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| The lies told by men such as Bill Cosby are brazen and chilling to hear | The lies told by men such as Bill Cosby are brazen and chilling to hear |
| (2 months later) | |
| Lying about something changes one’s memory of it. I thought about this a few days ago when nearly every story in the news was about rape or alleged sexual assault, including the Bill Cosby sentencing, the US supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault of two women, and the demise of Ian Buruma, editor of the New York Review of Books, after publishing an article by the alleged sex attacker Jian Ghomeshi. | Lying about something changes one’s memory of it. I thought about this a few days ago when nearly every story in the news was about rape or alleged sexual assault, including the Bill Cosby sentencing, the US supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault of two women, and the demise of Ian Buruma, editor of the New York Review of Books, after publishing an article by the alleged sex attacker Jian Ghomeshi. |
| The common factors in these stories were that in each case, the women had taken a long time to come forward – rightly anticipating attack – and the men had embraced various shades of denial. Kavanaugh told the most obviously disprovable lie, notably that he was decent to female students at high school, when his year book entry contained lines designed explicitly to sexually humiliate them. | The common factors in these stories were that in each case, the women had taken a long time to come forward – rightly anticipating attack – and the men had embraced various shades of denial. Kavanaugh told the most obviously disprovable lie, notably that he was decent to female students at high school, when his year book entry contained lines designed explicitly to sexually humiliate them. |
| The original Ghomeshi piece, in which he detailed what happened to him after more than 20 women accused him of sexual assault (he downplayed the number), included this line: “You wonder how you can exhibit any contrition about ways you may have behaved badly in the past without validating every crazy thing that is being said about you by people you’ve never met.” The piece was weaselly and misconstrued, but it was inadvertently revealing of how these men structure their internal defence; of where righteous indignation gets in, permitting them to feel like the injured parties; of what it is they tell themselves they have done. | The original Ghomeshi piece, in which he detailed what happened to him after more than 20 women accused him of sexual assault (he downplayed the number), included this line: “You wonder how you can exhibit any contrition about ways you may have behaved badly in the past without validating every crazy thing that is being said about you by people you’ve never met.” The piece was weaselly and misconstrued, but it was inadvertently revealing of how these men structure their internal defence; of where righteous indignation gets in, permitting them to feel like the injured parties; of what it is they tell themselves they have done. |
| It is pitiful. And yet despite the overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing in most of these cases, I think for many of us it is still hard to imagine that people – particularly public people – tell barefaced lies, even though most of us know, simultaneously, how capable the mind is of self-deception. | It is pitiful. And yet despite the overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing in most of these cases, I think for many of us it is still hard to imagine that people – particularly public people – tell barefaced lies, even though most of us know, simultaneously, how capable the mind is of self-deception. |
| When I was very young, I ran away from a hotel I was staying at with my parents on the Isle of Wight. The reason, I said, was that I was “looking for Big Ted”, who I had left in the car, and which seemed to me a reasonable explanation for why I might have run off, although it wasn’t the truth. The truth was that I had pushed a boy off a stone statue of a horse in the hotel garden, making him cry. After hiding for a while, I crept back to the lobby, which was in uproar. My clearest memory of the episode is the split-second between seeing the hotel manager’s face – blanched, panicked, already envisaging the news crews – and understanding that I was the cause of it. Storming over, he said: “You’ve caused a great deal of trouble. We’ve had the whole hotel out looking for you.” I opened my mouth and out the lie came. | When I was very young, I ran away from a hotel I was staying at with my parents on the Isle of Wight. The reason, I said, was that I was “looking for Big Ted”, who I had left in the car, and which seemed to me a reasonable explanation for why I might have run off, although it wasn’t the truth. The truth was that I had pushed a boy off a stone statue of a horse in the hotel garden, making him cry. After hiding for a while, I crept back to the lobby, which was in uproar. My clearest memory of the episode is the split-second between seeing the hotel manager’s face – blanched, panicked, already envisaging the news crews – and understanding that I was the cause of it. Storming over, he said: “You’ve caused a great deal of trouble. We’ve had the whole hotel out looking for you.” I opened my mouth and out the lie came. |
| For a long time, when I returned to this memory, the feeling I summoned was of having been monstrously wronged. To get to the boy and the horse I had to move an awful lot of mental furniture around and when they were finally revealed, I was shocked. | For a long time, when I returned to this memory, the feeling I summoned was of having been monstrously wronged. To get to the boy and the horse I had to move an awful lot of mental furniture around and when they were finally revealed, I was shocked. |
| I don’t say this to empathise with the men; quite the opposite. Perhaps they are active psychopaths, but I doubt it. There is something so chillingly ordinary about the mechanism of lying and the momentum it gains in one’s system, so that any remaining doubt is banished. The greatest lie told by Cosby and co is surely the one they must tell themselves daily: that they’re not lying. | I don’t say this to empathise with the men; quite the opposite. Perhaps they are active psychopaths, but I doubt it. There is something so chillingly ordinary about the mechanism of lying and the momentum it gains in one’s system, so that any remaining doubt is banished. The greatest lie told by Cosby and co is surely the one they must tell themselves daily: that they’re not lying. |
| •Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist | •Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist |
| Sexual harassment | Sexual harassment |
| Opinion | Opinion |
| Bill Cosby | Bill Cosby |
| Brett Kavanaugh | Brett Kavanaugh |
| US supreme court | US supreme court |
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| Law (US) | Law (US) |
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