Most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they're capable of... anything!

(Warning: The following post is meant to be taken with a strong dose of Leader Brand Irony, a hyperbolic deconstruction of contemporary mores, etc. I in no way shape or form endorse amnesty for child rapists...untalented child rapists.)

Via Gawker I learned about an artist who has constructed a big wooden tunnel as part of an installation, where if you crawl through it into a room, he will be waiting and will rape you. It's called "The Rape Tunnel", says the artist:

I've constructed a 22 ft tunnel out of plywood that leads into the project room. There is no way in or out of the project room except for this tunnel. As you travel through the tunnel, it gets smaller and smaller, making it so that you have to crawl and put yourself in a submissive position in order to reach the tunnel's destination. At the end of the tunnel the subject will find me waiting in the project room and I'll try to the best of my ability to overpower and rape the person who crawls through.

Of course, I bring this up only to reference another artistic genius who has had to rape, suffer for his art. I speak of course of the recent arrest and possible extradition of Polish midget/Oscar Winning director Roman Polanski, who after nearly thirty years may now face punishment for drugging and ass-fucking a 13 year old girl at Jack Nicholson's house. Polanski has been at the center of a cross-Atlantic culture tug-of-war between those who view him as a tragic, artistic genius and the self-righteous Philistines who forced him into exile, for the mere "crime" of sexually assaulting a minor.

Now I don't know where you fall into this debate, or how your personal morality shakes out, but I think it is possible to hold both these views. While Polanski is almost certainly guilty, I take a view that great artists should be given the broadest possible leeway when it comes to "laws." I'm not saying they should be allowed to get away with murder, but I think if one makes a movie as good as Chinatown you get to rape at least one teenager, boy or girl, and when you add Knife in the Water, Repulsion, The Tenant, Rosemary's Baby, and The Pianist, he's entitled to a veritable one-man rape-o-caust, and Mr. Polanski is quite frankly, behind the curve thus far. You may ask, "But, but Leader, how can you excuse Polanski but openly advocate the swift and brutal executions of Catholic priests who do the same?" The answer is simple: The Catholic Church has not commissioned a decent work of art since The Renaissance.

Now all this happened almost exactly after his wife's most notorious killer died in prison, which adds another layer, that is to say most of the people righteously pursuing Mr. Polanski have never had their mother carted off to Auschwitz or had their wife and unborn child butchered by the Manson family, let alone directed The Ninth Gate. Perhaps most telling, none of his most strident accusers have ever really been in a position where naked teenage girls and drugs are freely on offer, and are thus free to cast judgment without any real frame of reference. Like Noah Cross said, most never have to face the fact that in the right time and right place, they're capable of anything. In other words most men will never the get the chance to hang out at Jack Nicholson's house. Which bring us to America's Worst Columnist, Richard Cohen, who in the course of a "lemme at him" pantomime, gives us this crime against humanity:

Polanski is a great film director -- although the much-acclaimed “Chinatown” has a muddled script -- but his true talent is to make fools of his friends.

Cohen goes on to write, "I mean 'her sister and her daughter', that doesn't even make sense." You see, what I'm trying to say with all this is that artistic crimes will always trump actual crimes. It has been said that in the realm of art all is permissible, well the same must be extended to the men who create it. Conversely, those who degrade great art or like bad art must face dire consequences, and for this particular crime of not getting Chinatown and then writing about it, Richard Cohen must be put inside The Rape Tunnel.