LA Times' Patrick Goldstein Just Can't Get His Facts Straight

My most recent piece on child rapist Roman Polanski and the Hollywood toadies who adore him has been taken to task in a recent blog by L.A. Times writer Patrick Goldstein.

Count Mr. Goldstein as one of the Polanski toadies. Let me begin by giving you a little insight into Mr. Goldstein’s personal morality. He’s views the drugging and rape of a 13 year old as a “personal transgression.” As my regular readers know, I am a self proclaimed “rube” who lives out in the culturally barren wasteland know as the Midwest. Out here where we lack the gravitas of those Hollywood newspaper types, a “personal transgression” is when you bump into some coming out of church on Sunday. You say “excuse me” and go home and not to the south of France for thirty years to avoid the consequences of your actions.

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Here, the drugging and raping of a child is the kind of thing that gets you shot by an angry father and gets him exonerated for justifiable homicide whether the rapist made great films or worked at the feed and grain.

Goldstein also criticizes me when he says I “barely bother[ed] to take umbrage with Polanski.” He could be right on that. I only directly called him a pedophile and a cockroach by inference. Maybe in Hollywood those are seen as accolades, but again where I live that kind of talk might get you an ashtray in the eye at the local bar.

Just to show us how sophisticated he is Mr. Goldstein takes an out of left field snide swipe at two commercially successful film directors, Michael Bay and Dennis Dugan. Apparently in Mr. Goldstein’s mind making an Adam Sandler film is much worse than raping a child. Those guys he mocks may also be guilty of a crime worse than child rape in Hollywood, they may be conservatives!

Unknowingly, I may have committed another Hollywood transgression in my piece on Polanski and his supporters; I called one of them a “limousine liberal.” I only cited only one example of Pierce Brosnan’s liberalism in the piece and Mr. Goldstein seems to think that is the only example that exists. However, due to a marvelous system we in the hinterlands call “the internet” I found many examples of Mr. Brosnan’s liberalism.

It’s too bad that Mr. Goldstein doesn’t have access to the Internet or he wouldn’t have had to guess about a comment I made on Mr. Brosnan’s statement that in order to work with Polanski an actor needs to “know his onions.”

Perhaps my sense of humor isn’t quite broad enough for him to catch when I am being flippant about something, so I’ll try to go slower this time so he understands my point. The etymology of the phrase “knowing one’s onions” is a little foggy but is most definitely not “presumably obscure Scottish slang.” Why Mr. Goldstein would presume Mr. Brosnan would use Scottish slang is also beyond me, Mr. Brosnan being Irish and all. You’d think a guy who writes about Hollywood for a living would know something that. He really ought to get this internet thing; it’s great for checking one’s facts!

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