The Menschy Michael C. Moynihan
The NYObserver has an interview with Michael C. Moynihan, the guy who brought down Jonah Lehrer. He sounds like a very decent and humane journalist. Excerpt:
Did you get any insight into the “Why do that?” question from talking to Lehrer?
A bit. Yeah. I don’t think I’m ever going to revisit this, but there’s another piece to be written about the way this all unfolded. And again, I feel bad because: There’s a reason that when you get caught doing something, and you are grabbed by the police, that the police allow you to have a lawyer present. You’re panicking. You start saying things. And then you get in really, really deep. This is not something I did on a whim. I wasn’t trying to hurt him. As a matter of fact, when we were talking for so long, I was trying to help him, saying Let’s find this stuff. This was a three-week process. I could have taken it and put it up online as it progressed, and let the hive mind look for this stuff, and pinned him down…
But that would’ve been a little malicious.
That would’ve been malicious! And I swear on my life that was not my intention. That’s not something I wanted for him or would’ve wanted to have done to him.
Did he seem genuinely remorseful?
Yes. He did. He did. You can make the argument that when there’s been so much deception, at this point, he’s trying to save his own skin, and I don’t know what it takes for somebody like this to have a second chance, or if that happens. There’s been these things that have sort of preceded this that don’t look good either. I really do wish him the best and I really do hope he recovers from this. More than anything, though, by the way, I’m completely fu**ing mystified as to how somebody who does this sort of thing thinks they’re going to go work at The New Yorker. Those fact-checkers are obviously notorious, and that sort of stuff wouldn’t be published there. But back to your question, I did think based on our conversations that he is genuinely remorseful.
I like that Michael C. Moynihan. I bet for some reason, he knows what it means to suffer.