The irony in having Rorschach(sp.) as your avatar...

Animalman said:
quote:
If that's your opinion, fine. I think it's a bit pretentious to tell someone what they should think.

If you had a friend or family member that was a fugitive from the law(and yes, I realize Ford became great friends with Polanski after his conviction; I'm thinking generally), would you be disgusted with them? Would you automatically assume that because of their conviction that they were maliciously sociopathic in their intent?
I've had friends that were convicted of serious crimes: murder, assault with a deadly weapon and the like, and I saw no reason to continue speaking to them. Taking into account whatever circumstances led to such an act, I saw them by and large as people trying to take shortcuts at the expense of others, sometimes even killing someone else with no sufficient justification. Of course, Polanski doesn't figure into your scenario.

I'm not sure what else you can infer about Polanski's behavior but some form of quasi-sociopath behavior: he did the crime, admitted to the crime, then fled the country and has spent the whole of his life offering contrite excuses and rationalizations for his crime.

To make the situation a bit clearer and less morally weighted, take a case of petty theft: a friend of yours has stolen something from an anonymous third party. You understand the item to be stolen, yet because he/she is your friend you ignore the fact that it is stolen. If one lives a morally neutral or morally relative life, one is free to ignore. If one feels no responsibility to an inner morality, one rudimentary enough to distinguish right from wrong, well...

Any public activity which confers an award for an activity can be said to also confer a "moral seal of approval". The Academy Awards are meant to be--at least in principle--for movies that somehow add to the human experience. One can watch a movie and see life played out over the course of a few hours, and understand something about human nature. When we receive awards--perhaps at a job or a civic organization--there is an understanding that we didn't lie or cheat to achieve our ends. What if the awards handed out to car makers for safety didn't take into account the possibility that lies and deceit were used to achieve their goals?

Giving the award to Polanski, taking into account the aforementioned factors, is a farce.