The Courage to Tell the Truth
A ray of hope in dark times from Jodi Kantor, the Pulitzer Prize-winning NYT reporter who brought down Harvey Weinstein and sparked the #MeToo movement.
On April 5th, my wife and I attended a #HandsOff protest at the Texas State Capitol in our hometown of Austin, joining around 5-6k pro-democracy rally-goers concerned about the rise of an American dictatorship and the rapid erosion of the rule of law.
As someone who doesn’t attend tons of protests, I was expecting to be energized and empowered by the sense of community, by the sheer numbers and the whole all-American democracy of the whole thing.
It was a great, well-organized, completely non-violent protest with a really nice turnout, and let’s face it - there is release in simply getting out your anger in chants and cheers and ridiculous signage.
There’s a reason I write a Substack called Gulf of Mexico. By simply putting something on a page and sharing, by learning how to best advocate for my values by doing it consistently and freely and openly, I typically feel some sort of catharsis.
But this time was different. As I looked around the Capitol grounds (which were free of visible counter-protests, likely given the stock market decimation Trump has wreaked just days before), I couldn’t help but feel this really hollow, very empty, and profoundly sad feeling, when all I really wanted to do was channel anger.
I looked around at all the old people worried about their Social Security checks, some of them toting walkers; the frizzy-haired librarians fighting book bans; the lifelong government workers, family in tow, that have lost their jobs; pissed off vets and healthcare researchers who’ve lost their funding; and a whole lotta garden variety jamokes who already have a hard enough time winning in life without having to eat an extra bite of shit burrito every time Trump sends the markets nose-diving with ill-conceived tariffs.
It felt like the whole world was caught frozen, watching a fire juggler at the local gas station tossing around flamethrowers willy-nilly, mere inches from the pump.
And no matter how many millions of us lined the streets with signs trying to get him to slowly step away from the gas station, he just wouldn’t do it.
I knew that I was doing my part by showing up against fascism, as the administration was in the process of disappearing innocent immigrants to a concentration camp in El Salvador (by mistake), extorting control of free speech from universities, and sending masked goons to deport hundreds of students for the sin of protesting for peace.
Yes it pissed me off, but mainly it made me wonder just…fucking…why?
Why is so much pain being brought down on so many people? And why does so much of that pain seem directed at women and children and the elderly and just normal ass people? For whom? To what end?
And the longer I asked that question the more depressed and despondent I felt, and the more I felt like burying my head beneath my comforter, absorbed in grief at the sheer cruel stupidity of it all.
Then Jodi Kantor Set Me Straight…
Last Thursday, I attended a discussion at Texas Women’s University featuring Jodi Kantor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter and author of “She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement.”
Kantor was in town as part of the University’s Jamison Lecture Series, speaking on “The Power of Truth” to a packed room. Kantor and fellow NYT writer Meghan Twohey were the investigative reporters who brought down Harvey Weinstein by exposing the truth about decades worth of sexual harassment and assault, as well as the rape of several women while he ran Miramax.
The riveting 2022 film version of the book, “She Said,” stars Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan (as Kantor) and it details the absurd lengths it took for the reporters to uncover the truth about the power structure of Hollywood.
It also depicts the type of threats and intimidation that came from Weinstein, including legal threats, being followed by and spied upon by former Israeli intelligence, even phone calls in the middle of the night threatening rape.
When staring into the face of power and asking hard questions about abhorrent behavior, there is bound to be a time when any normal human has to question whether the trouble is worth it, especially when the threat of legal, financial, and physical punishment is very real.
Now imagine dealing with your normal life while listening all day long to story after story of sickening abuse, misogyny, and full-on professional sabotage, while also being subjected to a similar stream of abuse and intimidation from the same guy.
Listening to Kantor describe how she dealt with that fear and doubt based on the threats of a powerful bully was both enlightening and energizing.
“When I come and speak to students, I often get questions about how I took care of myself emotionally during the reporting process. Was I traumatized by the material? And I think it’s always a little disappointing to people when I say ‘guys the day you get to confront Harvey Weinstein at work is the best workday ever.’ Not only because of the thrill of journalism but because there’s inherent hope in what we do, right?”
She acknowledged that many of us may feel powerless, that “in such an unstable world, people get to the point that they are just ‘enough already.’ I’m not going to pay attention to the news.”
So why bother?
“As our historian friends know, there’s a huge difference between ‘everyone knows’ and it being documented. We take for granted that horrible things have happened in the world. That people have really suffered. And the question is ‘Can it be addressed? Can it be known? Can it be discussed? Can there be some safe and respectful way of extracting it so that society can somehow make a plan for doing something about it?’”
Of course (due largely to Kantor and Twohey’s reporting and their courage) Harvey Weinstein’s behavior was addressed. It was known and discussed and it was extracted very carefully into society, where it sparked the massive #MeToo movement and helped bring attention to the pervasive sexual harassment in Hollywood.
It also led to Weinstein going to prison for a very long time for criminal sexual assault and rape. While one of the case he faced in New York is up for retrial, he still faces a 16 year sentence for three felony convictions for rape and sexual misconduct in California, and is likely to live out the final days of his life fighting bone marrow cancer from inside the walls of Rikers.
As Laura Madden, one of Weinstein’s survivors in “She Said” puts it: “There isn’t ever going to be an end. The point is that people have to continue always speaking up and not being afraid.”
Amen. Today and for the foreseeable future, courage in the face of real consequences will continue to be required — especially if you want to see bullies face justice.