About "appreciating the artist, not the rapist", that's bullshit. When a guy commits a heinous and disgusting crime like this, you remember it everytime that you see one of his movies. When he's still on the run from the law and even is apparently being awarded film festival awards, you know that he was not in any way brought to justice and likely would have never been punished properly. Which makes it harder to watch any of his movies. I'll admit that the only movie of his that I ever watched was The Pianist but I didn't know who made it and I never watched it again, but that was because I thought it sucked. I had no idea who Polanski was until this week.
BTW, why didn't the French or the Polish arrest him? Not arresting a guy who does something like this just because it was on another continent just doesn't seem right.