With characteristic calm and objectivity, Vidal said:
I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?You could at least put down your cocktail for a second.
Vidal goes on to claim that Polanski was skewered by the "anti-Semitic and anti-fag thing going on with the press" at the time, and disputes "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." Mr Vidal then adds that the version of the story being peddled by the press today differs substantially from the vituperative gay-and-Jew-hating that pervaded coverage back in the 1970s: "There was a totally different story at the time that doesn’t resemble anything that we’re now being told," he said.
Well, Gore, I took the liberty of looking up exactly what the press said about the case at the time, and gosh!, are you right! What a witch hunt!
A lawyer representing the family read a letter before Judge Laurence J Rittenband, saying . . . the family was "not seeking incarceration" of Mr Polanski, only an admission of wrongdoing and a rehabilitation program. . . .I guess Polanski was also feeding Gore Vidal Quaaludes at the time.
The assistant district attorney also said the judge could recommend that Mr Polanski, a French citizen, not be deported. (Grace Lichtenstein, The New York Times, Aug 9, 1977.)