Teachout rattles off the names of a host of filmmakers -- including Woody Allen, Jonathan Demme, Sam Mendes, Mike Nichols and Martin Scorsese -- who signed an international petition that "demands the immediate release of Roman Polanski."

There's only one problem: All of those filmmakers, along with Harvey Weinstein, live far, far away from Hollywood and, with occasional exceptions, make their movies outside of Hollywood as well. If you look up the rest of the names on the best-known petition in circulation, it is filled with the names of foreign filmmakers, writers and actors -- including the likes of Pedro Almodovar, Wong Kar Wai, Alfonso Cuaron, Isabelle Adjani and Salman Rushdie -- who also rarely set foot in Hollywood. If critics like Teachout want to claim that high-brow artists and writers have rushed to Polanski's defense, fair enough. But to say that Hollywood is in his corner, as part of a political argument that Hollywood is a liberal elite woefully ignorant of mainstream values, is just hogwash.

There's no petition going around with the names of the real Hollywood elite -- A-list filmmakers and studio chiefs like Steven Spielberg, Alan Horn, James Cameron, Amy Pascal, Jerry Bruckheimer, Brian Grazer, Tom Rothman, J.J. Abrams, John Lasseter or Michael Bay -- because the real Hollywood elite isn't supporting Polanski. In fact, they haven't offered the slightest hint of backing for Polanski. It's only European and New York-based artists, who clearly see the world in a very different light than the real Hollywood elite.

Well, speaking as someone who actually lives and works right in the heart of the city and the business, I can assure you that this isn’t even remotely true.

Their entire argument rests on just three things -- an incredibly poorly conceived off-the-cuff comment by Whoopi Goldberg, a petition that Harvey Weinstein is circulating, and that there isn’t a great hue and cry from Hollywood demanding that Polanski be brought to justice. I cannot speak to Ms. Goldberg’s painfully unfortunate comment, except to say that I have no doubt she didn’t mean it to come out quite the way it did. As for the lack of a hue and cry, I’m not entirely sure what we’re supposed to do.

I cannot pretend, as some have, to have spent the last thirty years gnashing my teeth at the fiend Polanski’s escape from justice, but neither can I pretend to be outraged that a convicted criminal who fled prosecution has been caught. Perhaps I missed the meeting where these things were explained, but it just never occurred to me that I was supposed to stage a rally when something happened that doesn’t bother, interest or affect me in the least. ...

What we are NOT, however, is sitting around fretting about whether or not Roman Polanski will be displeased with us if we publicly state that we think raping children is a bad thing. ...

Then there’s Jonathan Kuntz, who’s quoted as believing “the local reaction may be a version of the ‘there, but for the grace of God, go I.’" Well, again, no, but thank you for the extremely ugly insinuation, and when DID you stop beating your wife, Mr. Kuntz? Does it occur to ANY of these people that we’re not all sitting around in a clubhouse smoking crack, patting each other on the back and hoping not to get caught molesting children? [my emphasis]

The response of so many Hollywood leading lights to the arrest of filmmaker Roman Polanski now suggests that, at least when it comes to one of their own, sex with children is within the pale. This deserves and demands a closer look.

The cultural left has responded to the arrest a week ago of Polanksi with outrage -- directed not at Polanski but at the arrest. [my emphasis]

The moral gap between Hollywood and "Middle America" is vast, though for some reason many Americans blind themselves to this fact. The Hollywood embrace of Roman Polanski and their outrage at his arrest in Switzerland shines a floodlight on this gap.

Are art and artists above moral accountability? The Hollywood elite seem to believe so -- and even to be willing to lend their names to the defense of the morally indefensible. Is the celebrity above the law? Watch this case closely. [my emphasis]

Ardi is, in fact, "so rife with anatomical surprises, that no one could have imagined it without direct fossil evidence," wrote C. Owen Lovejoy, a professor of anthropology at Kent State University in Ohio, and his colleagues in a summary of one of the papers.

Among the surprises: Ardi's jaw and limbs show she was a forest-dwelling omnivore, not a fruit-eater like today's chimps or an open savanna–dweller like other early hominids. Ardi had a brain about the size of a modern chimp's relative to body size (about a third the size of a modern human's). And Ar. ramidus's foot is strikingly unlike that of a modern chimpanzee, the authors of another paper (led by Lovejoy) explain.

The female skeleton, nicknamed Ardi, is 4.4 million years old, 1.2 million years older than the skeleton of Lucy, or Australopithecus afarensis, the most famous and, until now, the earliest hominid skeleton ever found. Hominids are all fossil species closer to modern humans than to chimps and bonobos, which are our closest living relatives. ...

The team's reconstruction of the 4-foot-tall skeleton and of Ardi's environment — a woodland replete with parrots, monkeys, bears, rhinos, elephants and antelope — alters the picture scientists have had of the first hominid to arise after the hominid line that would eventually lead to humans split about 6 million years ago from the line that led to living chimpanzees. [my emphasis]

Like any significant scientific discovery, Ar. ramidus raises more questions than it answers. "It's going to keep generations of students busy," CASHP's Richmond says of the research. It will also likely usher in a change in the common understanding that modern humans descended directly from chimpanzees — as popularized by the illustrated "quadrupedal monkey to upright man" sequence. Accepting the new view of human evolution that the Ardi analyses suggest, says Ward, will mean "tearing that [depiction] up and throwing it out the window."

Simply put, this means the new skeleton reverses the common understanding of human evolution. Rather than humans evolving from an ancient chimp-like creature, "Ardi" provides evidence that chimps and humans evolved from some long-ago common ancestor - but each evolved and changed separately along the way.

The analysis of Ardi gives new poignancy to the notion, set forth nearly 150 years ago by Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley, that there was likely a common ancestor quite different from both modern humans and great apes. Darwin knew, White noted in the recorded interview that, "the only way we're really going to know what this last common ancestor looked like is to go and find it." [my emphasis]

Following Thursday’s announcement, some critics of evolution theory used the latest buzz to point out that “faith” is required to believe pro-evolution scientists who are themselves unsure about many things and constantly changing what they believe to be true.

"’Six months ago, we would have said our common ancestor looked something like a chimp,’" Christian preacher Ray Comfort cited White as having said. "’Now all that has changed.’ Sure has. And it will change again, and again, and again. I know, ‘that's what real science does.’”

Comfort, who has been drawing attention and controversy this past week for his plan to distribute tens of thousands of anti-evolution books to university students, said he needs “hard evidence,” and for him, that comes from Christianity.

“I know where we came from (on the highest Authority), I know why we are here and I know where I am going after death,” he stated Thursday.

“[I]t’s hard to argue with the sort of devotion that evolutionists have,” Comfort added, calling the findings of the Ardi researchers a “faith matter.”

Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, agreed with me that the paper was “slow off the mark,” [on the ACORN story] and blamed “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.” She and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies. Keller declined to identify the editor, saying he wanted to spare that person “a bombardment of e-mails and excoriation in the blogosphere.” [my emphasis]

So what is the theme of our history lesson? It is a story of remarkable volume and utter weakness. It is the story of media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche — even in the Republican Party. It is a story as old as "The Wizard of Oz," of grand illusions and small men behind the curtain.

GREGORY: But, but, but, but the issue of influence, whether the, the harshness of the debate becomes what controls the politics and ultimately influences who emerges to the top of a political party, which is still a question for Republicans.

MR. BROOKS: There's no evidence--Barack Obama was not evidence of that harshness, John McCain was not evidence of that harshness. The people who actually vote, even in primaries, who are pretty hard-core people, they don't go for that. So it's a, it's a margin on the edge. And if Sarah Palin is the nominee, the Republican nominee, I'll eat my hat. I'll eat this cup on the air. But she will not be, because people just don't like that style of politics.

MS. MADDOW: I, I do think that there's a little bit of reckoning that needs to happen on the right for Sarah Palin's success. I mean, she was the vice presidential nominee, she is going to sell a kazillion books and she is the biggest brand name in Republican politics still right now. And she's chose--the person who's writing her book, her last--the last person who she co-authored a book with was called "Donkey Cons" and it was co-authored with a guy who's widely believed to be and I believe him to be a white supremacist. So she's chosen Lynn Vincent, who's written a book with a white supremacist, to write her book, and she's the biggest name in Republican politics.

MR. MURPHY: Oh, but, Rachel...

MS. MADDOW: And you can dismiss her and say she's not going to be the nominee, but I do think the right needs to sort of answer for what's happened to conservatism.

MR. MURPHY: But let me just say, I am a well-documented nonfan of Sarah Palin, at least as a national politician. I don't know her personally. But that's guilt by association stuff. That's the cable stuff. That's the problem.

MS. MADDOW: But why would you--you can pick anybody to be your ghostwriter.

MR. MURPHY: Sarah Palin's a lot of things, but she's not a white supremacist. And...

MS. MADDOW: You could--no, I don't think she is. But when you can pick anybody, why would she pick somebody who's associated with the League of the South, who said that Americans are revolted by the idea of having a black sister-in-law. I mean, she--this is who she picked to write her book.

MR. MURPHY: Yeah, but there's...

MS. MADDOW: Why do you do that?

MR. MURPHY: That's sort of guilt by association stuff, which I don't know and it can--I--check it out.

MS. MADDOW: It's guilt by choice. It's guilt by choice.

GREGORY: OK.

MR. MURPHY: It is, is so, so not important to the central questions in the country right now. But that's what cable TV has become, so I...

MS. MADDOW: Sarah Palin's popularity is a central question in the Republican Party right now.

GREGORY: Quickly, E.J.

MS. MADDOW: And you can make fun of her, but it doesn't make it go away.

MR. DIONNE: Forget guilt by association. Governor Rick Perry may win a Republican primary because he talked about secession. You haven't had somebody win an election on secession since 1858.

MR. MURPHY: Yeah. E.J., I can tell you...

MR. DIONNE: There's a radical strain in the Republican Party. It's not guilt by association, it's right out there.

MR. MURPHY: Yeah, but look...

GREGORY: All right, final thought here, Mike.

MR. MURPHY: Professional political consultant, that one line which you're deducing a complete definition of Perry from, who I oppose in that primary, is not the reason he's going to win. [my emphasis]

Palin and Steele are both being sent to stand in the corner--to pay for the failures of the actual leaders of the party. The whole party is essentially made up of old, stupid, white guy *gamblers*--just as McCain made a gamble that by picking Palin he'd get just enough support and excitement to get over the hump and get into the White House[,] they thought that they could somehow, for a short time, parlay Steele's blackness into a short term benefit vis a vis the Democratic party and Obama. He was the default choice but he was their choice and that was fairly explicit in their public reasoning on why he was chosen--he was there to reassure suburban whites that the GOP weren't stone racists. [my emphasis]

Mercedes fue la voz más grande y tuvo el más grande corazón para el que sufre. Fue la voz de sus hermanos de la tierra que elevó el canto del dolor y la justicia.

Artista conmovedora y admirada primera en la lucha solidaria.

Sufrió el exilio dando ejemplo de coraje y volvió con naturalidad a su sitio de elegida.

Nos deja la sencillez de su gesto y de su danza y la luz de su palabra y de su afecto.

Su canto era la idea: no repetía estrofas sino que transmitía el pensamiento hondo del verso y de la música.

Cantó a su gente y su tierra americana, pero su canto universal fue oído en todo el mundo.

La voz de Mercedes resonaba en el corazón como un abrazo.

Fue un honor cantar con ella. Lo hizo tan fácil, como una hermana mayor en el canto y en la causa de los niños.

"¿Nada quedará de mi paso aquí en la tierra? Al menos versos, al menos cantos", decía el ancestro mexicano. Mercedes deja el mundo lleno de sus cantos, poblado de sus versos.

Somos más buenos después de haberla conocido.
Nos mostró que la canción puede ser una enseñanza.

Shakira Mebarak

Mercedes was the greatest voice and had the biggest heart for those who suffer. She was the voice of her brothers and sister of the earth, who raised the song of pain and justice.

A moving artist and admired above all in the solidarity of struggle.

She suffered exile, giving an example of courage, and returned naturally to her chosen place. [She was exiled during the brutal military dictatorship of 1976-83 but returned to Argentina in 1982.]

She left us the simplicity of her gesture and of her dance and the light of her word and of her feelings.

Her song was the idea: don't repeat strophes without transmitting the inner thought of the verse and of the music.

She sang to her people and to her American land, but her universal song was heard in all the world.

Mercedes' voice resonates in the heart like an embrace.

It was an honor to sing with her. She made it so easy, like an older sister in the song and in the cause of the children.

"Will nothing remain of my through through here on the earth. At least verses, at least songs", said the Mexican ancestor. Mercedes left the world full of her song, populated by her verses.

We are better after having known her.
She showed us that a song can be an education.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza told a packed courtroom that he found the core argument in Polanski's request for a dismissal of charges -- allegations of unethical and, in some instances, illegal conduct by a prosecutor and a judge three decades ago -- to be credible.

"There was substantial, it seems to me, misconduct that occurred during the pendency of this case," Espinoza said.

But, the judge said, Polanski's fugitive status left him no choice but to deny the request. ...

In 1997, a prosecutor and a defense attorney worked out a plan for the director to surrender, be arrested at the airport, brought to court, sentenced and immediately released. The agreement fell apart with Polanski's side saying he objected to television coverage in court. ...

The victim, Samantha Geimer, settled a civil suit against Polanski and publicly forgave him. She has asked that the case be dismissed. Her attorney on Tuesday argued to Espinoza that she could make the motion to dismiss the charges if Polanski's fugitive status prevented the judge from doing so, but Espinoza said in a written ruling that there was no "legal justification" to support that argument. [my emphasis]

Finally, in a caricature of European cosmopolitanism, France's culture minister fumed that the harrying of such a cultural icon revealed the face of "a scary America."

Some of these arguments are more persuasive than others. For example, Polanski may have a due-process claim based on improper behavior by the judge in his case. By contrast, he shouldn't be left alone because of tragedies in his life or his status as a legendary director. Nor is it relevant that his victim seeks no further punishment for him. Prosecutions are brought in the name of the state, not the victim.

Plausible or preposterous, these arguments are eclipsed by a simple fact: Polanski fled the country.