Plenty of celebrities issued crazy statements in their efforts to defend director and rapist Roman Polanski but none went as far as author Gore Vidal did when he labeled Polanski's victim a "young hooker."
In an Oct. 28 interview with The Atlantic's John Meroney about a variety of topics, Vidal claimed he didn't "give a f---" about the Polanski case. "Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she's been taken advantage of?"
Vidal claimed "there was a totally different story at the time that doesn't resemble anything that we're now being told," and pinned the blame for the outcry against Polanski on anti-Semitism.
"The media can't get anything straight. Plus, there's usually an anti-Semitic and anti-fag thing going on with the press - lots of crazy things," elaborated Vidal. "The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel all in white, being raped by this awful Jew, Polacko - that's what people were calling him - well, the story is totally different now from what it was then."
Vidal also asserted that Polanski "seemed vicious and unnatural" to his "persecutors" for not "subscribing to [the] American values" of "lying and cheating."
People didn't persecute Polanksi for his failure to lie and cheat, as Vidal stated. They persecuted him for his "vicious and unnatural" rape and sodomy of a 13-year-old girl.
