Time may heal but it doesn't excuse

When did raping a child become excusable?

The furor and outrage over Roman Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland on the weekend has left me virtually speechless. This is not a man who is falsely accused – he in fact pleaded guilty all those years ago and then was worried his plea agreement wouldn’t be respected so he did what people of means often do, he fled.

He was ever so crafty. Lived in France and ironically, Switzerland. He made movies all over the world except in those countries likely to extradite him to the United States and won an Oscar or two in the process.

That he is a brilliant filmmaker is not in doubt.

But that he is a rapist is also not disputed.

According to the unsealed Grand Jury testimony and summarized nicely on The Smoking Gun web site, Polanski got his victim drunk and he drugged her. And then he raped her.

Two weeks after Polanski plied her with Champagne and a Quaalude, Samantha Gailey appeared before an L.A. grand jury and recalled Polanski's predatory behavior in a Mulholland Canyon home owned by Jack Nicholson.

The teenager's troubling--and contemporaneous--account of her abuse at Polanski's hands begins with her posing twice for topless photos that the director said were for French Vogue. The girl then told prosecutors how Polanski directed her to, "Take off your underwear" and enter the Jacuzzi, where he photographed her naked. Soon, the director, who was then 43, joined her in the hot tub. He also wasn't wearing any clothes and, according to Gailey's testimony, wrapped his hands around the child's waist.

The girl testified that she left the Jacuzzi and entered a bedroom in Nicholson's home, where Polanski sat down beside her and kissed the teen, despite her demands that he "keep away." According to Gailey, Polanski then performed a sex act on her and later "started to have intercourse with me." At one point, according to Gailey's testimony, Polanski asked the 13-year-old if she was "on the pill," and "When did you last have your period?" Polanski then asked her, Gailey recalled, "Would you want me to go in through your back?" before he "put his penis in my butt." Asked why she did not more forcefully resist Polanski, the teenager told Deputy D.A. Roger Gunson, "Because I was afraid of him."

She was 13 years old. She was a child at the time. And she said no.

We have a justice system not just to seek justice for the victim but seek justice for society. A crime like Polanski’s, and make no mistake, it is a crime and a violent one at that, damages our societal fabric and it must be punished.

His victim may have forgiven him and may wish for the whole thing to disappear – for a variety of reasons – but none of that changes what he did. He raped a child. And all the Oscars, lifetime achievement awards and years ticking by won’t alter that fact.
Polanski may be genuinely sorry. He may regret to the very depth of his soul what he did but that alone does not excuse him from facing punishment.

Why is he deserving of different treatment? He may be a brilliant man but that actually doesn’t make him all that different from many other convicted rapists. If he were a steel worker, or a bureaucrat or a police officer or a doctor who committed the same crime all those years ago and fled justice, would Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Presidents and actors be calling for us all just to move along?

And what kind of message are we sending to other victims of sexual violence when we excuse him so easily?

The Age of Nothing

Welcome to the Age of Nothing

Over the course of the universe we have seen many ages: golden, enlightened, Cambrian and as we slide to the end of 2009 it is clear to me we have entered a new age; a yet heretofore recognized age – the Age of Nothing.

Never before in the course of human history have we been so closely linked to one another. Technology has opened up worlds of possibility to us. We can, thanks to the internet, talk to people around the world, have instantaneous reporting from even the most remote parts of the world and watch history as it unfolds before our very eyes.

I think it is fair to say that our forbearers could never have conceived of the world we live in today. The men of the Canadian military who boarded boats to Europe and Asia to fight for King and Country in the Second World War could not have fathomed a day would come when drone bombers flying in Afghanistan and dropping bombs would be controlled in Nevada.

‘Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes’ has become ‘Don’t fire until the target appears on the radar screen.’

Survivors of the Killing Fields in Cambodia, the disappeared of Argentina and apartheid in South Africa among others are left to imagine how different their experiences might have been if they had been able to take to Twitter and let the world know, in real time, of the oppression and genocide.

We are on the cusp of so many breakthroughs – in medical research, scientific research and the very capacity of us ourselves.

And yet in the face of this previously unimagined access to each other what are we doing? What is to be our legacy?

So far? Nothing.

We are more plugged in and yet at the same time less connected. We no longer debate, we defeat. We don’t discuss, we dismiss. Should your opinion not be exactly like mine there is no room for dialogue. We are only interested in the monologue.

Social networking, Twitter especially, has proven at times to have an enormous influence on the immediate. The flow of information from Iran following the elections was unprecedented and an example of how powerful the organic can be. But for the most part we aren’t engaged in a dialogue with those around us. We speak but do not listen. The very advent of Twitter and Facebook are so self-centred (and in the interest of full disclosure I have accounts on both sites). They ask us what we are doing. They don’t ask us what our friends are doing or what is happening in the world.

We post opinions, espousing them as fact; hammering people over the head should they deign to disagree (a sin I may be guilty of from time to time.) The more we know of each other, the more we share, the more fearful we are that people will – gasp! – disagree with us. These days dissent is viewed with as much affection as H1N1. It is through debate, discussion and disagreement that we grow. Opinions are meant to be swayable in light of new or more pertinent information. We should never be so rooted to a position that we are unable to respond to a sharp bend in the road.

As people refuse more and more to live “off camera” because it is their right to tell everyone everything, we fall off the path of where we were headed. Per the site’s advertising package, 13.5 million unique visitors scroll the pages of Perez Hilton.com every month. There are NGOs, governments and legitimate news organizations who would give pretty much anything to have a tenth of that traffic to their sites. While I am relatively confident that Mario Lavandeira is a good guy, I don’t feel the same about Perez Hilton. I will readily admit I have visited the gossip pages and snickered and rolled my eyes what’s being reported – my feet are clay covered like everyone else’s. But as I do, I’m aware it’s like drinking a can of Coke – tastes sweet going down but the sugar is going to rot my gut. Gossip sites, while at times harmless fun, are the greatest product of the Age of Nothing. They are pages and pages and pages of information and pictures that contribute nothing to the village. Garbage in. Garbage out.

If the world is indeed, as McLuhan suggested, a global village, what the heck are we all doing hanging out in the village outhouse?

There has been, of late, a huge hue and cry about our rights. “MY RIGHTS!” People shout from the rooftops as if it is an absolute that supersedes all. This Age of Nothing has been marked by pockets of Entitlement. We focus on what we are owed rather than what we owe. Kanye West doesn’t like the result of a video popularity contest and he reacts like a boor. He is, after all, entitled to his “feelings.” Serena Williams doesn’t like the call in a tennis game (emphasis on the word ‘game’ here) and she threatens a woman, almost a foot shorter and 80 pounds lighter, with the presence of tennis ball in her gullet. She is allowed, entitled, because this was important to her and what matters to her is of greater importance than everything else. Joe Wilson, ignorant that institutions and office require respect even if the office holder or institutional leaders are not to your way of thinking, yells out that the President lies. Free speech is his right, after all.

The Age of Enlightenment advocated for reason as the primary source for legitimacy and authority. The Age of Nothing advocates for ‘me first’ as the primary source period. For all the talk of our individual rights there is no talk of our individual responsibilities; as though we believe the two aren’t related. Free speech is a right but it is also a responsibility – you must use it judiciously and powerfully. Responsibility is something that was easily understood and accepted in times before this. Now, if we make a mistake, we call press conferences, write books, cry on cue or shrug it off as being the fault of anything but our own actions. It was our parents, the drugs, the lack of hugs or too many of them, the violent cartoons, the vaccines, the sugar, the meat, the hole in the ozone layer or not getting good Halloween candy when we were six. It was those things and many more but it was not us. We can tweet it, blog it, facebook it or text it so long as it’s clear we aren’t responsible for it.

Because if we are responsible we must do something. Not nothing but something.

And if we do something then we need to discuss and debate and disagree but ultimately work together.

And if we work together then we will probably produce something. Something.

And while it may sound less romantic than the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Something is a much better legacy than the Age of Nothing.

The road in front

Yesterday a 34 year old woman was killed outside of my office building. She was a cyclist who, somehow, collided with a bus. She was dragged underneath and died.

The road was closed for hours - almost 6 hours by the last count. There were police, ambulance, press and all kinds of observers present. There were pylons, blankets, tarps and police tape. After several hours, they finally lift the bus and were able to free the woman's body.

I have travelled that same path on my bike many, many times as I biked to and from work and I know there but for the grace of God go I. It has been a dangerous bike season on the roads this year - several fatalities and too many accidents.

As I walked up the sidewalk to my building this morning I saw the pylons, blankets, tarps and tape were all gone. In fact if you didn't know about the accident, if you didn't know what had happened you would have had no idea that anything had happened. The road and sidewalk were both clear.

And then it hit me.

Shouldn't there be SOMETHING? ANYTHING? A young woman lost her life less than 18 hours earlier in front of the very spot I was standing on and the place was void of any recognition of that.

A thousand times a day in a thousand places in the world people die and it goes unmarked except by those who love them. And I get that and for the sake of the world turning, it's probably how it should be.

But for the next little while, as I enter and leave my building, I am going to spare a thought for that woman. And I'm going to hope those who love her know that just because there is no marker on the road means that people don't recognize the loss that particular piece of road represents.

The truth in its many forms.

My friend Maha has a very honest post about the truth asking "How do you spell truth" - worth a read if you are so inclined.

Another peek inside the truth is Post Secret. If you have not had an opportunity to check out this project that allows us all an insider's view on some of what our friends, neighbours and even strangers are thinking. It is powerful in its honesty and its realness.

So fkn tired

My job is an interesting one. Most days I can survey the headlines and know, in varying degrees of detail, the whole story - the part that isn't printed. It can be fascinating, addictive and on occasion, fun.

But when it blows up, it blows up big. For the last three weeks I have been running for probably 12-16 hours day, including weekends, working on something. There is an end to it - it just keeps getting pushed back.

As a result I am tired. Fkn tired.

There are all kinds of blog posts I've started and not finished because there hasn't been time and I hate not being able to write the fun stuff after a day of writing the seriousasdeath stuff.

I'm not seeking sympathy (though I won't object if you give me some. I wouldn't object to a drink either.) but rather just trying to explain the lack of entries here.

I have noticed the more tired I get, the more fixated on small, irrelevant details I get. Like, why do women wear high heeled, open toe shoes that are too small and thus their toes are hanging over the end? It's gross.

And don't your toes get rug burn as you traipse along the carpet? Why not just buy the next half-size up and have shoes that, oh, I don't know, fit?

You can see the meagreness my brain is capable of these days.

I hope you all are well and I do promise more here soon.

xoxox L.