WASHINGTON - Hasn't Roman Polanski suffered enough? Didn't he endure all those cool, gray, rainy Paris winters? Wasn't he forced - well, not forced, but strongly enticed - to subsist all those years on overpriced fare served up by haughty waiters in Michelin-starred restaurants? Didn't he survive for decades having his vacation options limited, essentially, to the grim monotony of the South of France?
I've got a better question: Shouldn't Polanski and his many apologists give us a break?
I'm a huge fan of Polanski's work. "Chinatown" is one of my favorite movies of all time, "Rosemary's Baby" is a masterpiece, and he richly deserved the Oscar he won as best director for "The Pianist."
Brilliant auteur or no, Polanski has been a fugitive from U.S. justice since 1978. And there was no artistic merit in the crime he acknowledged committing: During a photo shoot at the Los Angeles home of his friend Jack Nicholson, Polanski plied a 13-year-old girl with champagne and drugs and had sex with her.
That is grotesque. In general, I agree with the European view that Americans tend to be prudish and hypocritical about sex. But a grown man drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl? That's wrong in any moral universe - and deserves harsher punishment than three decades of gilded exile.
Polanski went on the lam after pleading guilty to the crime and surfaced in France, where authorities ruled that his crime wasn't covered by extradition treaties with the United States. He was arrested Sunday in Zurich, where the extradition treaty does cover his crime.
Polanski has dual French-Polish citizenship, and officials in Paris and Warsaw are outraged. Which makes me outraged. What's their beef? That Polanski is 76? That he makes great movies? Sorry, mes amis, but none of this matters. If you decide to become a fugitive, you accept the risk that someday you might get caught.
Those who argue that there's something unjust about Polanski's arrest are essentially saying that drugging and raping a child is simply not such a big deal.
As far as I'm concerned, it's a huge deal. Even in France, it should be a big deal. This isn't about a genius who is being hounded for flouting society's conventions. It's about a powerful man who used his fame and position to assault - in every sense, to violate - an innocent child.
And it's about a man who ran away rather than face the consequences of his actions.
That's the sort of protagonist, a great director like Polanski must realize, who doesn't deserve a happy ending.
• Eugene Robinson's e-mail address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com.