"The Left" Strikes Again!
By Neo-neocon bring her mad yoosta-bee skillz to the Polanski issue:
The reaction of no small number of pundits on the Left to the Polanski case is to recommend that we let bygones be bygones.
Amusingly, the post goes on to engage in some speculation about the motives of these dastardly “pundits on the Left” without getting around to naming any of them or their their alleged specific arguments, which one would think would be necessary for her project. And the reasons for this are obvious: leaving aside Hollywood directors/writers and mediocre French “philosophers” (who don’t fit the criteria anyway), the most prominent American pundit to apologize for Polanski has been…Anne Applebaum, whose politics are essentially identical neo-neo con. The one dismaying actual leftist exception to this is Katrina VandenHeuvel, who posted a one-line twitter agreeing with Applebaum’s idiotic column, which she’s partially walked back (albeit with a regrettable endorsement of Wanted and Desired.) And…that’s it. (And, no, Richard Cohen really doesn’t count.) Pretty thin reed to hang an indictment on “the Left,” I’d have to say. (Mother Jones editor Clara Jeffrey’s reactions would be far more representative.)
And now, the punchline:
But thank goodness the rank and file liberals at HuffPo and Salon don’t happen to agree with their journalist “betters” that Polanski should be let off the hook.
Yes, damn Salon for publishing so many apologies for Polanski! I’m afraid neo has a lot to learn about writing lazy indictments of “the Left”; it’s generally a bad idea to even name sources, because it makes it embarrassingly obvious that you haven’t even read the ones you’re criticizing.
For rather more useful contributions on Polanski, see Lauren and little light. They don’t even blame Polanski on the moral relativism of “the right!”