Hollywood is run by Satanists! Liberals are child molesters! AIEEE!!!!

I wanted to see if I could make one of these videos in a single day. Mission accomplished! But it wasn't easy.

You know what else isn't easy? Decrying the way right-wingers have made political use of the Polanski case WITHOUT seeming to excuse the actual crime committed in 1977. Many people out there seem to think that it's acceptable to concoct all sorts of outlandish and imaginary conspiracy stories about a man who, in the real world, committed one provably awful act.

There must a name for this logical fallacy. Argumentum ad hominem? Close enough, I guess.

We see the same fallacy whenever we talk to the anti-Clinton Crazies. Around the time Pizzagate first hit the news, I chatted via email with an old friend. His bottom line came down to this: It's okay to accuse Bill Clinton of child molestation because he got an out-of-wedlock BJ from Monica Lewenski.

That bit of loopiness came from my oldest friend -- a liberal who, incidentally, works in Hollywood and comes from what you might call a "Hollywood" family. This was the same friend who, throughout the 1990s, kept bringing me back down to earth, at a time when I had foolishly decided to hang out with the "paranoia chic" crowd. Maybe we've switched positions.

And maybe he and I aren't friends anymore. I won't associate with anti-Clinton Crazies.

(And the hell of it is, I never was a huge fan of either Clinton. But my quarrels with them were based on policy, not neo-puritanism or wacky conspiracy theories.)