I spent my early childhood in Hollywood, CA, where my father had lived since the end of World War I. I had the usual kid's awe of movie stars but my father pooh-poohed such notions. "They are a bunch of degenerates" he would say, without ever being explicit.
I always figured the behavior of the movie colony offended his Midwest moral and political sensibilities and let it go at that. Later I learned some of the details of the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, the uses of the casting room couch, and the Red scare and was sure I was right. Dad was a prude and show folk were fast and loose, slept around, and some were Marxists too.
Recently I began to think dear old Dad was right, that I had been too forgiving. What has convinced me is Hollywood's reaction to the arrest in Switzerland of Director Roman Polanski to serve the sentence for a 30 year old conviction of molesting a 13 year old girl.
Eugene Robinson, writing for RealClearPolitics, documents the Hollywood luminaries who have risen to Polanski's defense. Polanski is an unrepentant child molester - what's to defend? It appears the only heinous sin in Hollywood's value system is naming the names of fellow Communists to a Congressional committee.
