Anne Applebaum, You Gotta Be Putting Me On

Alternative Shorter Anne Applebaum: I applaud the laudable Swiss referendum that uses a bigoted minaret ban to address an threat that is entirely non-existent in their country. Indeed, I'm so proud of the irrational racism of their attacking-Muslim-architecture policy that I can almost forgive them for their disgraceful arresting-fugitive-child-rapists policy.

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Anne Applebaum, You've Got To Be Putting Me On

In today's edition, Anne Applebaum attempts to further explain the many complexities that make it "outrageous" that someone who raped a 13-year-old and fled the authorities after pleading guilty was arrested. Apparently, the slut had it coming because her mother permitted her to be alone in the same room with Polanski:

What apalled [sic] me about that story was the mother’s reaction, which should have been “I am coming to get you right now.” There is more than one adult who bears responsibility here, which is part of what makes the story so far from straightforward.

First of all, I am (to put it mildly) skeptical of the idea that any mother who doesn't treat anyone who may interact with her daughter -- including in a professional setting! -- as a child molester is irresponsible. This is Grade A, or "Tim McCarver" level, second-guessing. But even if we assume that the victim's mother should have had the wisdom that Applebaum so easily acquired decades after the fact knowing what happened, it should be obvious that from Polanski's perspective this doesn't provide the slightest mitigation or "complexity" whatsoever. Whether or not her mother acted wisely, the choice to drug and rape an adolescent* was Polanski's alone, and he alone shares the moral and legal responsibility. It's frankly amazing that it's necessary to explain this to anyone, let alone a well-compensated national pundit.

And then, there's this:

Yes, there is “evidence” that Polanski did not know the girls age – or that he was told but did not believe it: He has told people since that, anyway. Pictures of her from the time show a girl who could be anywhere from 12-25.

Given this standard -- in which even actually being informed of a victim's age doesn't constitute evidence -- I don't see any reason to keep statutory rape laws on the books at all. But it's worse: this is the young woman that Applebaum says could be 25. I don't think further elaboration is necessary.

I'm not even sure what to say about someone who continues to invent new erroneous "facts" and transparently specious arguments to defend someone who rapes a 13 year-old, but I think Brad DeLong's argument that "there is grave moral fault attached to everybody who pays the Washington Post company a cent for any purpose whatsoever" is a good start.

*Applebaum considers this characterization erroneous, but needless to say doesn't explain which isn't true. Since both elements were admitted by Polanski in his plea agreement, I'm sticking with them...

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Further thoughts from Anne Applebaum: The slut was asking for it

Incredibly, Applebaum's followup to her original contribution on the Polanski rape is even more clueless and offensive than the original:

Of course, there were some very legitimate disagreements, including two excellent ones from my colleagues Gene Robinson and Richard Cohen, and I take some of their points. But to them, and to all who imagine that the original incident at the heart of this story was a straightforward and simple criminal case, I recommend reading the transcript of the victim's testimony (here in two parts) -- including her descriptions of the telephone conversation she had with her mother from Polanski's house, asking permission to be photographed in Jack Nicholson's jacuzzi --and not just the salacious bits.

Here's the relevant part of the transcript:

Q. What happened out there after he indicated he wished to take pictures of you in the jacuzzi?

A. We went inside and called my mother.

Q. When you say “we called,” did you call or did Mr. Polanski call?

A. He told me to and I talked and then he talked and then I talked again.

Q. What did you tell your mother?

A. She goes, “Are you all right?

I went, “Uh-huh.”

And she says, “Do you want me to come pick you up?”

And I went, “No.”

And he said that we’d be home kind of late because it had already gotten dark out.

Q. When you said “he said,” did he tell you or did you hear him tell your mother on the phone?

A. He told my mother.

Q, Did he tell your mother any other things?

A. Not that I was listening to.

Q. After talking to your mother on the telephone, what happened?

A. We went out and I got in the jacuzzi.

Applebaum can't even read 20 lines of a trial transcript accurately (the victim never asked her mother for permission to be photographed in the jacuzzi). But that idiocy pales to insignificance in comparison to the moral blindness involved in suggesting, as Applebaum clearly does, that if the 13-year-old victime had in fact asked her mother's permission to be photographed in a jacuzzi by a 44-year-old man that would somehow transform the man's subsequent drugging and raping of the girl into something other than a "simple and straightforward criminal case."

Applebaum's first post on this subject might have been ever so slightly excused by the possibility that she simply hadn't thought through exactly what she was defending. This has no such excuse.

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