Pardon me if I don't get all weepy about the Academy Award given to Roman Polanski. And if I hear another one of his media shills blame the judge for his having skedadled out of the country to avoid a harsh sentence for raping a thirteen year old girl...I mean, what planet do these people live on? The prosecutor backs away from going after Polanski's hired guns in court and offer him an easy sentence, and the judge doesn't accept that. OK, so the girl in question has now forgiven him; one of the reasons child molestors get sent away for awhile is so they don't do it again a few months later. In the Dwarf's case, he was bonking the teenage Nastassia Kinski (before the Snake Poster and the humiliating performance on Letterman, back when she was still an "actress") as soon as he landed in France.

When the D.A.'s office chickened out on going after Angelo Buono a few years later, the judge hearing the Hillside Strangler case rejected that ploy too, and the State A.G. took over. If Polanski wants to return to the U.S., he should make sure he's carrying his toothbrush at all times. And besides, it was a weak year for films anyway.