THE FORMER Penn professor sentenced earlier this week to 25 years in a kiddie-porn case should have been an award-winning filmmaker instead of an Ivy League academic.

Maybe if Lawrence Scott Ward, who used to teach marketing at the Wharton School, were famous for creating major motion pictures instead of making child porn, Hollywood bigwigs would be signing petitions and trying to get clemency for him. Sexual misconduct with a 16-year-old Brazilian boy? Well, it wasn't "rape rape," Whoopi Goldberg might argue on his behalf on ABC's "The View," the way she did in defense of Roman Polanski, the noted film director recently arrested in Switzerland.

And what about that brain researcher, also from Penn, who sexually assaulted the niece of a college friend after showing her around campus back in 2002? Perhaps if he had won an Oscar and had a slew of Hollywood heavyweight friends, Tracy McIntosh would have Hollywood come rushing to his defense, too. Maybe he'd have gotten away with just a house arrest . . . which he almost did anyway.

It's disturbing how when you're a wealthy celebrity, you get a free pass with certain folks even when it comes to the despicable crime of child rape. There's this tendency to shrug off the moral and legal failings of people whose work you admire. Artists of Polanski's stature sometimes get held to a completely different standard.

Look at the hoopla following Polanski's arrest. He'd been on the lam for three decades. The man's a coward.

But you'd think he was innocent from the way Hollywood has been carrying on. Not only does Polanski have bigwigs such as Martin Scor-sese and Jonathan Demme signing petitions for him, but members of the French government have called America out as if we're some sort of monster with stars and stripes.

"In the same way that there is a generous America that we like, there is also a scary America that has just shown his face," French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterand said.

French officials have wisely backed off that initial hard-line position, but there are still echoes of Ira Einhorn all over again. Einhorn, as you may recall, fled to France to avoid prosecution for the murder of Holly Maddux. It took years for him to be tracked down and then extradited to Pennsylvania, where he was tried and convicted in 2002.

Even if he's an old man now - he's 76 - and has spent the last three decades in exile, Polanski did plead guilty to raping a little girl. And served no time.

It's true that he's not a risk to society. But you can't have one set of rules for college professors, researchers and bus drivers and a whole other set for the glitterati. There are legal procedures that need to be followed regardless of what film festivals have honored your movies and how many movie stars think you're the most amazing director ever.

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