Speaking of the academy awards, one of the nominees is a criminal on the run. As usual you can go to France and they won't send you here even if you've committed a crime. Anyway, I've seen this mentioned a few times, usually mentioned with no explanation as to why (assuming perhaps that you've heard the story), but sometimes you get remarks like this: "It remains to be seen whether Polanski's fugitive status will have any bearing on his Oscar chances. There is a chance that because his transgression was having sex with an underage girl, the so-called family-values gang will protest his nomination." from salon. This is quote makes it sound as though he did something which wasn't that bad, i mean sex with an underage girl could mean a lot of things, and although its usually illegal, and certainly not a particularly good idea for adults to be having sex with older teenagers, it certainly doesn't have the same ring to it as someone on the lam for say murder. I mean most 17 year olds are having sex anyway. But, if you look into this, as they have say at the Volokh Consipacy, you discover that what he did wasn't "having sex with an underage girl" but raping (and I don't just mean statutory) a thirteen year old! This shouldn't be something taht you think of as something that just the "the so-called family-values gang" is upset by. We're not talking about a 17 year old having consenual sex with someone who may happen to be older than her (which again, i don't think is a good idea, and I wouldn't do it, but most 17 year olds are having sex after all) we're talking about drugging and raping a 13 year old kid.

I wouldn't vote for him. I'd considering voting for his film, but there's a limit to what sort of people you recognize with awards, and he's crossed it and should be in jail.

This post is a particular example of my general dislike of using really bad terms for things which are a lot less bad. We shouldn't call consenual sex with 17 year olds "rape" of any sort, because regardless of whether its a decent nice thing to do, it is in a different category then what say Roman Polanski or any other actual rapist has done.