In a 24-7 media world, one would have expected the story of Roman Polanski to last, oh, about 9 1/2 minutes. He raped a girl, admitted it, fled the country before sentencing, was caught again and now faces justice.

On what planet is this controversial?

We might shrug and say, “Only in France,” where the culture minister called the arrest evidence of “a scary America that has just shown its face.” Or, perhaps, we say, “Only in Hollywood,” where more than 100 filmmakers and actors have petitioned for Polanski’s release.

What’s more likely is that we have reached the point, identified by the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, at which deviancy has been defined down to such an extent that we no longer recognize it. If it isn’t deviant for a 43-year-old man to stalk, drug, rape and sodomize a 13-year-old girl, what is?

Yet, during the past several days, Polanski has become a true cause celebre, point man in an international incident that has individuals and nations weighing in and staking out positions.

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Nowadays you practically have to kill somebody to get blacklisted in Hollywood. Mere rape, by contrast, scarcely jiggles the needle of outrage. Producer Harvey Weinstein actually went so far as to describe Mr. Polanski’s odious conduct as a “so-called crime.” The names of such noted filmmakers as Mr. Allen, Jonathan Demme, Michael Mann, Sam Mendes, Mike Nichols, Martin Scorsese and Steven Soderbergh can be found on an international petition whose 100-plus signers “demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski.” Equally predictable was the response of European bureaucrats such as French culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand, who called Mr. Polanski’s arrest “absolutely dreadful,” adding that it made “no sense” for him to be “thrown to the lions for an ancient story.”

We need not take the remonstrations of the French too seriously. They have a long history of forgiving their own artists for pretty much anything, up to and including open collaboration with the Nazis. Far more interesting was the response on this side of the Atlantic. At first, American reaction to the arrest appeared to be breaking along the usual red vs. blue fault lines, with much being made of the fact that Samantha Gailey, Mr. Polanski’s victim, has said that she’s forgiven him (though that didn’t stop her from suing him in civil court in 1988””or from accepting an undisclosed out-of-court settlement to drop the suit).

But the cultural tide started to turn on Monday when Kate Harding, a contributor to Salon.com, wrote a column called “Reminder: Roman Polanski Raped a Child” in which she pointed out, bluntly and accurately, that Mr. Polanski “gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her. . . . There is evidence that the victim did not consent, regardless of her age.” Ms. Harding’s piece included a link to the transcript of Ms. Gailey’s 1977 grand-jury testimony, in which she described with gruesome explicitness the crime perpetrated on her person””a crime of which Mr. Polanski acknowledged his guilt in court.

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For more than 500 years the book has been a remarkably stable entity: a coherent string of connected words, printed on paper and bound between covers.

But in the age of the iPhone, Kindle and YouTube, the notion of the book is becoming increasingly elastic as publishers mash together text, video and Web features in a scramble to keep readers interested in an archaic form of entertainment.

On Thursday, for instance, Simon & Schuster, the publisher of Ernest Hemingway and Stephen King, is working with a multimedia partner to release four “vooks,” which intersperse videos throughout electronic text that can be read ”” and viewed ”” online or on an iPhone or iPod Touch.

And in early September Anthony E. Zuiker, creator of the television series “CSI,” released “Level 26: Dark Origins,” a novel ”” published on paper, as an e-book and in an audio version ”” in which readers are invited to log on to a Web site to watch brief videos that flesh out the plot.

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It had taken the better part of a decade, but Reed Hastings was finally ready to unveil the device he thought would upend the entertainment industry. The gadget looked as unassuming as the original iPod””a sleek black box, about the size of a paperback novel, with a few jacks in back””and Hastings, CEO of Netflix, believed its impact would be just as massive. Called the Netflix Player, it would allow most of his company’s regular DVD-by-mail subscribers to stream unlimited movies and TV shows from Netflix’s library directly to their television””at no extra charge.

The potential was enormous: Although Netflix initially could offer only about 10,000 titles, Hastings planned to one day deliver the entire recorded output of Hollywood, instantly and in high definition, to any screen, anywhere. Like many tech romantics, he had harbored visions of using the Internet to rout around cable companies and network programmers for years. Even back when he formed Netflix in 1997, Hastings predicted a day when he would deliver video over the Net rather than through the mail. (There was a reason he called the company Netflix and not, say, DVDs by Mail.) Now, in mid-December 2007, the launch of the player was just weeks away. Promotional ads were being shot, and internal beta testers were thrilled.

But Hastings wasn’t celebrating. Instead, he felt queasy. For weeks, he had tried to ignore the nagging doubts he had about the Netflix Player. Consumers’ living rooms were already full of gadgets””from DVD players to set-top boxes. Was a dedicated Netflix device really the best way to bring about his video-on-demand revolution? So on a Friday morning, he asked the six members of his senior management team to meet him in the amphitheater in Netflix’s Los Gatos offices, near San Jose. He leaned up against the stage and asked the unthinkable: Should he kill the player?

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So maybe it’s not swine flu, but the nation seems to have come down with a serious case of impulse control disorder.

Symptoms include (but are not limited to) Kanye West snatching Taylor Swift’s moment at MTV’s Video Music Awards; Serena Williams threatening, with expletives, to cram her ball down a lineswoman’s throat at the U.S. Open; and Rep. Joe Wilson’s inability to contain the urge to denigrate President Obama while the president was in the middle of addressing the nation on a topic of critical importance.

Wilson’s House colleagues formally chastised the South Carolina Republican on Tuesday.

In the wake of these high-profile outbursts across disciplines — politics, entertainment and sports — many Americans have found themselves asking what is going on. To some, it’s not a coincidence but rather the manifestation of a deepening social dysfunction.

“It’s extremely regrettable, but not shocking,” said Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist. “And there is a viral element to it. It’s like Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘The Tipping Point.’ You get to a critical mass of something and it spreads like wildfire.”

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This is not the first time these questions have been raised. Pocket books called Stalags circulated widely in Israel during the Eichmann trial in the 1960s. They depicted American or British pilots being abused by sadistic Nazi female officers, and then taking revenge by raping and/or killing their torturers. Deemed pornographic by Israeli courts, these books were banned.

There is a not uncommon belief that the Torah sanctions revenge. But the precept of “an eye for an eye” is usually cited incorrectly, according to Rabbi Joel Roth, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. It is actually meant to refer to monetary compensation rather than bloodletting. And Leviticus 19:18 says, “Thou shalt not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people.”

Rabbi Roth notes that Jews are prohibited from taking “the law into your own hands as a matter of legal punishment.” The scaffolding of legality””a fair trial and conviction””is paramount under Jewish law. Eichmann was the one person to ever receive a death sentence in an Israeli court, and not without much hand-wringing from Jews world-wide.

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Richard Poncher’s eternal sleep will soon be disrupted.

The onetime Beverly Hills resident, who died 23 years ago at the age of 81, will be moving out of the crypt above Marilyn Monroe’s resting spot at the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park cemetery. Poncher’s wife intends to sell the crypt, said to have once been owned by Monroe’s former husband, Yankee great Joe DiMaggio.

So although the plaque on Poncher’s crypt reads: “To the man who gave us everything and more,” his wife, Elsie, is hoping that he has just a little more to give. She wants to use the money to help pay off the $1.6-million mortgage on her 1 3/4 acre Beverly Hills home.

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“I think there is a very clear recognition of where power lies….The numbers of true believers are probably not as great as we imagine, but the place where truth is created, in a televisual sense, is in the sphere of the popular media.”

—Linda Kintz, a professor of English at the University of Oregon in Eugene

[Leslie] Van Houten, who was 19 at the time of the murders, refused to comment for Waters’ article. She said she had no interest in being in a magazine for what she had done, and that she was greatly ashamed by it. Nonetheless, she and the director struck up a friendship.

“[Van Houten is] well read. She’s smart. She cares about people,” Waters says of the woman who has spent the past 40 years in prison for the murders of Rosemary and Leno LaBianca.

Waters says he was so inspired by Van Houten’s patience ”” she has been denied parole 16 times ”” and her intelligence and remorse that he devoted a chapter to her in his upcoming book, Role Models. He recently posted an excerpt of the book in which he argues for Van Houten’s release on the Huffington Post.

This is a must-listen-to (there is much more on the audio than the small text summary). I caught it on the way home last night after an all day meeting and it still haunts me. A very profound illustration of the consequences of one sinful act. Did (could) she contemplate at the time that she would be living with the incredibly serious results of her decisions more than four decades later–KSH?

Colby Curtin, a 10-year-old with a rare form of cancer, was staying alive for one thing ”“ a movie.

From the minute Colby saw the previews to the Disney-Pixar movie Up, she was desperate to see it. Colby had been diagnosed with vascular cancer about three years ago, said her mother, Lisa Curtin, and at the beginning of this month it became apparent that she would die soon and was too ill to be moved to a theater to see the film.

After a family friend made frantic calls to Pixar to help grant Colby her dying wish, Pixar came to the rescue.

The company flew an employee with a DVD of Up, which is only in theaters, to the Curtins’ Huntington Beach home on June 10 for a private viewing of the movie.

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Take a look.

This clip includes brief comments from Bishop Iker and Bishop Duncan among others.

Bishop [Nigel] McCulloch said in a House of Lords debate on public service broadcasting: “The BBC insists that its plans for moving departments are on course, and that includes children’s programmes, but what children’s programmes?

“Many of us are dismayed about the diminution of quantity and quality in children’s television provision.”

He pointed to the quality in previous times of Blue Peter, Crackerjack and The Railway Children.

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This is a very interesting report, featuring especially the recent film “Fireproof.” Note especially the budget numbers involved. Watch it all (just under 9 minutes)–KSH.

Elizabeth and Selimah (just home from school) and I went to the new Pixar movie last evening. Fantastic.

Poitier’s memoir, Life Beyond Measure, now in paperback, is a series of letters to his great-granddaughter Ayele, taking her back to the moments that shaped him. His chapter on people of courage ends with his own father, Reginald Poitier.

“He was honest,” Poitier tells NPR’s Renee Montagne. “My father was the quintessential husband and dad.”

When Poitier was a teenager he left his native Bahamas for better opportunities in Miami. His father took him to the dock, gave him a lecture and then put $3 in his hand. “He said, ‘take care of yourself, son.’ And he turned me around to face the boat,” Poitier says.

Caught this one on the midday run and loved it. He has a wonderful voice. Listen to it all.

Q: “Angels and Demons” presupposes a natural hostility between the Christian faith and modern science. What do you think about this?

Father Wauck: It’s relatively easy for people to see that a lot of the great art of the Western World — music, painting, sculpture, literature, architecture — is the product of a Christian culture, often inspired by the faith or even funded by the Church. That seems obvious. But what people don’t realize is that something similar is true of the sciences.

Think about it. Universities are an invention of the Church. Copernicus was a Roman Catholic cleric, and he dedicated his book on the heliocentric universe to the Pope. The calendar we use today is the Gregorian Calendar, because it was promulgated by Pope Gregory XIII, who was working with the best astronomers and mathematicians of his time. Galileo himself always remained a Catholic, and his two daughters were nuns. One of the greatest Italian astronomers of the 19th century was a Jesuit priest, Angelo Secchi. The father of modern genetics, Gregor Mendel, was a Catholic monk. The creator of the “Big Bang” theory was a Belgian priest, Georges Lemaitre.

In short, the idea that there is some natural tension between science and the Church, between reason and faith, is utter nonsense.

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Piggybacking on the fascination with lost gospels and alternative Christianities, he serves up a Jesus who’s a thoroughly modern sort of messiah ”” sexy, worldly, and Goddess-worshiping, with a wife and kids, a house in the Galilean suburbs, and no delusions about his own divinity.

But the success of this message ”” which also shows up in the work of Brown’s many thriller-writing imitators ”” can’t be separated from its dishonesty. The “secret” history of Christendom that unspools in “The Da Vinci Code” is false from start to finish. The lost gospels are real enough, but they neither confirm the portrait of Christ that Brown is peddling ”” they’re far, far weirder than that ”” nor provide a persuasive alternative to the New Testament account. The Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John ”” jealous, demanding, apocalyptic ”” may not be congenial to contemporary sensibilities, but he’s the only historically-plausible Jesus there is.

For millions of readers, Brown’s novels have helped smooth over the tension between ancient Christianity and modern American faith. But the tension endures. You can have Jesus or Dan Brown. But you can’t have both.

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Elizabeth and I made it to a showing last evening. Crisp and clever–KSH

The other day I finally rewatched Ordinary People (1980) which I had always thought so very good. I was blown away. It is such a good portrayal of the incredible damage done by trying hard to go past a terrible incident/loss without really dealing with it thoroughly.

This brought to mind an idea which is to do this thread. Tell us about a good older movie you watched recently and tell us why we should view it again. It can be from any genre.

We went last evening. It is really worth seeing. Terrific performances by the two leads.

Bishop Patrick O’Donoghue explained in a statement released today that the proposal originated from the Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV, and “therefore comes from the heart of the abortion industry — threatening yet another hammer-blow to the sanctity of human life in this country.”

“I am appalled that this proposal will result in the deaths of many more preborn children and cause untold harm to women,” he continued. “As a society, we need to wake up and stop treating abortion as a quick-fix solution to pregnancy and offer compassionate and practical support to women facing crisis pregnancies.”

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Great stuff–watch it all.

Starring Kevin Bacon, it aired for the first time last night. Based on a true story. If you have a way to view it, do so. It was simply fantastic.

Professor JEREMY DAUBER (Yiddish Department, Columbia University): We have “Fiddler on the Roof” in Hindi, and we have “Fiddler on the Roof” in Japanese, so clearly the stories that Sholem Aleichem told, even translated, have this universal appeal, and I think a lot of it has to do with the way his stories talk about the appeal of tradition and the struggle of maintaining tradition in a rapidly changing world.

[BETTY] ROLLIN: Theodore Bikel, who has played Tevye more than 2,000 times, is now touring a one-man show called “Sholem Aleichem: Laughter Through Tears.”

THEODORE BIKEL (Actor and Singer): Sholem Aleichem doesn’t only appeal to Jews. I get non-Jewish audiences who find parallels in what he wrote and how he wrote. I ask them, “What does this play mean to you?” Pogroms, Jews, Russians, turn-of-the-century shtetls ””“What does that mean to you?” And they said, “Tradition.” We know what that is. We know what it is when children don’t want to follow the tradition of their parents.

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Digital podcasts and streaming video might bring Christian audiences inspirational messages in the future, but they aren’t bringing in the cash that broadcast ministries need to weather a painful economy.

To make ends meet, religious broadcasters are tightening their belts and going back to basics. That means sticking with time-tested formulas, postponing innovations and counting on loyal (largely senior) audiences to keep donating even when it hurts.

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Once again, family-friendly, uplifting and inspiring movies drew far more viewers in 2008 than films with themes of despair, or leftist political agendas. Sex, drugs and antireligious themes were not automatic sellers, either. Among the 25 top-grossing movies alone, 14 out of 25 had strong or very strong Christian, redemptive and moral content, and nearly all had at least some such content.

Values of importance to all people of faith were not the only ingredients in many of 2008’s top movies. As in past years, films with strong pro-capitalist content — extolling free-market principles or containing positive portrayals of real or fictional businessmen and entrepreneurs — tended to make the most money. The hero of the biggest success of the year, “The Dark Knight,” is a billionaire capitalist who, disguised as Batman, defends Gotham City and its residents from a crazed, anarchistic terrorist criminal. In “Iron Man,” the second-most popular movie with American and Canadian moviegoers in 2008, a capitalist playboy and billionaire defense contractor stops working against the interests of America and its citizens and uses his wealth to defend America and its free-market values.

I would replace “uplifting” with wholesome. Read it all–KSH.