Yes, We Really Do Have That Many Sex Predators
Because power corrupts and absolute star power corrupts absolutely
Can so many famous men be such creeps? Handsy guys who say creepy things to women, and sometimes to men? Molesters? Rapists? Serial rapists? Does American public life really promote so many predators to power and influence?
Yes. More, undoubtedly, than we know or will ever know. A lot, lot more.
Even King David
King David was one of the good guys, one of the Bible’s biggest heroes. Yet even he was the kind of sexual predator who could appear in a breaking news story.
We see him at work in the story of Bathsheeba. First he watched the poor woman taking a bath. That’s creepy enough, but creepers gonna creep.
It gets worse. He seduced her, maybe raped her. When she got pregnant, he tried to trick her husband Uriah into thinking the child was his. When that didn’t work, he murdered the man. The brute killed one of his loyal soldiers.
Then he went on with life as if nothing had happened, except he had a hot new wife to add to all the other wives in the harem. In fact he seems to have thought himself a great champion of the down-trodden. When the prophet Nathan reported that a rich man had stolen a poor man’s only sheep to feed a guest, David wanted the rich man executed. Of course, as Nathan said, David was that rich man.
And he was a man God Himself called a man after His own heart. David is a hero. He was a hero before he started spying on naked women. If even David went so wrong, Matt Lauer, John Conyers, Bill O’Reilly, Roy Moore and everyone else — millions of others — can go so wrong.
David repented. He had been pretty much as bad as a man could be, but he turned to God in genuine sorrow for his sins.
But even so: David had to live with the effects of his sin. His preying on Bathsheeba hurt her and her family first, then his family, his city, his entire nation. God forgave him his sins, but He didn’t erase the past. All Israel suffered because David took something he couldn’t have.
We know that they infest the worlds of politics and entertainment, including that branch of entertainment called the news. Lauer, Conyers, O’Reilly, Moore. Businesses also. Churches, schools, too. Pretty much every major institution in America.
We can’t be surprised. First, many men want sex and power. They lust both to possess the bodies of women and to control and dominate them. That’s fallen humanity. Tens of millions of men with the power to abuse means millions of men abusing.
Second, look how many predators and abusers operate in normal life. Ever work behind a counter? Sit typing in an office? Depend on tips? Work pretty much anywhere you weren’t in charge? Then you should know.
Powerful People Treat People Like Objects
Anyone shocked by these stories “is dumb,” blogger Leticia Adams wrote on Facebook. “Anybody who has waited tables anywhere can tell you that powerful men and women treat people like objects, because they do. It can be bartending at the Landing Strip or waiting tables at Olive Garden, there are always those people. I am shocked that anyone is shocked.”
Why? Because as everyone knows, power tends to corrupt. Most of us have suffered the effects of people with power. Even a tiny bit can be enough. Ask any waiter. Ask my colleague Al Perrotta.
If power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Who has power, in some cases almost absolute power? Who can get away with almost anything? Which people enjoy the favor of other powerful people? Who can abuse lots of people who can’t fight back?
Celebrities. Biggies. Stars. Powerful men and women in politics, the news media, entertainment, religion, business.
Operators in the Darkness
Power lets men and women operate in the darkness. When you’re a star, your bosses cover up for you, because they need you to make them look good and to keep making money for them. They can’t afford to let you embarrass them.
Your agent and p.r. people cover up for you because that’s what they do. Your lawyers too. They lie, they sell illusions, and you pay them well to do that. Your troubles means money in their pockets.
The people around you probably won’t say anything. Those at your level almost certainly won’t. (They certainly didn’t in Hollywood and D.C.) The bosses will be angry at them. And if you go down, they might go down and they like their jobs too much to risk losing them just over a sex abuser. Good jobs are hard to find. They might also cover up for you just because exposing you would take too much effort.
The people under you cover up for you because you scare them. You can hurt them. They need the job or want the next job up the ladder. You can send them out the door with their things in a box. Your bosses and your peers won’t protect them.
Matt Lauer etc. could all do that to other people. But — and this is crucial — not just $20 million a year celebrities like him and senators and other masters of the universe. Almost everyone has power over someone else. The big fish in the smallest pond can still be a shark.
The weaselly boss at the warehouse has his chances to exploit and abuse, even if he can’t do it on the industrial scale of a Harvey Weinstein. He’s a celebrity at the warehouse. Some people support him and some people depend on him. Others fear him. He wants to prey on vulnerable women, that’s all he needs.
That’s one reason I say we have more predators than we know or ever will know. Fallen men want what they should not have, and many will take it anyway.
