Whoopi Goldberg, Super Genius

Today on The View Whoopi offered up this gem on the arrest o Roman Polanski;

I know it wasnt rape-rape. It was something else but I dont believe it was rape-rape.

Just to remind people of the facts;

I met Roman Polanski in 1977, when I was 13 years old, wrote Samantha Geimer, in a 2003 editorial for the Los Angeles Times. He told my mother that he wanted to shoot pictures of me for a French magazine. Thats what he said, but instead, after shooting pictures of me at Jack Nicholsons house on Mulholland Drive, he did something quite different. He gave me champagne and a piece of a Quaalude [a hypnotic drug, also used as a sedative and a muscle relaxant]. And then he took advantage of me.

Geimer now a 45-year-old mother of three who lives in Hawaii and works as a bookkeeper wrote these words a few weeks before the 75th Annual Academy Awards, at which Polanski was nominated for an Oscar in absentia for The Pianist, about a Jewish musician living in the Warsaw ghetto of the Second World War. Much to Americas surprise, the French-born director prevailed, and the golden statue was collected on Polanskis behalf by a beaming Harrison Ford, who described the win as delicious.

But not everyone in Hollywood felt the same way especially those who had young daughters of their own at the time of Polanskis 1977 arrest. But the US-led invasion of Iraq was about to begin and Michael Moores anti-Bush speech during the Oscars ceremony dominated the headlines that night so the controversy soon disappeared. A three-decade-old sex case involving a foreign director was the last thing on the countrys mind.

Still, in spite of Geimers forgiveness of Polanski (in the same editorial, she wrote that she had no hard feelings towards him and that I believe Polanski and his film should be honoured according to the quality of the work), many never forgot the shocking details of the original charges against the director of Chinatown and Rosemarys Baby, which included committing a lewd act upon a person less than 14, rape of a minor, rape by use of a drug, oral copulation, and sodomy.

According to police, the alleged assault happened at the home of the actor Jack Nicholson

As Geimer herself wrote: I said no, repeatedly, but he wouldnt take no for an answer. I was alone and I didnt know what to do. It was scary and, looking back, very creepy. Nevertheless, the charges against Polanski were later reduced under a plea-bargain agreement to a mere unlawful sexual intercourse with an underage girl. But then the judge reneged on the deal and Polanski, fearing up to half a century in a California prison, fled to France. It was as much of a disaster for Polanskis victim as it was for him. Geimer says that the continuing publicity is a just another kind of rape, and that all she wants is for the saga to end.

And that's the sanitized version, click here for the excruciatingly detailed version.

So Whoopi, are you standing by your expert legal analysis that it wasn't a "rape-rape"?

Tell me Whoopi, would you feel the same if it wasn't a famous Hollywood director but instead a Catholic priest who didn't commit a "rape-rape" and fled to France for the last 30 years and then was arrested when he tried to attend a religious event?