The Hope of Innocence

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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9 Responses

  1. LeeEsq says:

    National Treasure might be a thinly fictionalized version of the Jimmy Saville saga. Jimmy Saville was a beloved entertainer/national master of ceremonies of sorts for Great Britain. After he died it was revealed that his extracurricular activities involved raping lots of underage girls. In one particular brazen case he found a runaway teenage girl at a club he was at and told the police that he will return the girl in the morning. The number of victims seemed staggering. Worse yet, the BBC and the British police knew about this criminal activity and did nothing. It was institutional failure at every level. Making a bad situation worse, reporters went through past interviews and found that Mr. Saville was giving hints about his criminal life through out his career. A posthumous biography of him was entitled “In Plain Sight.”Report

  2. pillsy says:

    There was some attention paid to this in the very long comment thread on Mike Dwyer’s post about Bill Clinton, but going back to a lot of allegations previously dismissed as implausible with contemporary eyes make them look much different. “Holes” in victims’ stories that would once have been treated as utterly discrediting now perhaps just introduce a measure of doubt, and “holes” in victims’ stories that would have introduced a measure of doubt are generally not regarded as serious issues.

    I remember basically believing none of the allegations of assault and harassment against Clinton at the time. This wasn’t out of partisanship, because I identified as a Republican, disliked his politics, and still thought he was detestable on a personal level.Report

    • Will Truman in reply to pillsy says:

      I voted for Clinton in ’96 and disbelieved most of it. When I flipped on Clinton in 1998, Broaderick was the only one I still didn’t render judgment. Even if I didn’t like him, the thought of a president – even that one – doing that was hard to accept.Report

      • pillsy in reply to Will Truman says:

        That makes sense. TBQH I still don’t really believe Willey.

        At the time I made a lot more out of Broaderick changing her story. Now I look at it and I’m like, “Holy shit dude is guilty as hell.”Report

  3. LeeEsq says:

    The differences between this fictionalized version and the real Jimmy Saville was that Saville was really guilty as sin and that his crimes were a lot worse because of the very young age of his victims. Like I mentioned above, the number of victims was vast. I think in the donzes.Report

  4. Maribou says:

    I really appreciated this piece, Will, and I think you’ve hit one of the reasons for widespread disbelief square on. No one wants to believe the person they love could have harmed other people in such a low manner.Report

  5. Burt Likko says:

    You’d think that after so many repetitions of the cycle, we’d have eventually grown numb and used to the notion that people we admire are also falliable and indeed likely have questionable events in their histories. Sometimes more than “questionable.” Complex opinions are hard to hold, harder to sustain, and ultimately deeply dissatisfactory.

    Longing for a hero doesn’t mean that your chosen hero is going to be worthy of that honor. Perhaps we simply need to ratchet down the sorts of roles that heroes play in our lives.Report