All the obvious trigger warnings for dudes defending sexual predators
Ghomeshi just got published in the The New York Review of Books and it is precisely what you might expect. What is far more interesting is the absolutely batshit interview that his editor, Ian Buruma, did with Slate to justify running the column in the first place.
If you have a strong stomach, I strongly recommend you give it a read (without ad blocker! Support journalism!). If not, just strap yourself in for some choice quotations about how an old white dude with no background in law speaks with equal parts confidence and ignorance about how law works and how it would affect his choice in subjects.
The Ghomeshi article was born of its author’s desire to reflect on what it was like to be “at the top of the world…, being a jerk in many ways, and then finding your life ruined and being a public villain and pilloried” [emphasis added]. Indeed, Buruma’s defense of the article relies heavily on Ghomeshi’s acquittal, while seemingly failing to understand what a crime is, what an acquittal means, what the judge said in deciding Ghomeshi’s case, or that being acquitted of a crime does not come with a set forgiveness period like parole.
Buruma said he was not standing in defense of rapists, because “something like rape is a crime, and we know what happens in the case of crimes.” (It’s “Trials.”) Later in the interview, he doubles down on this, saying that, “Harvey Weinestein would be denied an article, because unlike Ghomeshi, he was accused of rape.” In contrast, Buruma claimed that he was creating a space for guys who just “behaved badly sexually, abusing their power in one way or another”. So, I guess Buruma lives in a world where sexual assault and overcoming resistance by choking—Ghomeshi’s charges—are not crimes. And a world where Ghomeshi did not stand trial.
Anyway, since Ghomeshi wasn’t convicted, he made for an interesting subject as someone “who has not been found guilty in any criminal sense but who perhaps deserves social opprobrium.” Here, Buruma equates not being found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt with being found beyond a reasonable doubt to be not guilty.
Yet, Justice Horkins explicitly stated in paragraph 140 of the decision that “my conclusion that the evidence in this case raises a reasonable doubt is not the same as deciding in any positive way that these events never happened” [emphasis added].
Even though Buruma spends so long on how important the acquittal is to the story, the interviewer’s suggestion that the same type of space be given to another acquitted person, O. J. Simpson, was rejected out of hand. Why? Well, “he was found guilty in a civil trial.” To be clear, people are not found guilty at civil trials, and their liability is found on a balance of probabilities, a much less rigorous standard. Of course, Ghomeshi has not yet been subjected to a civil trial. So, on Buruma’s own logic, it seems premature to stand by his author’s innocence.
Finally, even though Buruma concedes that Ghomeshi may deserve social opprobrium, by affording him a platform from which to vindicate himself, Buruma seems to dismiss even that opprobrium as a sort of social prison, from which he must free Ghomeshi, regardless of his conduct in the time since his trial. Namely, making a list of all the people who haven’t backed him up and then patting himself on the back after managing to have a single conversation with an attractive woman where he doesn’t hit on her.
And that cynical affirmation of vindication is the key here. Men like Ghomeshi have been raised to believe that their position in society is their due. A loss of that social capital is therefore seen as theft. It is no doubt that same feeling of entitlement that allows them to treat consent casually, and to downplay the effects of such an attitude. It is the same logic that leads to concerns over Brock Turner’s swimming career, rather than over the future of the woman he violated.
If nothing else, the Ghomeshi article did help to shine a light on how famously progressive people (Buruma has built a reputation around a belief in a pluralist society) can fail so transcendently in understanding their own privilege.
[Editor’s Note: After this piece was written, Ian Buruma left The New York Review of Books.]
