You know, there is nothing much to be said about the media frenzy over the Polanski arrest.  That the Hollywood elites would come to the defense of a child rapist is sadly not too surprising.  What has been gratifying is that they are being called out for it, even amongst their liberal counterparts.  Isn’t it great that libs and conservatives can find common ground on this issue?

But what prompted me to post on this disgusting matter was this report from France.  It seems that the “regular” folks there are not pleased that their intellectual betters have offered unqualified support for a man who drugged and then vaginally and anally raped a 13 year old girl.

Marie-Louise Fort, a French lawmaker in the Assembly who has sponsored anti-incest legislation, said in an interview that she was shocked that Mr. Polanski was attracting support from the political and artistic elite. “I don’t believe that public opinion is spontaneously supporting Mr. Polanski at all,” she said. “I believe that there is a distinction between the mediagenic class of artists and ordinary citizens that have a vision that is more simple.”

The mood was even more hostile in blogs and e-mails to newspapers and news magazines. Of the 30,000 participants in an online poll by the French daily Le Figaro, more than 70 percent said Mr. Polanski, 76, should face justice. And in the magazine Le Point, more than 400 letter writers were almost universal in their disdain for Mr. Polanski.

That contempt was not only directed at Mr. Polanski, but at the French class of celebrities — nicknamed Les People — who are part of Mr. Polanski’s rarefied Parisian world. Letter writers to Le Point scorned Les People as the “crypto-intelligentsia of our country” who deliver “eloquent phrases that defy common sense.”

You know, it is refreshing to see everyday American and French people on the same page.  It’s been a long time since that happened*.

Oh, and for the record, Polanski was 44 years old when he raped the girl, so it was not some “youthful indescretion”.

*I am aware that France to did not formally join with the Continentals until 1778 after the American success at Saratoga.  However, France was secretly supporting the revolutionaries even before war actually broke out.  That they did so more from hatred of the British than love of our cause is irrelevant to my point about my new found respect for the French.  Wow.  Respect for the French.  Who would have believed I’d ever type those words?