Despite that stance, as a dispassionate intellectual Gore Vidal was fundamentally critical of Scientology as religion. In "The Atlantic" magazine interview, "A Conversation with Gore Vidal" (October 2009), by John Meroney, Vidal spoke about topical and cultural matters of U.S. society. Asked his opinion about the arrest of the film director Roman Polanski, in Switzerland, in September 2009, in response to an extradition request by U.S. authorities, for having fled the U.S. in 1978 to avoid jail for the statutory rape of a thirteen-year-old girl in Hollywood, Vidal said, "I really don't give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she's been taken advantage of?" Asked for elaboration, Vidal explained the cultural temper of the U.S. and of the Hollywood movie business in the 1970s  Asked to explain the term "American values", Vidal replied, "Lying and cheating. There's nothing better." In response to Vidal's opinion about the decades-old Polanski rape case, a spokeswoman for the organization Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Barbara Dorris, said, "People should express their outrage, by refusing to buy any of his books", called Vidal a "mean-spirited buffoon" and said that, although "a boycott wouldn't hurt Vidal financially", it would "cause anyone else, with such callous views, to keep his mouth shut, and [so] avoid rubbing salt into the already deep [psychological] wounds of (the victims)" of sexual abuse. In April 2009, Vidal accepted appointment to the position of honorary president of the American Humanist Association; he succeeded the novelist Kurt Vonnegut. In the 1960s, Vidal migrated to Italy, where he befriended the film director Federico Fellini, for whom he appeared in a cameo role as himself in the film "Roma" (1972). He acted in the movies "Bob Roberts" (1992), a serio-comedy about a reactionary populist politician who manipulates youth culture to win votes; "With Honors" (1994) an Ivy league college-life comedy; "Gattaca" (1997), a science-fiction drama about genetic engineering; and "Igby Goes Down" (2002), a coming-of-age serio-comedy directed by his nephew, Burr Steers. In the 1960s, the weekly American sketch comedy television program "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" featured a running-joke sketch about Vidal; the telephone operator Ernestine (Lily Tomlin) would call him, saying: "Mr. Veedul, this is the Phone Company calling! (snort! snort!)".