Must Read Jeffrey Toobin (According to Tina Brown)

CNN's Jeffrey Toobin recently made the Daily Beast Editor-in-Chief Tina Brown's must read list. In her "Word of Mouth" segment on NPR, she recommends Toobin's New Yorker article The Celebrity Defense.

Brown's next suggestion is a New Yorker article on Roman Polanski. Writer Jeffrey Toobin traces Polanski's trouble with the law to determine whether his fame has helped or hurt him with regard to the rape charges he has been fleeing for more than 30 years.

"He very coolly dissects the impact that celebrity has had on the vicissitudes of Polanski's whole course with the law in the last 33 years," Brown says.

In the article, Toobin argues that at first, celebrity helped Polanski's case. But fame turned against him eventually, when a photo of the director carousing with a young woman in Germany landed in the papers.

"That picture made the judge absolutely crazy," Brown says.

"He felt that Polanski was flouting the judge's authority, and that really set him a course for the second round, where, in fact, everything was really weighted against him."

Source: NPR: Tina Brown's Must-Reads: Celebrities Behaving Badly

A clip of NPR's Steve Inskeep discussing Brown's picks is available from NPR:

Toobin also has another article on line at The New Yorker, On Top of Spaghetti. In this article, he interviewed Edward Youkilis, a restaurant owner and Cincinnati native.

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