Another year, another celebration of sexual predators by the cultural establishment.

I wrote a piece not long after I began writing at Hot Air about the case that turned me into a culture warrior, and that case was Roman Polanski’s drugging and rape of a 13-year-old girl and Hollywood’s persistent embrace of the director. Hundreds of actors, authors, government officials, and MSM folks rallied behind Polanski and protested his being barred from entering the United States to attend the Oscars–despite his still being a fugitive from justice, having skipped bail to escape jail for the rape.

All those #metoo activists love the child rapist. He was once arrested in Switzerland in order to be extradited to the US, and the French government and intellectuals rallied behind him and pressured the Swiss to let him go.

They did.

Polanski is an artiste, and artistes don’t have to follow the same rules. Neither do other elites, who routinely get away with committing similar offenses without consequence. The French Minister of Culture at the time of Polanski’s arrest, Mitterand, had himself written about his sex romps with young boys in Asia, who had been sold to him by pimps.

Woody Allen and Roman Polanski to bring new movies to Venice Film Festivalhttps://t.co/gTVdRyJWVH

— The Week (@TheWeek) July 25, 2023

The Roman Polanski case is crystal clear: he is a rapist, and no amount of sugarcoating it changes that. He has often mused that he is being persecuted. After all, everybody wants to sleep with young teenage girls, so what is the big deal?

Yeah, well, we tend to have laws against bad things that people want to do–that is why we need a law, after all–and we don’t pat people on the back for getting away with murder or rape.

Woody Allen, on the other hand, is not a proven sexual abuser, but I am pretty sure that a guy marrying the adopted daughter of his long-time near-wife, after having helped raise her, is not something most of us think is quite kosher. It is, in fact, downright creepy. I say this as somebody who loved the early Woody Allen movies.

None of this matters, though, to the people at the top of the cultural pyramid. No rules apply to them. How many celebrities pimped out aspiring actresses to Harvey Weinstein? Everybody knew what he was doing, and nobody cared until some actresses who made it to the top tier finally got their revenge. And only because they, too, were at the top of the cultural pyramid.

She was Harvey Weinstein's friend, too. pic.twitter.com/f3XKKoCB6J

— THE Book Goddess (@misstozak) July 16, 2023

Perversion is pretty normal among the cultural elite and is apparently tolerated as the right of the elect. Fallout is unusual unless other members of the elite are harmed. Think Jeffrey Epstein, who paid a price when photos of illicit activities got out, such as those of Prince Andrew. But you will note that all of Epstein’s other clients remain unnamed.

It is not unusual for elites to get away with things that others wouldn’t, but then again in most societies there is no pretension that we live in a rules-based democratic society.

We apparently do not. It is not just money and power that protects the elite–after all, rich people can hire the best lawyers–but rather the apparent indifference to morality aside from virtue signaling.

Is it really too much to ask that our cultural leaders be something more than moral bottom-feeders?

Yes, it apparently is.