Holding Contradictory Truths Is the Work

6 min readFeb 27, 2020

February 26, 2020, 7:35 pm
Filed under: feminism, movies, podcasting, TV | Tags: #MeToo, Alec Baldwin, Bill Cosby, Chasing Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, James Toback, Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey, podcast, Ronan Farrow

CW: Sexual Assault and Rape

It’s not often that I listen to Alec Baldwin’s podcast but something compelled me to listen to his interview with Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor. I suppose, after listening to Ronan Farrow’s podcast about breaking his Weinstein story, I was hungry to hear about their experience.

I suppose I knew that Alec Baldwin would fumble this particular ball a little. After all, he’s a part of this Hollywood world they were talking about and surely his hands are not entirely clean. I expected it to get uncomfortable at times. But I did not expect him to recognize his own fumbles. It is actually weirdly refreshing to hear a celebrity say that he’s fumbled the ball spectacularly. And he did. But his struggle on this topic was actually fascinating.

The interview began to get tense when Baldwin brought up his friend, James Toback, about whom there are a great many stories about how he exploited his power as a director. Baldwin was clearly having trouble reconciling his affection for his friend with the myriad of stories about him. Twohey and Kantor were artful in riding that roller coaster with him and in pointing out things Baldwin was skating over or denying. They even pointed out patterns in his speech. Baldwin veered between “he was my friend” to “he is my friend” back to “He WAS my friend.” Several times. It’s an uncomfortable but compelling listen. What struck me about the whole exchange, though, is how hard it was for Baldwin to imagine that the good guy he knows, his buddy, could do the things of which he is accused. I imagine it would be hard for any of us to reconcile a person who is kind to us but cruel to others. We all only see the person the way they are with us. But I think many women are more experienced at negotiating this contradiction.

I mean, of course, Toback is nice and fun with Alec Baldwin. Baldwin is a successful powerful man. But women who auditioned for Toback experienced a whole other person. He was not nice and fun with them. But I don’t think those women would be surprised to learn that other men find Toback nice and fun. This sort of behavior lives in corners. Men miss it all the time. They’ve been missing it for centuries. It was only when #MeToo hit that most men seemed to pay attention to the way other men treat women. I was struck by this conflict in Baldwin, by the struggle to feel both the affection for his friend and the truth of his friend’s behavior. It’s a conflict that feels like the sort many women have been negotiating for years. It’s the, “I’ve heard Harvey Weinstein is a pig with women but he’s also one of the most powerful men in the movie business so maybe lunch with him isn’t as terrible an idea as it seems.” It’s the, “I heard that guy was a dick to his previous girlfriend but he’s been a real sweetheart with me. Maybe he’s changed?”

But it’s also the less obviously problematic stuff. It’s the “that guy makes sexist jokes at meetings but he’s great at mentoring, so I’ll live with the sexist jokes.” It’s the “Many men are trash so we’ll deal.” We’ll be friends with even the trashy ones. Some will even marry them — because problematic men are the norm and reconciling the good with the bad is something women have always done. In listening to Baldwin try to reconcile Toback, I felt like I was listening to a more complex interesting future where men aren’t just good guys and bad guys anymore.

Throughout #MeToo, I feel like I’ve seen a lot of men try to separate out the bad eggs — to say, “Oh yes, Weinstein and Cosby are clearly awful. Once they’re out of the picture, we’ll just all be good guys here again.” Mmmm. Sure.

I listened to the Chasing Cosby podcast, which follows the story of the trial that sent Cosby to prison — and the thing that shook me the most were the stories about how kind and generous Cosby was to those women before he raped them. He gave them jobs and mentoring. He opened up opportunities. He met their parents and took them to dinner. Many of these women (some of whom were girls at the time) considered him a mentor and father figure. Until the moment he drugged them, they too would never have believed such a kind man could do such a thing. Then he did. And the people around him who had never been drugged by him could not imagine the person who could do that. The divide is simply between who got the pills and who didn’t. The kid who played Rudy on The Cosby Show felt sure that Cosby was innocent because Cosby was so kind to her. But both things are true.

Cosby was kind to Keshia Knight Pulliam and did not rape her. He was also kind to Lili Bernard who played Mrs. Minifield on the Cosby Show and he DID rape her. Even a rapist can do kindnesses.

Understanding that even generous, helpful men might still be rapists is the work. It’s not pleasant work — but that’s the work.

I’m not even sure you can’t be friends with someone like Toback. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be. But if I were already his friend and then found out about what he did, I’d hope I’d show up for him to say, “Wow, man, you really fucked up. What can I do to get you some help to rehab yourself?”

I appreciate that it’s a difficult position to be in. A lot of women have been in it for a mighty long time.

I think Baldwin is standing in an interesting spot and I’ll be curious about what happens for him next. Is it possible that digging into his friend’s stories will lead to realizing he may have exploited his own power at some point? I think it’s very possible and if that reckoning happens, I will be right by my podcast feed ready to witness. That will be the most compelling listening of all.