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SF Chron's Polanski Apologist Gets Mad

| Mon Oct. 12, 2009 3:15 PM PDT

San Francisco Chronicle movie critic Mick LaSalle is getting hot under the collar. The Polanski-supporter published a scathing op-ed just before 10am PST on Sunday, October 11. But by early morning October 12, the article had been taken down. The reason? LaSalle got into a flamewar with his commenters and huffily announced that he was "leaving this post up for exactly five more minutes, and then I'm taking it down because I can't keep up with... the stupidity. Five more minutes, maybe I'll put it back up later..."

To be fair, the commenters were ruthless, and they had a lot of material to work with. I've read a LOT of Polanski apologism, and this was still a jaw-dropper. LaSalle wrote "celebrities get a raw deal from the law and the courts." While admitting Polanski "did a bad thing," LaSalle argues that Polanski's early trauma should "earn him some human sympathy. Just some. So why none? Why no human sympathy?" LaSalle thinks many people hate Polanski because they're jealous of his talent and pretty wife: LaSalle's readers vociferously disagreed. So he unpublished ALL their comments AND the article.

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The article and comments are now back up at SFGate.com, but LaSalle has threatened to pull them again "if things degenerate to the level they were at in the early morning hours..." LaSalle has admitted to personally deleting many comments because (he says) they contained "personal attacks or vulgarity." According to him, the Chron's comment moderators don't have the time to police LaSalle's commenters as quickly as he'd like, so he's picking up some of the slack. LaSalle also deleted a few of his own replies to commenters, but only because of grammar reasons, he said, such as "subject-verb disagreement." Personally, I hope he'll be able to keep the article and comments online, if only because of the 285 current comments, an overwhelming majority condemn LaSalle's views as simplistic and poorly reasoned. I agree, and find it astonishing that LaSalle thought his opinion—that we should all be more sympathetic to the man who drugged and anally raped a 13-year-old—was universal. But hey, we can't all be Jay Smooth. Some choice LaSalle-commenter exchanges below, bolding mine.

Commenter: Mick, you have a tendency to selectively engage with the least defensible opposition.
Mick LaSalle: I don't think there's any nuance of this case where my opinion isn't either out there or can be easily imagined. You might just be agreeing with me, which I would not ask you to admit here, but in that quiet place inside. No, but seriously, I absolutely assumed everyone agreed with me. That's why I was so completely dismissive in the beginning, with the first post. I thought EVERYBODY agrees about THIS, it's just so OBVIOUS. It never occurred to me that I had the minority opinion. It's interesting.

Commenter: Mick, comments were deleted for a previous post including your own, because they supposedly include "personal attacks" and thus violated the Terms and Conditions of the site.
Mick LaSalle: Nooo, if one of my comments is deleted, it's because I said it should be deleted. I had a typo in there that I didn't want to see quoted.

Jen Phillips is an assistant editor at Mother Jones. For more of her stories, click here.

Comments

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Boy, that ivory tower must

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue Oct. 13, 2009 3:24 AM PDT.

Boy, that ivory tower must be very, VERY secure if LaSalle actually believed that popular opinion would be sympathetic to an ADMITTED pedophile rapist! Maybe Polanski did have a traumatic childhood. So? How does that justify drugging and raping a barely pubescent child?

Either offense, the drugging of the girl or her subsequent rape, are wayyy beyond the pale for the vast majority of people. What kind of people do they grow up there in SF to think it wasn't?

Donor

A RELATED FACEBOOK GROUP

Submitted by DICKERSON3870 on Tue Oct. 13, 2009 4:49 AM PDT.

A RELATED FACEBOOK GROUP -
Name: Roman Polanski Should Be Pardoned!
Category: Common Interest – Beliefs & Causes
Description: This is a group for individuals who believe Roman Polanski should be granted a legal pardon (executive clemency) by the governor of the great state of California (The Honorable Arnold Schwarzenegger).

LINK – http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=140671249769

Even a rapist deserves a

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue Oct. 13, 2009 6:46 AM PDT.

Even a rapist deserves a fair trial.

castration

Submitted by head butt pro (not verified) on Tue Oct. 13, 2009 2:09 PM PDT.

His balls and small dick should be removed!
Major piece of shit...I hope that he gets cancer and dies a slow painful death......but that's just me...I don't think that you should ass rape a child.

More than the chop

Submitted by head butt pro (not verified) on Tue Oct. 13, 2009 2:14 PM PDT.

Actually, I would like to shave his head, take a giant shit and then lay a nice skid mark on his bald fucking melon....just because he is a douche bag...

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Donor

LaSalle is a moron.

Submitted by auntikrist on Fri Oct. 16, 2009 7:23 PM PDT.

LaSalle is a moron. Polanski had a fair trial and pled guilty to drugging and having sex with a minor which is against the law. I don't give a damn if she took the drugs willingly and had sex willingly with him (which she did NOT) The law says you do not put your penis into a girl who is underage, no matter what -- and that is that unless the laws are changed.

Polanski broke the damn law and needs to face up to the consequences. I don't give a crap if the jerk walks on water artistically. He is an escapee from justice and I hope they extradite his sorry ass.

LaSalle is an ignorant chump and acted like a child about his thoughtless article and the reactions to it. Seems like he can't "man-up" any more than Polanski can.

Feh. Disgusting.

"If you've never seen an elephant ski, you've never been on acid." ~~Eddie Izzard

Hmm, considering I've had

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Oct. 14, 2009 9:04 PM PDT.

Hmm, considering I've had NannyJones yank my comments, none of which were obscene or abusive, and all of which were yanked without a single discussion of WHY they were yanked, I am hard put to understand why you're suddenly upset with people pulling comments.

That said, LaSalle has always been one of those opposite direction move critics. He says a movie is good, I know it's shit. He says it's shit, the movie holds promise.

Since you're policing SFGate now, why not get on that pretentious yuppie idiot Morford?

Sorry if you've had comments deleted

Submitted by Sam Baldwin on Thu Oct. 15, 2009 12:20 PM PDT.

tagged as:

because it they were inoffensive then it was not our intention at all that they be removed. It may have been our anti-spam system that deleted them and we are working on this problem. A piece of advice, anonymous: If you register on the site your inoffensive comments will never be deleted accidentally. Sincerely, NannyJones