The Too Late Show

What's the difference between being a defender and an apologist? It may be easier to point you to the supporters of Roman Polanski and David Letterman.

Let's start with the Oscar-winning director first. You surely know that he fled the country more than 30 years ago rather than face sentencing for having sex with a 13-year-old girl. As a consequence, he's never stepped foot on U.S. soil since, for fear of landing in jail.

Well he landed in jail anyway, but just over a month ago in Zurich, and he and his legal team are fighting extradition back to Los Angeles.

Immediately after his arrest, some big Hollywood names - including Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, and Harvey Weinstein - rushed to his defense. But you would have thought a saint was about to be burned at the stake. Many decried this as unfair persecution, pointing to his artistry, the grisly death of his wife to Charles Manson's followers, and his survival of the Holocaust as proof that he's suffered enough.

And then there's Letterman. A blackmail plot of a CBS producer thwarted by federal officials revealed he had several affairs with female staffers over the years. This from a man who joked for years about not getting any.

Quite a few celebrities, media commentators and fans thought there was no harm, no foul. All the sex was consensual, so who cares? And they feel that those who attack Letterman are moonlighting as moral police officers.

Well, I'm not one to shake a moral stick at anyone but I think both men's supporters are ignoring some inconvenient truths.

Let's start with Polanski. Yes, a recent documentary showed the judge in his case loved publicity and seemed ready to renege on a plea bargain. However, there's a powerful central truth. He plied a 13-year-old girl with champagne and Quaaludes and had sex with her over her protests.

The same documentary showed the same girl, all grown up, stating she forgave Polanski, has moved on and thinks everyone else should, too. But she also reminds the viewer that...Polanski had sex with a 13-year-old girl, which is illegal.

As for Letterman, a former female staffer (who did not have sexual relations with that man) recently wrote a piece exposing the environment created from Letterman's dalliances. While the staffer never witness anything she'd categorize as sexual harassment, there was indeed favoritism. Apparently, Letterman's girls, many very young and with negligible experience, got plum assignments. Some others employees were uncomfortable but felt powerless to speak up.

Plus, there's the general folly of sex in the workplace (Grey's Anatomy notwithstanding). Can a boss who chooses certain employees for sex really create a fair environment? At the very least, there's a skewed balance of power at stake. At worst, an emotional fallout could make things messy - and litigious.

Polanski may have been made into a monster by some zealots, but his supporters queasily go to the extreme in the other direction. They rhapsodize about the movie Chinatown but they easily ignore that...he had sex with a 13-year-old girl, which is illegal.

And Letterman supporters point out he's an entertainer, not a politician bound to a moral code. True. But he also crossed the sexual line on the job and humiliated his wife (who has been with him for 20 years) and the mother of his child with his unfaithfulness (Letterman himself has noted this).

The apologists need to realize that the only apologies in these cases need to come from the men who affected people's lives with their reckless actions.