Member-only story
A Proposed Remedy for Predatory Men
Force them to wallow in their own bullshit
The world is not short on stories from abusive men. This fact was brought to our attention most recently by rumors that Charlie Rose would be getting a new TV show. Rose, if you’ve forgotten, was accused by eight women of sexual harassment that ran the gamut from obscene phone calls to making his female subordinates watch him walk around in the nude; in the rumored show, he would use this experience to “interview other high-profile men who have also been toppled by #MeToo scandals.” The rumor was started by former New Yorker and Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown, who told Page Six that she’d been approached to produce the series. Understandably, she declined.
The theme of the series, as per Brown and/or the gossip column, was to be “atonement.” But let’s be real: No one has ever “atoned” for sexual assault or harassment by speaking to someone who was not his victim, or by saying anything other than “I’m sorry” and “tell me what you want me to do.” In particular, it’s unlikely that men who — allegedly! — used their fame to get away with sexual misconduct would be able to “atone” in front of a bank of TV cameras.
What these men would be doing, presumably, would be reasserting their own control of their damaged narratives. By giving them an hour and a friendly interviewer, Rose presumably would offer accused men a chance to spin a story of their crimes in which they appeared as sympathetic characters, worthy of support and absolution.
The social media backlash was instant and overwhelming. We may never know if Rose was actually working on the show — I pity the network executive who would greenlight that sucker now — but the disgust spoke to where we stand in the #MeToo saga. Over the past six months, we’ve heard a nonstop torrent of abusive men’s apologies, excuses, and rationalizations, to the point that even the most naive and wide-eyed Pollyanna among us can identify the distinct whiff of bullshit emanating therefrom. To recap a few of the major points:
- I have no idea what I did. (James Franco)
- But she seemed fine with it. (Aziz Ansari)
- It didn’t actually happen, but I feel bad about it. (Matt Lauer)
- I “remember it…
