How About A Compromise on Roman Polanski?
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Hey, I just had an idea: how about Polanski agreeing to come to the United States and face this charge, on one condition. And that condition is...
That the members of the press (if you can call them that) any anyone else who publicly blamed Sharon Tate for her own murder in 1969, calling her a "drug fiend," a "Satanist," a cannibal, a wild party girl, and a promiscuous whore while she was carrying her child (according to all witnesses, she wouldn't even drink wine while pregnant), apologize publicly to her memory and to her surviving family, something that these vulgar ambulance chasers never did before they went panting after exclusive interviews with that loser Charles Manson.
Since we're talking about a crime that happened thirty-two years ago, why not face the injustice that happened after another famous crime, forty years ago?
Arguably, those so-called journalists who spat out headlines attacking Sharon without any evidence whatsoever profited more from her death than anyone in the Manson family, despite all their born-again blather in books.
How about it? Let's hear an apology from those smug, self-righteous hacks who coined the blame-the-victim phrase, "Live freaky, die freaky." You know who you are.
Let's hear them express sorrow for heaping pain upon pain at the expense of the Tate family.
Let's hear them apologize for dissing not only poor, generous, beautiful Sharon, but Abigail Folger, who spent her fortune working as an amateur social worker; Steven Parent, a teen-aged hi fi enthusiast who was merely visiting the caretaker at the Tate residence; Jay Sebring, an internationally-known hair stylist and Sharon's ex-boyfriend who kept an eye on her while Roman was gone (oh, there was plenty of yellow journalism surrounding that--"what was he doing there, they must have had an affair, was it even Polanski's kid," etc., when Jay was a friend of Polanski's, too); and Woyciech Frykowski, who yes, did have a drug problem.
None of these people were cannibals or Satanists, but I'm not so sure about the press. Their sad charges -- screaming "It's her fault! All her fault!" as if they were rejects from an audition for The Handmaid's Tale--forced Roman Polanski to deny them (!) at a press conference.
Here is the link. Unfortunately, embedding has been disabled. A clip from the press conference begins at 1:08; however, the beginning gives background.
It just blows my mind. They called her a bimbo and said that she had no acting talent. (Sharon had wonderful comic timing.) They accused her of carrying someone else's child, or of taking drugs while pregnant. They called her a Satanist (and ironically, it was the thankfully deceased Susan Atkins, Sharon's killer, who briefly flirted with that), and they backed it up with "a photograph showing Sharon in a devil cult" that was in fact taken from one of her films. Come on, that was deliberate.
And then, to add insult to injury, the phony "psychic" Peter Hurkos visited the crime scene, "borrowed" some polaroids taken by a Life photographer to spew more slander about "three men who killed Sharon" and LSD and black magic at the house, and then pocketed the polaroids so that he could sell them later to the press. What a slime bucket!
Well, since we're already talking about something that happened thirty-two years ago, why not talk about something else that happened forty years ago?
(Unlike O.J. Simpson, Roman Polanski did search for the real killers--to the point of confronting someone he was sure had committed the crime.)
How about it, surviving paparazzi? How about it, Hollywood? How about it, newspaper and new agencies that were involved? If we're so concerned about one victim, how about your actions toward another?
Since we're so concerned about crime and morality in this country, why don't you do the right thing?
Shimmies to Swallowing the Camel
Labels: crime, journalism, roman polanski, rumors, sharon tate