his Life In Exile

Scary Time For Men

John Hockenberry: My Life In Exile

Oooh! How dramatic!

I wouldn't have read it except that 1. I subscribe to Harpers and 2. I heard on NPR someone interviewing a victim of Hockenberry's one night early last week really late at night and it was a great discussion about his racism, sexism and bullying and how a white guy became the face of a show trying to express diversity and I couldn't find it online.

Hockenberry starts out by reminding us "HEY, I'M FAMOUS!" and also "I'm in a wheelchair" before explaining that he's already said he's sorry, what else do these people want. He then marches on listing all of his awards (which are in storage because #metoo destroyed him, does he need to remind you?) and success with The Takeaway - a show, which in my understanding, was supposed to be one to highlight diversity and minority voices. . . Next, he goes on to show a bit of remorse, not about this actions, but about how he used to be recognized as an author and advocate for disability rights and now he wants to hide from passersby who might believe the falsehoods that are repeated without challenge -- UNTIL NOW. He's here to set you straight.

One of the more annoying bits is when he says he's tortured by the names of women he's hurt running through his head. I'm thinking, this could be the start of remorse and growth. But then he gets angry about the anger of his colleagues who are working through pain he obviously caused and castigates them for giving him the cold shoulder or silent treatment. He doesn't get to control their reaction to his misconduct, yet that is exactly what he expects.

He predictably launches into the "but at least I'm not a serial rapist" routine, as though not falling into the most extreme violation of women exonerates him of any wrongdoing. He's beyond indignant that what he calls "awkward attempts at courtship" are equated in any way with sexual misconduct and rape. Both are crossing the line and violating bodily autonomy. They involve abuse, bullying, power imbalance in varying degrees. He admits to a bit of bad judgment (again, are we going to get some remorse now?), but mainly places the blame on America's contradictory values of puritanism and social progressivism. So basically what he's saying is that men aren't to blame, it's these contradictions getting in the way of gender and racial equality.

He claims this doesn't let him off the hook, then explains that he should be off the hook because his marriage was falling apart and he was really stressed out. We then get the pointed denials of his being a racist bully - he claims he treated everyone equally as awful because he was stressed out. Then he attacks Suki Kim and says she misconstrued his oh so innocent "friendly" emails and how can he help that anyway? Again he says he takes responsibility for his actions but uses stress and his disability to wiggle out of it.

And now after all that "context" (read: flat out denial), he wants to start a conversation! What a guy! He's got the answer to the question absolutely no one is asking. Wonderful. Romance and courtship were destroyed, thrown out in the 21st century. That's our big problem, he thinks. Sexual harassment and white male privilege is not an issue. So he launches into this ridiculous "it's not my fault!" narrative while simultaneously claiming the brave position of speaking truth to power for poor little rich, powerful accused white men. How brave indeed.

He's a pariah. He can't get work. He's shunned, unemployable (in the line of work he desires and believes he deserves without question). He throws out the suggestion of a greeter at Wal-Mart and says he can't get a meeting except by sympathy. Boo hoo. My first issue is when the rest of us lose a job, we have to work at Wal-Mart, bag groceries, be a waiter. We go back to school or learn a new trade. Many people I know are working in fields totally unrelated to their degrees. My second issue is that BEING FAMOUS IS NOT THEIR RIGHT. These guys are comfortable in this position, they enjoy being beloved and creating programming people love and that's fine, but they are not entitled to this pedestal they become accustomed to. Marketing yourself may seem like a great idea when things are going well and your skeletons are securely locked in that closet and you're making money hand over fist. When the product is you and you have a pattern of behavior people dislike, you just can't serve in that capacity anymore, nor to you deserve it in any way. Find another job. It seems like the most entitled, privileged position to say that the people owe you the fame you once had or that it's others who need to change rather than you that needs to adapt to a situation you brought on by your own bad decisions and actions.

He's entirely misguided in what relationships and sexuality are today. He talks about what he views as the current drunken hook ups and avoiding STDs replacing the misguided flirty romance of his past. And instead of taking responsibility in any way, he again says sure maybe I did things but it's really not my fault and is erasing me from my profession going to bring gender equality? How long must he suffer this exile before he can return as though nothing at all happened.

And he brings up Lolita and says Nabokov would've been jailed - and juxtaposes Our Bodies, Ourselves and his learning of vulvas and and clitorises and admiration for Andrea Dworkin. 

Next he practically shouts his point that HE'S JUST MISUNDERSTOOD. Again with the hook up culture and saying his romantic ideas are way better than hooking up. So HE WON'T BE QUIET! I'm reminded of Lindsey Graham during the Kavanaugh sexual assault hearings here. . . He laments that sending a woman a Lord Byron poem -if she understood it, mind you - might get you in trouble. So he's insulting women as he's complaining about not being able to harass them. Classy.

And super upsetting to him in his exile is all the anger and having to think about gender and equality and what women think, so he weaponizes his disability trying to shame women for candid talk about sex because he doesn't need or can't have it. Then he shames them and misses the point, saying that they are substituting scientific sex talk for actual romance. In his misunderstanding, he even gives a nod to Louis CK. He uses his misunderstanding of romance today with all the sciencey talk (which isn't really a substitute for romance, btw) to say that it's so confusing these days what with hooking up, who can consent really - you can't actually blame me. It's not my fault! ME ME ME! Open season on ME. What am I to tell my KIDS?

He does talk about looking back on every encounter he had with women and I was fooled into thinking this was when he'd be decent and reflect and show some respect and remorse. But no. He's thinking about books. Of course! Lolita again. I'm cringing. He sees this book as a celebration of arousal and how a man is powerless to resist his urges. Ugh. I always took the work as art because Nabokov humanized a very unlikable fellow, not because it was a great romance novel. He even brings a favorite book of mine, Reading Lolita In Tehran, into it. He praises the women in the book for their intellectual freedom, but rebukes his accusers and other sexual assault survivors as the Iranian morality police. This is infuriating and insulting to all women. Unforgivable.

And to top off this misappropriation, he identifies with Lolita. Lolita! Him? He had an incident at a theater where a man grabbed at his zipper and erection in the movie Psycho when he was in 8th grade. He didn't call this sexual assault because he ran away and it was part of navigating discovery of sex - for him. He's saying see? it happened to me and it was no big deal. What he's missing is the power imbalance. The women are at a disadvantage in status and in the way we are taught to be polite and not to make waves and to please men no matter the cost. I'm sorry he had that experience, but he could run and wasn't pressured by a professional or cultural situation to accept abuse rather than upset someone.

He falls back into the refrain of not having a job for a year and contrasts this with taking piano and having a recital among children. Rather than feeling shame (he begs for congratulations again), he connected to the music and learned that Brahms and the Romantic composers also had familiar problems with "tolerance of women or clarity of relationships." So that makes it all better, doesn't it? We shouldn't be expected to evolve and work for a more equal society, should we? And then he kind of uses his wheelchair in that slimy way to draw attention away from the issues at hand - his abuses of power - to say I don't know if they recognized me for sexual harassment or the usual gawking at the wheelchair. He tries to blame these composers as well as the Zorba role from a high school play for his bad choices and abuses and still has not taken responsibility for his actions.

And now we come to Dworkin, who he dismissed as a radical feminist earlier, but now he connects, reading her description of the mechanics of sex where she exclaims "can he get out alive?" It must be so tough to be a white guy.

As we near the end, he finally says it: he believes #metoo is the presumption of rape, meaning you shouldn't believe women. Again he misses the point. #metoo is solidarity. Me too is like Black Lives Matter in that currently black lives are treated as though they don't matter and women aren't believed and we want these things to change. Those movements aren't about hating men or hating white people, but he reduces #metoo to a trumpian "witch hunt." He finally argues for sweeping #metoo under the rug because - c'mon, it's romance! And the last bit is about what this moment in history means to him and his family. He's very proud of himself, he really wants us to know. It's funny how much about him this whole thing is; not really anything like a self-examination or as he claims, context.

What I can't get over is the deflection and also how he seems to believe being famous is his RIGHT. It's privilege in the extreme. It's no tragedy for him to go back to school or get a local job in a shop or editing from home or something. The way he talks about his year long exile as something he has a right to emerge from like nothing happened shows he doesn't understand what he needs to do to change or to even feel remorse.

I was taught to aim low. I wanted to be an architect. My mom told me she wasn't good at math. I had to work at it, so I adopted the same attitude, that I wasn't good at math. No one told me that you can study and get better at it. My dad made me say it. He asked me if I thought I was good at math and the answer I was supposed to give was no, so that was that. Being an architect takes math and I don't have it.

I wanted to be a veterinarian in high school. The vet I worked for told me I couldn't be a vet unless I could restrain cats. I had let one go while restraining it while she was examining it. The office manager told me that if the vet is injured, they lose money and I don't want to be responsible for that. I can't be a vet without being able to restrain cats and obviously I failed. In college, my adviser sealed the deal by telling me Bs wouldn't cut it. I'd need all A's for vet school, I should give that up. People never said you can do it, they only said oh my, that sounds hard.

The idea that these men believe they deserve fame and deserve to continue in the limelight after abuse comes to light is insane to me. Fame seems fleeting and completely based on luck, who deserves it? Who can dictate what people like and make popular? Yet these powerful white men want to be able to stay famous, make a victorious comeback and want everyone to forget about their abusive behavior as though they deserve a privileged spot above everyone else.