Tab Dump

Yes Jerry Brown is insane. At this point, however, non-Euclidian governance is the only chance we've got. Plus his opponents are awful.

Not a bad profile of Jerry Brown. Doesn't dwell on how his efforts in Oakland aimed to replace residents of color with white people.

Nonetheless, this Californian expects to support Brown. The alternatives are actually worse. Yes, this state is broken.

Who else could you possibly support for governor? Newsom is a complete disgrace and more conservative than Brown. Oakland is far better now than before Brown was mayor, and the argument that he's responsible for Prop. 13 is ludicrous. He's terrible because he once ate lunch with Howard Jarvis? Come on...

I'm not Californian, and I'd first encountered Brown as the 1992 populist, and heard the "Moonbeam" hippy reputation, so the profile quite shocked me with its conservative, even Norquistian, portrait.

Your position on Polanski is perfectly reasonable , as is Dionne's. I find it strange that you are addressing this case at all, though. Dionne, Klein,and Ceci Connolly are three of the most reliable mouthpieces for administration policies. If she also writes an anti Polanski piece it will suggest that someone in the admin. thought this position would be a good way to give such white house spokes-journalists some conservative (or "family values") balance.

Neither conservatives nor families have a monopoly on being opposed to the forced rape of thirteen-year-olds, as far as I'm concerned. Some views are just part of being a civilized human being, which Polanski is not.

No they don't. But the considerable defense of Polanski is coming from Hollywood liberals. That has to be acknowledged. I merely remark that I have not seen Ezra at odds before with this group. ever.

While it is most certainly true that there are some people who happen to be conservative who rightly want to see Polanski finally be held responsible to the law because they are disgusted that this hideous crime has gone unpunished, the conservatives speaking out against Polanski are generally using the case as an opportunity to grind their anti-Hollywood axes.

Well, you say so. How do you know why they are speaking out? Reading their minds? In any case, I repeat that the only people I know of protesting his arrest are international leftist celebrities. That's entirely and only where his defense is coming from.

Right, "celebrities" is the key word here. Not leftists in general. If you honestly thought Ezra was going to defend a child rapist, I don't think you've read much of his stuff. I don't think you could find very many reputable lefty wonk/blogger types defending him, just these people who know him and really like his movies, man.

truck1, you never hear the conservatives praising Bono for being married to his high school sweetheart, do you? No, it's all complaints about how Bono is a liberal. "Liberal celebrity" is what makes Bono an enemy to conservatives, even if they share common ground when it comes to claims of "family values."

Members of the same tribe defend their own (in this case, movie celebrities). People who believe themselves to be against a certain tribe will always condemn them (the right-wingers and their fixation with bashing liberal entertainment celebrities). It just so happens that movement conservatives happen to be taking the same side as those with no tribal allegiances to Polanski.

There are people primarily concerned with justice who want Polanski to face the consequences who happen to be conservatives. And there are movement conservatives who see the Polanski case as another arrow in their anti-Hollywood quiver. Amanda Marcotte said it best over at pandagon when it comes to Polanski: "Note to conservatives: thanks, but your help is not needed."

Amanda Marcotte says? She's hardly the sharpest knife in the room. It remains odd and anomalous that liberal democrats are so sure Polanski should be arrested after so many years. What about "moving on"? What about getting a life? All this furor from a left that jeered at plausible allegations of rape made against Clinton. And the woman who was the girl assaulted by Polanski says don't pursue him now. When William Kennedy Smith was accused of rape, where was the outrage among liberals? Nowhere. No, there has to be an explanation of this particular case.

*It remains odd and anomalous that liberal democrats are so sure Polanski should be arrested after so many years.*

Polanski is a fugitive from the law for the crime of rape of a child. He was already arrested. It is his sentence that he refuses to serve that he's avoiding.

The explanation is that "normal people" regard this as a travesty. His "tribe" (his fellow filmmakers) doesn't want to admit that's he's as bad a person as he is, and the movement conservatives would be bashing him even if he had not committed a crime but was living in his house happily married for 40 years with 3 children simply because he's considered part of "lbrul Holluwood." The outrage from movement conservatives at Polanski is just the case of a stopped clock being right twice a day. They hate and condemn everyone in the entertainment industry, and some of those people are genuinely criminal scum. They don't get credit merely because a couple times their condemnation is warranted. I think, truck1, that you don't really know what you're talking about here.

We'll take it from here, truck1. We don't need your help on this one. Go back to screaming about Micheal Moore (happily married with children and still on his first marriage).

Yes, you do need my help, because you have no consistent position on crime, or on rape, whatsoever. It is entirely dependent on who the accused is. By not answering why you were not outraged at the other celebrity accused rapists I mentioned (and the case against Kennedy Smith was compelling) you cite "child rape" here. I still say, how is Polanski worse than a Kennedy, or Clinton, or so many others whose accusers you heap scorn upon? Not a rhetorical question -- I really wonder how Polanski has gotten such a posse on his case. He's been running around a long long time in Europe before getting arrested just at this moment. Why now? Don't you yourself wonder why this case is coming up at this point in time?