Ev Ehrlich's Everyday Economics

The Content of Their Character

In 1992, Mike Tyson was tried and convicted for the rape of an 18 year-old woman.  The woman was a contestant in a beauty pageant in which Tyson was some manner of celebrity attendant or participant.  He met the woman at the event and, at 2:00 A.M. the following morning, called her to come to his hotel room.  Outside of this outline, Tyson and his accuser differed.  His defense claimed that the woman knew what such an invitation meant, that their sex was consensual, and that her rape claim was buyer’s remorse, after the fact.  The prosecution claimed she was naive and star-struck, and unwittingly putting herself in a position where she would be victimized by a predator. 

Tyson was sentenced to ten years in prison and served three.  His last fight before this imprisonment occurred a few days before his 25^th birthday; he lost the next four years, the prime of his career.  (Ali was also thrown out of boxing at age 25 and lost the next three.)

I’m writing this not to compare Tyson to Ali.

I’m writing it to compare Tyson to Roman Polanski.

Perhaps Tyson victimized a beauty contest entrant; a jury said he did, and that’s the fact until God sorts it out.  But where’s the perhaps in the case of Roman Polanski?  He gave a 13-year-old girl alcohol and a Quaalude and once she was rendered defenseless, raped her and sodomized her despite her protests.  Then he drove her home. 

At various times, we have heard that Polanski thought she was older, that she was pushed on him by her rapacious mother, and that he had negotiated a plea deal in which his time in psychotherapy would be regarded as dues paid.  And with these excuses made, Polanski’s champions claim he has suffered enough.

I’m impressed by the list of people who support Polanski, and I think Polanski’s a talented director and a man who experienced a terrible loss.  But his talent is far from an excuse, and his loss could just as readily have been a platform for spiritual reflection and renewal (as I am now reading in Ted Kennedy’s True Compass) as opposed to a pretext for self-indulgence and evil.

But what confounds and angers me the most is the patently obvious way in which Polanksi is being given, by some, a very high-end white skin privilege.  Tyson’s case strikes me as more morally ambiguous than Polanksi’s – there’s a fairy tale quality to a girl receiving a call from a man at 2:00 in the morning and deciding to go to his hotel room after talking it over with her roommate.  But a 13 year-old girl being taken to be photographed by a director in a meeting arranged by her mother is a different matter altogether.  And yet Tyson was sent to jail for three years and Polanski was about to walk before a judge who was portrayed as “publicity hungry” threw the deal out.  Tyson lost the prime of his career; Polanksi won an Oscar.

Remember that business about “not the color of their skin but the content of their character?”  Now’s a good time to do so.   Polanksi’s talent makes his crime a shame, but does not absolve it.  Neither did Tyson’s.