollitt in The Nation, you get the idea. When you're dealing with Limbaugh, though, facts never get in the way of some random point you think you're making. (And Limbaugh condemning someone for evading the law is a little like John Wayne Gacy saying clowns are scary.)

There's also attempts to tie the Polanski case to other supposed liberal excesses. On Morning Starbucks on MSNBC, Mika Brzezinski, dominatrix sneer in full swing, compared Polanski to David Letterman confessing to having sex with employees under some general "Hollywood" banner. Over at the Heritage Foundation, the blog is using Polanski as a way to condemn Kevin Jennings, the assistant deputy secretary of education for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools and the latest victim of the right's witch hunt in the Obama administration. Gary Bauer somehow shoehorns ACORN and abortion into his discussion of Polanski.

What's fucking funny is that all of these people who write the lie about how squishy liberals want to set Polanski free get into a righteous froth when liberals say that people who committed torture during interrogations should be investigated and brought to justice. This is not some vague analogy. See, some of us believe in principles, not just politics. One of those is that criminals should pay for their crimes, no matter if they're famous movie directors, CIA agents, or Vice Presidents. We can argue about what the punishment should be. But no one should be excused from answering to the law. It's the right that's always too ready to excuse criminals when it suits their ideological purposes.