Hollywood's moral compass

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Oct 01, 2009

"Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion," Weinstein said.

 That pearl dropped from the lips of Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood impressario, speaking to the Los Angeles Times. Read it again. Let it sink in.

The compassion to which Weinstein referred is directed, in this case, toward film director Roman Polanski, who is facing felony charges for raping a 13-year-old girl.  Weinstein is proudly leading the Hollywood brigade in a charge to the defense of their colleague and friend. Polanski made beautiful movies, he wrote in The Independent, and there were "legal irregularities" in the case against him. Criminal prosecution for such a sensitive soul? "It is a shocking way to treat such a man."

Whoopi Goldberg has chimed in with the memorable defense that Polanski's offense was "not a 'rape' rape"-- presumably because the director wasn't actually brandishing a gun as he drugged the little girl and forced himself on her despite her pleas. You've heard that argument before, haven't you? Defenders of predator-priests occasionally suggested that those 13-year-old boys were probably asking for it. And it's true that Polanski's case dates back to the 1970s, just like so many of the cases against Catholic priests. So it makes sense that Hollywood celebrities, who were so outspoken in their defense of the Catholic priesthood a few years ago, should now come to the defense of...

What? What's that you say? You don't recall hearing Hollywood celebrities speaking out in defense of priests? Oh, my mistake. It couldn't be Hollywood's mistake, because, as you now know:

Hollywood has the best moral compass.

The best. Moral. Compass. 

Hollywood.