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In September 2014, I flew to Toronto to record a series of podcast interviews with a few of the city\u2019s cultural figures, mostly writers, all of whom I\u2019d reached out to either because I already admired their work or because they came to my attention through trusted recommendations. The sole exception was also the one interview that fell through: with Jian Ghomeshi, host of\u00a0Q<\/em>, the CBC\u2019s most popular radio show. Although I\u2019d only heard a few of his broadcasts, Ghomeshi seemed too famous, and too closely identified with the city that would give these conversations their unifying theme, to ignore. But the arrangements proved unusually complicated, and a week before my flight one of Ghomeshi\u2019s enthusiastic-sounding team\u2014I remember e-mailing with an Ashley, a Debra, and a Cait\u2014informed me that, \u201cUnfortunately, we aren\u2019t able to fit this in his schedule this trip, but please don\u2019t hesitate to let us know if another opportunity presents itself in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
No opportunity to interview Ghomeshi, at least the Ghomeshi\u00a0Q\u00a0<\/em>listeners knew, would ever present itself again. While in Toronto, I mentioned my attempt to a friend who has spent much of his life in close proximity to the Canadian entertainment industry. \u201cOh,\u00a0Jian<\/em>,\u201d he said, shaking his head, his tone a mixture of disappointment and resignation. From his subsequent elaboration I gathered that Ghomeshi was well known for his boorish behavior, especially toward women, during both his career as a broadcaster and his time as a musician before that. Though I\u2019d never heard any rumors to that effect before, it didn\u2019t exactly surprise me: something about the apparent pains he took to be seen publicly projecting just the right sensitive, tolerant attitudes\u2014his \u2018virtue signaling,\u2019 as such behavior was not yet widely labeled\u2014struck me as unseemly, in the same way that the loudest and longest moralizing on the part of a certain kind of American politician always seems to precede the revelation of his utter depravity.<\/p>\n
The CBC suddenly fired Ghomeshi just a few weeks later, and the following month he turned himself in to the Toronto police, facing four counts of sexual assault and one of the even nastier-sounding \u201covercoming resistance by choking.\u201d In Canada, this all became Trial of the Century material. But in the rest of the world, where most people first learned of Ghomeshi when he fell from grace, only spared its attention for the charges (three more of which, related to three more women, came in January 2015) and the verdict. Along with his decision to acquit Ghomeshi completely, Justice William Horkins also delivered a damning assessment of the credibility of the women who took the stand against him. \u201cThe evidence of each complainant suffered not just from inconsistencies and questionable behavior, but was tainted by outright deception,\u201d said Horkins. \u201cThe harsh reality is that once a witness has been shown to be deceptive and manipulative in giving their evidence, that witness can no longer expect the court to consider them to be a trusted source of the truth.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n