People Are Questioning Your Sacred Cows? Listen Up
There's good reason to scrutinize claims like the Roy Moore mall story. It's certainly not to protect a pedophile.
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Banned from a mall because he preyed on girls? Beware of claims that sound "too good to check."
Photographer: Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images
Twitter had a festive evening after the New Yorker ran an article alleging that Senate candidate Roy Moore was banned from an Alabama shopping mall sometime around 1980. His offense? You will be unsurprised by reports emerging now that say he had a reputation for trying to pick up teenage girls.
“Roy Moore was banned from a mall. Banned. from. a. mall” tweeted Jonathan Chait of New York magazine. And in the ensuing hours, I saw roughly one trillion versions of that statement. It might have been a quadrillion. I lost count.
First of all: I find the women who have accused Moore credible. The behavior they describe ranges between “ick” and “child molester.” I think Moore should withdraw his candidacy, and if he refuses, I think Alabama voters should select any opponent who did not attempt to “date” a 14-year-old girl when they were in their thirties.
Nonetheless, I’m skeptical about the mall story. No one in the New Yorker story seems to have been directly involved with the alleged mall ban; every source who was willing (even eager) to talk seems to have heard the story from someone else. It seems probable that there was a rumor floating around that Moore was banned from the mall; it seems possible that this rumor was even true. But it’s also possible it’s false. Those of us over a certain age will remember how many compelling, yet false, urban legends we believed before Snopes.com was invented. And who was the source for every one of those legends? That stalwart figure, “a friend of a friend.”
So without better confirmation than “35 years ago, I heard from a guy that Roy Moore got banned from the mall,” I will withhold judgment on whether Moore was actually banned. I tweeted as much after I read the New Yorker story. And was immediately inundated with aggressive accusations of covering up for a child molester and general partisan hackery.
I am not generally identified as a member of Team Trump, much less Team Roy Moore. Indeed, prior to my tweet about the mall story, I’d been saying some fairly astringent things about the people who were attacking Moore’s accusers -- or worse, saying “But Democrats covered for Bill Clinton!” I just didn’t happen to think this particular story was very strong.
I also didn’t think it particularly mattered. If Moore did everything he has been credibly accused of, would we be inclined to give him a pass because that supreme judicial authority, the mall of Gadsden, Alabama, never got around to banning him?
But as I attempted to explain why this story looks weak to a lot of journalists (I was not the only one who noticed the thin sourcing), I began to understand why I’d triggered such outrage. Because several people asked me some version of the same question: “Why would you even question this story?” In their minds, it was clear that there could be only one reason: because I was trying to somehow salvage Moore’s candidacy.
I get asked this question a lot these days. Why would you even argue about rapestatistics, when we know that rape is a problem? Why would you give even a moment's consideration to those who theorize that global warming could be moderate rather than catastrophic? Why would you raise questions about that terrible gang rape at UVA?
My interlocutors have a point: We all make choices about which assertions we interrogate, and which we accept on easy faith. And because we are biased, we tend to interrogate most ruthlessly the inconvenient claims that stand in the way of something we’d very much like to believe. When someone casts doubt on a politically charged story, it’s not crazy to infer an ulterior ideological motive (even though in this particular case involving my qualms about that Roy Moore mall story, this inference was dead wrong).
But if we are committed to believing only things that are likely to be true, then how much does the motive of a questioner really matter? I’d argue “not much.” Knowing someone’s political commitments tells you that they are likely to accept evidence for some propositions more easily than for others. But it does not tell you that their analysis is wrong.
To the contrary, partisans with an axe to grind are often the people who see what others don't. The faked Second Amendment scholarship of Michael Bellesiles, the forgeriesthat suggested Bush had gone AWOL during Vietnam, the imaginary gang rape at a UVA fraternity -- in all cases, the people who raised questions were dismissed as cranks and partisans, and often this was actually true. And yet, they were the ones seeing clearly, while the people questioning their motives were not.
Truth is powerful stuff; it can be bottled up for just so long before it bursts its container and splatters all over the place. And when that happens, the revelation of the lie hurts the credibility of everyone who embraced it -- and harms the very cause they thought they were helping.So instead of labeling folks as partisan and dismissing their questions, we should embrace a tough critique regardless of its source. You have your blind spots, just like they have theirs. By overlaying their world view onto yours, you may be able to get a fuller picture. You'll get closer to the truth by listening to people who see the world very differently from you, especially the ones who ask questions that make you uncomfortable. If what you believe is true, their objections can only refine your ideas into something stronger. And if what you believe is false -- well, it’s better to find out quick.
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