The View

In September of 2009 Whoopi Goldberg who was the new moderator of the View at that point, made the infamous statement that Roman Polanski was not guilty of rape: " Whoopi Goldberg suggested that whatever he was guilty of it wasn't "rape-rape".As a guest on The View chat show on US television, she said: "I know it wasn't rape-rape. It was something else but I don't believe it was rape-rape. He went to jail and and when they let him out he was like, 'You know what, this guy's going to give me a hundred years in jail. I'm not staying.' So that's why he left."' This outraged many people because Polanski was charged with plying a 13 year old girl with drugs and alcohol and then sodomizing her. And infact he was charged with rape: "In March 1977, film director Roman Polanski was arrested and charged in Los Angeles with five offenses against Samantha Geimer, a 13-year-old girl, rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious acts...." Goldberg's statement that it was not "rape-rape" was both inaccurate, (it was rape-rape as she put it); but it also seemed to soft-pedal or excuse Polanski's crime to a certain degree.

Featured in Bette: True Story (2001)