Thought on Polanski

Did you guys watch The View today? I didn't* (even though, on my Mondays off work, I've been known to), but I read Lindsay's article about it on Jezebel. Alex and I have been talking a lot about this. There's always an icky, uncomfortable feeling that comes along with liking the creative work of someone who's done horrible things in their personal life. Well, I can only speak for myself, but I assume others would agree. It has always been hard for me to reconcile that some of my favorite films are made by a man who left his wife for her adopted daughter (I'm talking about Woody Allen, of course). And last week, we all learned about Mackenzie Phillips's incestuous relationship with her father, which makes enjoying the Mamas and the Papas all but impossible. Most of us aren't capable of divorcing an artist's creative output from the context behind it. I can't ever hear "You Look Wonderful Tonight" on the soft rock radio without thinking of Eric Clapton writing it for George Harrison's wife, nor can I hear "Lady in Red" without thinking about how the singer wrote it for his children's babysitter. I'm not even entirely sure that last one is true, but it's still all I think about.
What I'm saying is, it's difficult for me to think of Roman Polanski as someone who drugged and raped a 13 year old child. But he did.
Alex has a new business venture that's come out of all of this...t-shirts that say TEAM POLANSKI. He'll apparently have at least one customer, and that customer is named Whoopi Goldberg! Probably no one else though, aside from the entire country of France.

*I watched The Golden Girls instead. Blanche's daughter wanted to have a child through artificial insemination, hilarity ensued.