This guy makes some intelligent points, but his argument about brushing aside Samantha Geimer‘s plea that the Polanski case should be forgotten because the laws are about protecting “we the people” and “for the good of the people” sounds a little wingnutty to me.
The 78 year-old Polanski doing more time will, I realize, make a symbolic statement that justice prevails and no one can ultimately defy U.S. law. But anyone over the age of 10 will see this as hollow moralistic theatre — a play aimed at those who refuse to tune in to the truly serious corruptions and malignancies plaguing the country and the planet, but whose pulses race when someone talks about putting Polanksi’s head on a pike.
Polanski would do well to stop fighting extradition and just see the situation through in the U.S. and do whatever he can to put the case to an end. A 10.9 Thomson Reuters report quotes Polanski’s lawyer as saying his client “is in fighting mood and determined to defend himself” and then “U.S. judicial sources” saying “the complex extradition process could take years, if Polanski challenges it.” In other words, he’s dug in and determined to stay in a Swiss jail for as long as it takes — possibly “years” — in order to prevent the possibility of going to jail in the U.S. for maybe eighteen months but possibly less. Does that make any sense at all?
I wish someone from the “show compassion, put things in perspective and let it go” side of the debate would make a similar video so we can have a good tit-for-tat.