If that Joanie Faircloth had claimed, I dunno, Anthony Keidis had raped her, even with no proof whatsoever, you might think, well, if he walks like a duck and he quacks like a duck… even without any proof whatsoever, who would possibly make such a claim. And that is real bad and I can’t say more than that, but if it was Anthony Keidis you might think it’s a duck to yourself, hey dude, you shoulda kept a sock on that dick.
But CONOR OBERST???
And what hurts more is people who, above all others, should know better, decided he was guilty without a shred of evidence. I could just as well have stood up and said he raped me, as Joanie. In this day and age anybody can accuse any one of anything and be found guilty in the court of public opinion.
A few years ago I was accused, and went to court because I wouldn’t settle, after being accused of sexual harassment. And I got very lucky, the liar also accused the VP of my company, so if they had been inclined to believe her about me, they didn’t believe it about him.
It was a complete shakedown by this snake, and it cost my company $700,000 to defend itself and we were found not guilty immediately after lunch (my assumption is the jury were just hanging for a free meal).
So my sympathies were with Conor any way, compounded by having met his ex girlfriend Maria Taylor, who I didn’t believe would have dated a scumbag (or at least that type of a scumbag) for year after year. Also, it is a small world and stories of Conor’s sybaritic indulgences made rape a somewhat weird concept, he couldn’t throw a brick without hitting a girl who wanted to fuck his brains out, why would he bring that world of trouble down on himself? Infidelity? Yes, absolutely. Rape? It didn’t smell right.
The real pain in all of this story is how the huge girl fans, the sixteen year olds he denigrated to Rolling Stone, deserved his insults. How could they turn their back on somebody they worshipped on one woman’s comment on Tumblr. How could uber fan Catherine Moore turn on him on such flimsy (flimsy? Non existent) information. How could she have studied his music and lyrics for years and years, obsessively, and decided he was a rapist?
If Mary and I couldn’t believe it, how could Moore? How could other people? How could this have happened? It is such a terrible, sad story, and that’s what hurts. I know his wife, his label, father, friends, Maria, everybody knew it was complete bullshit but how can those people who so deeply feel his music misread the situation so entirely.
It is all an illusion, this social media interaction, knowing people you don’t know is an illusion of intimacy and when it comes down to it, when people who know and love you should stand by you, they let you down. I don’t know how Oberst feels, maybe be intuited this and that’s why he has been so cynical about the entire process for so long. Oh how the circumstances change, indeed.
