Just for a moment I want you to imagine that Roman Polanski was a priest. Frightening, yes? But for the sake of my point imagine that he’s a priest who drugged and raped a thirteen year old.

Imagine he’s a priest who fled to France so as to avoid punishment for his crime. Imagine that he flaunted his freedom in America’s face for decades.

Now imagine that Roman Polanski as a priest was apprehended by the police after all those years. Now, imagine what the media would be saying.

If Roman Polanski were a priest would we be getting quotes like these from the media?:

With the state Legislature forced to make dramatic cuts in the prison budget and a three-judge federal panel having recently ordered California lawmakers to release as many as 40,000 inmates in response to the scandalous overcrowding of the California state prison system, it seems like an especially inauspicious time for the L.A. County district attorney’s office to be spending some of our few remaining tax dollars seeing if it can finally, after all these years, put Roman Polanski behind bars.

And:

Meanwhile, Polanski’s victim, Samantha Geimer, long ago announced that she had forgiven the filmmaker for his transgressions and supported various efforts to have the case against him dismissed.

Or this:

you’d hope that L.A. County prosecutors had better things to do than cause an international furor by hounding a film director for a 32-year-old sex crime, especially one that Polanski’s victim wants to put behind her

Or this from The Washington Post:

“The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, called the arrest “a little sinister” after such a long lapse. The French culture minister, Fr?d?ric Mitterrand, said he was upset to see Polanski “thrown to the lions for an old story that doesn’t really make any sense.”

And this:

Fellow filmmakers, including the directors Costa Gavras and Wong Kar-Wai, along with actresses Monica Bellucci and Fanny Ardant, signed a petition in France that called the arrest “inadmissible.”

Now, could you imagine the mainstream media running quotes defending a priest from serving his sentence in a similar case.

In fact, wasn’t it the same mainstream media who used the abuse scandal to tar the entire Church?

If Roman Polanski were a priest France wouldn’t love him, the media wouldn’t love him, the film making industry wouldn’t love him. But he’s a big time director. He’s edgy. He’s a talent. He’s one of them. So they forgive. And they urge us all to forget. If this keeps up pretty soon the media is going to start asking what the thirteen year old was wearing before the rape.

Update: I write it and then it happens. Wow. Whoopi Goldberg just said Roman Polanski didn’t really commit “rape-rape.” Not even sure what that really means. But wow, they’re sinking to the depths pretty quick. Hot Air has the story and the video.

Update 2: David Gibson of Politics Daily had a similar take. His is better written and smarter than mine. But hey he’s paid to do this stuff. Here’s the link to Politics Daily.