. . . to say the least. No doubt you have heard about the misfortune of Jeffrey Toobin but most reports have been somewhat circumspect. The original story broken by Vice is explicit. It seems he was on a Zoom call with fellow New Yorker contributors in which they were somehow simulating election night. (Bizarrely, Masha Gessen was playing Orange Julius.) Anyhooo, as they were going into break rooms Toobin apparently transferred his attention to a video sex service and jerked off (to quote the Vice story directly), thinking he could not be seen by the other participants, but sadly no.
I bring this up for the sake of a few reflections on human nature and morality, and the digital age, in no particular order.
1. Toobin is a rich, famous married guy. This happened in the middle of the workday while he was in fact working, yet he felt compelled to get in a quick wonk. This reminds us that: a) Humans are capable of obtaining sexual gratification from an essentially imaginary experience, although the imagination sometimes benefits from a boost such as feelthy peectures or, in the brave new world, an on-line interlocutor. That tells us something about how the big brains bequeathed to us by evolution work, which is not always very functional for survival and reproduction: b) We really don't know very much about people who may have all sorts of odd shit going on when you aren't looking. In this case presumably his wife didn't know about this habit. It's reminiscent of Anthony Weiner, actually, who was under some inexplicable compulsion to tweet his junk.
2. This was evidently a complete accident, and the vast majority of people don't think there's anything morally wrong with yanking the crank in private. So we need to reflect on exactly why he's in big trouble, has been suspended from his job, and is so profoundly shamed. He could have committed some other fuck up such as burning the roast or accidentally deleting some computer files, in which case his wife or his employer would have been annoyed with him but he wouldn't end up divorced or fired. The reason this is big news and he's in such disgrace is because we are squeamish about sex. By accidentally reminding the world that all sorts of shit happens in private that we're supposed to keep secret, he disrupted the social order.
3. Let's face it, it's also comical and entertaining. We tend to laugh at transgressions or failures that are absurd or surprising. Think of schlemiel comics like Jerry Lewis or Jim Carrey. And while we're squeamish about sex we also like to talk about it and be entertained by it, so this is doubly entertaining and doubly funny. It's something absolutely ridiculous which could only happen because of strange new world in which we find ourselves, so it serves to make fun of our predicament.
Can Toobin live this down? I would say I hope so because it's absurd, not intentionally offensive. But who knows?
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