I once interviewed the Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis in anticipation of a new movie. At the end of the allotted hour we'd only gotten through half my questions, so I was thrilled when he invited me to come back to his hotel later to finish up--celebrity profiles are usually a root canal.
That evening we talked for several more hours. He offered drinks, which I declined, and asked if I wanted to stay longer, which I declined, and I left thinking he was the nicest famous person I'd ever interviewed. And then earlier this year four women accused him of sexual misconduct. Two of them said it was rape. Haggis denied the charges.
But as the news circulated, I spent a few weeks repeating my anecdote to friends--benevolent mogul helps young reporter--before I realized I didn't know what the point of telling it was. Was I just trying to convey shock? Or convey that, in three to four hours of conversation, he seemed like a really kind guy?
In the current harassment minefield, as brave women come forward with tales of being wounded, it's also become common for unharmed women to have parallel discussions about the fact that they've got all their limbs intact.
"I'm left thinking: what kind of duplicity was he engaged in?" emailed one friend, upon learning her longtime mentor had just resigned after accusations of misconduct. "Did he just change dramatically over the years? Did he say inappropriate things that I was too dense to even recognize? Did I send out 'be respectful of me' signals?"
I'm not sure whether telling these anecdotes is useful. I'm not sure if they provide context or misdirection.
Sexual harassment seems to be one of the few misdeeds for which we accept testimonies from non-victims as evidence of innocence. Serial killers manage to not murder everyone they meet. Burglars don't rob every house they pass. We don't call the owners of un-robbed houses to the witness stand and ask them to add their statements to the public record: He couldn't be a thief, your honor--he once visited my home, and yet I still have my flatscreen.
But when authority figures are accused of sexual harassment, we often look to the landmine-dodgers. We ask them to testify. We ask, did he ever try to lift up your skirt? Steal your television? "Tom treated each of us with fairness and respect," wrote 65 women in the media industry, in defense of Tom Brokaw.
Earlier this week, following a rash of accusations against CBS chief Les Moonves, the Atlantic writer Megan Garber called this the Familiarity Fallacy. "There's saying 'I know him,' and then there's assuming that the knowing itself is an exoneration," Garber wrote. "People are complex and variable and, as a rule, containing of multitudes."
Editorial on 08/03/2018