This week's New Yorker offers a look at the ways Roman Polanski's celebrity has both helped and hurt him — and his case shows striking parallels to that of the other high-profile defendant du jour, Amanda Knox.

Strange NY Times story on the courthouse behavior of celebrities. Inside, these tidbits: rapper Jim Jones once put a kaffiyeh over his head and pretended to be Yiddish when someone asked if he was famous outside of a courthouse; Foxy Brown uses her post-perp walks as excuses to show off her glamorous designer duds.…