Ben’s view
The Jeffrey Epstein story brings out two of the worst traits in journalists and — to really point fingers here — in our audiences. First, the human tendency to fill in gaps with wild theories that flatter our prejudices; second, the bias toward what’s new over what’s known.
The larger Epstein belief system is QAnon for people who went to college. If you spend five minutes looking at the evidence, you’re amazed by what’s not known about the case. If you spend an hour, you learn that there’s just no evidence to support the core suggestion: that Epstein, who did horribly abuse underage girls, also ran a child-sex and blackmail ring that ensnared powerful men (on behalf, naturally, of Mossad). Twenty years of investigations and a decade of aggressive journalism has turned up zero videos, no “client list.” His helper Ghislaine Maxwell is sitting in federal prison for the usual reason: She didn’t have anyone better to hand over to prosecutors.
And is there anything new to say about the social life of a middle-aged Donald Trump? The Wall Street Journal’s hilarious and gross revelation of his leering 50th birthday party note to Epstein sits squarely in what everyone knows already: Trump and Epstein were party-boy associates on the louche side of 1990s New York. The new letter is not as explosive as, for instance, Trump’s 2002 remark that the “fun” Epstein “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” The novelty of the Journal’s great scoop doesn’t mean we learned something new about the president.
There’s obviously great fun in watching the world’s dumbest media revolution — the social media Epstein detectives, led by podcasters-turned-keystone-cops — devour its children. There are political incentives for Democrats to join MAGA in stoking wild theories. And there are good, non-conspiratorial questions about how Epstein linked business, social climbing, and sex, as the heroic reporter who reopened the case, Julie K. Brown, suggested the other day. Maybe investigative documents, perhaps including the files Trump ordered released, can answer some of these questions.
But those of us trying to stay sane ought to keep in mind the distinction between evidence and speculation, fantasy and reality.
Room for Disagreement
Brown, who effectively reopened the case in the Miami Herald, offered a reality-based version of the darkest Epstein theories in an interview with Ross Douthat: “I don’t think he blackmailed people directly like that. I mean, if you just really think about it, if you send a girl over to have sex with one of these men, it’s not like you write it down,” she said. “I don’t believe he had a list. I just think that he used these women, girls, as pawns in order to ingratiate himself with people that he wanted to do business with. It was a business transaction to him.… I don’t think it was an official or an outright blackmail scheme like that. I think it was more like: He knows this about me, maybe I better do this.”