That’s it, I’m out. I’m finished with the Epstein scandal. This morning I read about a man who is on the cusp of cancellation because he once sent a flirtatious email to Ghislaine Maxwell, years before her crimes were known about. This is getting ridiculous. It feels like MeToo on steroids.
There’s a medieval vibe of finger-pointing and rumor-mongering
The man is Casey Wasserman. He’s chair of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics. And there are hollers for him to stand down. All because he once got digitally horny with Ms Maxwell. “I think of you all the time,” he wrote in one email. “What do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?” he asked.
That’s it. A little bit of lame middle-aged wooing. And it happened in 2003, 17 years before Maxwell was first arrested for trafficking minors on behalf of that ultimate wrong’un, Jeffrey Epstein.
“I deeply regret my correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell,” Wasserman has pleaded in a public statement. Correspondence, he reminds us, that “took place over two decades ago, long before her horrific crimes came to light.”
If he thinks such a reasoned response to the Epstein feeding frenzy will save his skin, he’s in for a rude awakening. LA’s political bigwigs want his scalp. “Having him represent us on the world stage distracts focus from our athletes,” says LA county supervisor Janice Hahn. What, because he once fantasized about seeing a lady in leather?
Can we please clock how mad this is? A man sent a private message to a woman more than two decades ago, at a time when none of us knew what that woman was up to, and now his career is on the line?
This is a species of hysteria. You have to go all the way back to the craziest days of MeToo, when men were being ousted from public life on the basis of accusation alone, to find anything as bonkers as this. Or to the campus sex panics of the 2010s, when everything from an unwanted come-on in the student bar to an off-color joke on the quad was reimagined as an act of “rape culture” deserving of punishment.
The case of Mr Wasserman confirms that the Epstein scandal has become a moral panic. No, this is not to say there was no wrongdoing on the part of Epstein and Maxwell. Of course there was. Epstein was a venal character whose abuse of young women was appalling.
But there’s a medieval vibe of finger-pointing and rumor-mongering to this latest stage of the Epstein affair. Innocent people look set to be devoured by the bloodlust of the digital mob that can’t get enough of all the tall tales about a vast pedo ring that secretly runs the world.
No sooner had the Department of Justice dumped three million Epstein files onto the web than people were scouring them for names of the rich and famous who had some association, however fleeting, with the Beelzebub of the digital era.
Innocents are being dragged through the mud. Not only Mr Wasserman but also Britain’s national treasure and fierce defender of women’s rights, J.K. Rowling. The discovery that Epstein received an invitation to the official Broadway opening of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child got the misogynistic mob that hates Rowling frothing at the mouth. “She was pals with a pedo,” they wail.
Her name is in the demonic files and that’s enough. She consorted with the devil. Cast her out
That the invitation didn’t come from Rowling but rather from the show’s producers, and that Rowling had no contact whatsoever with Mr Epstein, makes not a blind bit of difference to the sickly witchfinders. Her name is in the demonic files and that’s enough. She consorted with the devil. Cast her out.
Then there are the truly insane claims. Such as that George H.W. Bush once had an orgy with Bill Clinton on Epstein’s yacht, and what’s more he sacrificed babies and ate excrement from their intestines. You would think it would be unnecessary to point out that this is obviously complete baloney born of a fevered mind, yet which somehow ended up in the DoJ’s teetering files on dodgy Jeffrey. But you’d be wrong. Social media is aflame with lunatic chatter about our baby-eating overlords.
We end up in the psycho situation where a digital mag can publish the following headline: “Fact-check: Did Jeffrey Epstein really eat babies?” I hope I’m not risking cancellation myself when I say: “No he didn’t, you mad bastards.” It has the feel of the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic. That old, crazy idea that devilish men sacrifice babies and devour human flesh staggers back to cretinous life.
Are there bad men in the world? There sure are. Epstein was one. Did the likes of Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor show a staggering lack of judgment in their dealings with Epstein? Yep. But can we please not give in to that dark ancient urge to find witches and devils? Can we please not burn the presumption of innocence at the altar of mob mentality? The Epstein scandal has become a swirling social mania and I am done with it.
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