UNITED STATES
The Guardian
Lindy West
Between Bill Cosby, Jian Ghomeshi, Rolf Harris, Jimmy Savile, Terry Richardson, Woody Allen, like half the British government or something, and, most recently, American schlock TV star Josh Duggar, one might say that it has been a rough couple of years for famous men accused of sexual impropriety. The hammer’s really coming down. Tough break, gentlemen.
Or not. Actually, I believe the word you’re looking for is “fantastic”. Fantastic break, gentlemen.
Because the reality is that some of these men got away with their alleged crimes for years (decades, even) without ever being publicly exposed. Others saw their victims come forward only to be laughed off and dismissed by the culture at large – victims forced to watch the world fawn over their abusers while the statute of limitations achingly slipped away. None except for Ghomeshi, Harris and perhaps Cosby have experienced significant damage to their careers, and even those who are facing criminal charges got to spend the previous years doing exactly as they pleased, (allegedly) flush with the illusion of untouchability, leveraging their fame and power while freely victimising others for sport and pleasure.
That’s not a loss; it’s a win. That’s not being embattled; it’s being pampered. The pain of being criticised, however loudly, on the internet is in no way proportionate to the pain inflicted by sexual assault. Receiving a five-, 20-, or 50-year buffer before any charges stick to you is pretty much as cushy as crime gets.
The Duggar case, in this regard, is particularly repulsive. For those unversed in the “look at this weird family” school of American reality television (subsets include “let’s all laugh at the impoverished” and “fats – they think they’re people!”), the Duggar family populates a programme called 19 Kids and Counting, formerly 18 Kids and Counting, formerly 17 Kids and Counting. The premise is that patriarch Jim Bob Duggar incessantly impregnates his wife Michelle in order to expand the ranks of their sanctimonious Christian homeschooling cult – which, as far as I can tell, holds as its sacraments: boringness, purity, female subservience, shamelessly rubbing heterosex in strangers’ faces, the letter “J”, hairdos of a peltlike nature and keeping LGBT people from doing stuff.
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