Maggie's Farm

Now, let's be charitable. It's possible that the press decided to run with the "dangled his junk in my face" and "gang rape cruise" allegations because they were marginally more credible than the other 1400. So you can imagine how barking made the other 1400 sounded. "Dwarf Rapes Nun, Escapes in UFO."

As AVI has been pointing out, the question is not whether it's culpable or inexplicable that Ford can't remember a number of key details while remembering others vividly. There are two points. First, "I had exactly one beer" is not the kind of thing most people take seriously as "seared" into memory decades later. Second, a legitimate reason for memories to be effaced doesn't change the fact that they are effaced, and therefore that some 35-year-old memories are unavoidably unreliable. It doesn't matter whose fault that is, as long as it's not the fault of the accused. What remains is that memories that old, especially if uncorroborated and even disputed by contemporaneous written records, are too unreliable to destroy a life over. There's not enough of the whole fabric of the incident left for the accused to be given a fair chance to construct a defense. It's a shifting fog.

I treat an accusation that I'm a traitor to my double-X chromosome with the same contempt I would extend to an accusation that I'm a traitor to my race. Few arguments are less likely to win me over. Remember "n*****-lover", a filthy epithet that I'm glad was long ago flushed down the sewer? Pfffffffffffui on all such habits of thought. You don't have to agree with me politically, but at least keep your honor clean.

Too true. People kept saying, "But why would she lie?" as if that were even a difficult question. But supposing it were, wouldn't it be harder to sort out "Why would one accusation among 1,400 be more credible, given that 1,399 are patently absurd?"--especially when the people telling you solemnly to "believe believe believe" don't seem all that able to tell the difference, either.