I wrote to French President Jacques Chirac to share my concerns regarding two men the French have protectively embraced - Ira Einhorn, a Philadelphia fugitive convicted of murder (in absentia - he jumped bail), and Woody Allen, a New York filmmaker as immature and vindictive as he is creative and brilliant.
Each uses his keen intelligence to deny and excuse his own behavior. The slippery slopes they justify can seem not only hip and entertaining, but even enviable and enticing.
Allen and Einhorn indulge all personal longings and impulses - no matter how hurtful to others. Allen uses irony, humor and charm to seduce his audiences and keep them oblivious to his pathology. Einhorn, also highly engaging and charming, uses denial and legal technicalities to accomplish the same thing.
When I met Ira Einhorn, he held court at a restaurant in University City, where his partner, Holly Maddux, a recent Bryn Mawr College graduate, worked. Holly's mangled body was later found in a trunk at Einhorn's apartment.
Basically lazy, Einhorn attempted to seduce (and then control) anyone who could further his ambition.
Allen, like Einhorn, attempts to disguise his pathology by manipulating all around him. In his films, he attempts to justify a descent into ethical and moral oblivion.
Men with Pygmalion patterns of personal attraction (they must, above all, compulsively teach, instruct and mentor) have a terror of committed intimacy and a hatred of mature women. It was within this psychological context that Allen attempted to destroy Mia Farrow, his former lover, companion and star, whom he had mentored earlier, by replacing Farrow with her own daughter. Although this may not be incest technically, common sense dictates that any woman's lover must forever keep his hands off her daughter.
Allen and his bride honeymooned in Paris, where the French press criticized America's puritanical views concerning Allen's lack of insight and judgment.
Sociologists and anthropologists agree that certain taboos, if crossed, mark the deterioration and eventual death of a society. True leaders must have the courage to speak out against those who cross all boundaries of dignity and decency and dare to try to entice others to join them.
I asked Chirac to do just that, to speak out and say: Enough is enough! The cold-hearted murder of a young woman can never be blurred through a lens of denial and legal technicalities. Incest and the brutalization of a former lover and co-parent will never be hip or sexy.
SaraKay Smullens is a social worker and family life educator.
