You Can Tell Me I'm Not Neil Gaiman, But I Won't Believe You

Mama, this is one to skip!

My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time —
To let the punishment fit the crime —
The punishment fit the crime;
And make each prisoner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment!

So sings the Mikado in “his” eponymous Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. Though the libretto is itself a source of innocent merriment, The Mikado is rarely performed today. To the sensitive and the awakened, the whole thing is an irredeemably racist spectacle. Those of us who know cultural history can expect The Mikado’s return to favor sometime towards the late 2020s, when last decade’s “cruel offense” becomes this decade’s “bold reimagining.” It is always so.

It is also always so that we like to make merry at the expense of those who fall from grace. I don’t know how innocent it is, but it is delightful. One of the great pleasures of the #MeToo movement isn’t just the chance to see the celebrated brought low, it is the opportunity to shame one’s friends for continuing to read or consume the creations of the accused. Reveling in the sordid details of the misdeeds is a quarter of the fun; pious expressions of sympathy for the victims of the wrongdoer count for another quarter. Another 25% of the pleasure lies in declaring that the recently disgraced was “always overrated anyway,” and the final quarter of delight comes with the denouncing of all those who attempt to defend the principle of separating art from artist.

The #MeToo movement could not stop Donald Trump. It will not derail his cabinet picks. In MAGA-land, the accusations of sexual misconduct are either disbelieved or dismissed. The last election showed the limit of the mob’s reach. Never mind, though. Remember the old Steven Stills lyric? “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with?”

There’s a familiar and cynical corollary for social contagions: “If you can’t hang the one you hate, hang the ones you can.”

For better or worse (probably the latter), our once and future president lies beyond the reach of the opinion pages and the cancellers. Neil Gaiman, the subject of a devastating exposé in today’s New York Magazine, is not protected by his money or his politics. Gaiman, a celebrated and prolific fantasy writer, is credibly accused of multiple sexual assaults and predatory behavior towards much younger women. The article is long, well-reported, and no doubt carefully vetted by legal. J.K. Rowling herself – like Trump, maddeningly beyond the reach of the pitchfork brigade – has denounced her one-time friend. Mr. Gaiman’s career is - surely — over.

Neil Gaiman is also Jewish. As an unnecessarily provocative aside, is it just me, or are Jewish men substantially overrepresented as targets of #MeToo? Epstein and Weinstein? Louis C.K.? Al Franken? Jeffrey Tambor? Woody Allen? James Levine? James Toback? Brett Ratner? Anthony Weiner? Maybe the accusations against Jewish men are proportional to their demographic percentage but… doesn’t seem like it. (Perhaps I’m getting more sensitive to anti-Semitism in my old age.)

Jeffrey Epstein is dead, and Harvey Weinstein is in prison. The rest of the men on that list have either fully or at least partially resuscitated their careers. Woody is still making movies. Louis is still doing standup. Anthony Weiner, who went to jail for sexting a minor, runs a flourishing business and is planning to run for New York City Council. Perhaps Neil Gaiman can survive as well. Perhaps he will survive by doubling down defiantly and continue finding people to publish his books (as Woody Allen continues to find people to finance his films). Perhaps he will peddle a very sincere redemption narrative. He may not need to do much of anything. As New York Magazine concedes:

As far as the police report goes, the “matter has been closed,” a spokesperson says. Gaiman’s career, meanwhile, has been marginally affected. A few pending adaptations of his novels and comics have been put on hold or canceled. But the second season of The Sandman is set to premiere on Netflix this year, as is Anansi Boys on Amazon Prime.

The punishment will not fit the crime, of that the magazine is sure. So, the only recourse left against Neil Gaiman is the “merriment” of condemnation for any less powerful people who still support or admire the exposed and disgraced monster.

Why, Hugo, are you writing about this? I can hear the question. Hugo, you’re not Neil Gaiman, just as you’re not Epstein or Weinstein or Weiner. I can hear the statement.

A few inches from where I type is a tax bill from the IRS for $201,000. I owe the California Franchise Tax Board another 70K. In the aftermath of losing my job, I cashed out my pensions to pay legal and medical bills – and to support the children I had hurt so badly. Don’t ask me about the credit card bills. I cannot imagine ever paying back what I owe. With ghostwriting drying up, I am facing the prospect of homelessness once more. I have debts no honest man can pay, as Springsteen sang, and unlike in his greatest song, I have no man in Atlantic City for whom to do a dark favor and thus be free. Some of those debts are financial, more of them are moral. I live every damn day with shame for what I did to the people who loved and trusted me. I live with suicidal ideation on a constant basis, an ideation to which I will not succumb because I will not compound the already grievous harm I have done. Even a fantasy that cannot be indulged becomes a weight to carry, and thinking about suicide all the livelong day is like hiking Runyon Canyon sporting Jacob Marley’s pendulous and ponderous chain.

Let the punishment fit the crime. The mob says it was right that I lose my teaching job for sleeping with my female students. The mob says it’s not their fault if that job loss plunged me into debt, and it’s not their fault that I can’t rebuild as slickly as a Weiner or a Woody or a Louis CK. Just because you don’t have the resilience to thrive after disgrace doesn’t mean we should have softened the blow, Hugo. We’re sorry, but you’ve got only your sick self to blame. Go find a bootstrap and pull. Don’t kill yourself, but um, don’t expect us to forget what you did.

I make no secret of my compulsion to search my name online. I search it on Twitter, on BlueSky, on Reddit, on Google. I pop up more often than you’d think, even now. I check: do the haters still hate? Am I still despised? Am I still the poster child to prove that no one should trust overly earnest Male Feminists who tout their credentials just a little too enthusiastically? I note who loathes me, and why, and I wonder if the mob would be pleased to know of the scope and span of my self-loathing. Would they be glad that I’m still struggling, still in debt, still traumatized? Would they be comforted to think that I replay the memories of every affair -- every kiss and touch and sext that crossed a line -- and that I replay these images not to arouse myself or to remind myself that I was once wanted and adored, but to remind myself of my own staggering stupidity, cupidity, and selfishness? Is that self-hatred enough punishment for you? Or do I need to finish the job and leave this life? I suspect the latter, because you’re still brandishing the pitchforks.

You cannot ask me not to compare myself to Neil Gaiman when people are doing it right now on BlueSky. Sure, he is accused of rape and assault. He seems to be something of a sadist. I craved being adored, aroused only by other’s arousal. I tried to tell myself that made me more benign, but the mob didn’t believe it, declaring it a distinction without a difference. I have no internal sense of self that is reliable; I am only as forgivable as I am forgiven. I am Neil as long as anything thinks of me like Neil.

You cannot ask me to forgive myself while I remain manifestly unforgiven. And you also cannot ask me not to lash out, blindly and desperately, against those who long to defenestrate a fellow fool. I may not in fact be Neil Gaiman, but the tactics you deploy to bring him low are all too familiar to me. I know the punishment you intend to exact, and while it may or may not fit the crime, I am frantic to do all that I can to get you to stop.

In any event, I am very grateful to anyone willing to Buy Me a Coffee.