D’oh!-de to Roman Polanski

Bless Calvin Trillin. In verse, he can skewer a news story more succinctly than a thousand Op-Eds. Recently he Nation’s beloved “Deadline Poet” chimed in on the, um, The Roman Polanski Affair, and in so doing, sounded the final bell… though you may still hear reverberations for a while. After all the hand-wringing, belly-aching and brow-beating from both sides of this open and smut case, Trillin deftly passes judgement, sentencing Polanski to some… poetic justice. Below, I reprint Trillin’s indictment which originally appeared in the October 26th, 2009 edition of The Nation. Enjoy.

(And, if you need more, want more Trillin, check out my interview with the wit taped earlier this year at Words & Wine.)

(For more about Polanski, revisit my interview with the filmmaker’s unauthorized biographer, Christopher Sandford.)

What Whoopi Goldberg (‘Not a Rape-Rape’), Harvey Weinstein (‘So-Called Crime’) et al. Are Saying in Their Outrage Over the Arrest of Roman Polanski

by CALVIN TRILLIN

A youthful error? Yes, perhaps.
But he’s been punished for this lapse–
For decades exiled from LA
He knows, as he wakes up each day,
He’ll miss the movers and the shakers.
He’ll never get to see the Lakers.
For just one old and small mischance,
He has to live in Paris, France.
He’s suffered slurs and other stuff.
Has he not suffered quite enough?
How can these people get so riled?
He only raped a single child.

Why make him into some Darth Vader
For sodomizing one eighth grader?
This man is brilliant, that’s for sure–
Authentically, a film auteur.
He gets awards that are his due.
He knows important people, too–
Important people just like us.
And we know how to make a fuss.
Celebrities would just be fools
To play by little people’s rules.
So Roman’s banner we unfurl.
He only raped one little girl.