Lehrer canât even be bothered to fake an apology that sounds meaningful. Call me uncharitable, but if I were a magazine editor, Iâd never hire him.
âJ ERRY C OYNE , QUOTED ON R ICHARDBOWKER.COM ,F EBRUARY 18 , 2013
âI thought of you,â Jonah said. âI thought, Thatâs an interesting question for Jon. Jonâs spent some time with me. Maybe I
am
a sociopath.â
The question didnât surprise me. Ever since I published a book about psychopaths, people have been asking me if theyâre one (or, if not them, their boss or their ex-boyfriend or Lance Armstrong). Perhaps Jonah was honestly intrigued by the possibility that he was one, but I didnât think so. I think he knew he wasnât, and he had a different reason for wanting to have this conversation. Academics shouldnât diagnose people from afar as sociopaths. It was a stupid thing for Jerry Coyne to have done. I think Jonah wanted us to bitch about his stupidity for a moment. It would be a way for him to recover some self-esteemâto do a bit of shaming of someone else. Jonah was at rock bottom, so I was happy to go along with it. I told Jonah that he didnât seem like someone who had no conscience.
âWho the hell knows what a conscience is,â Jonah replied. âIf a conscience is living in a world defined by regrets, then, yeah, Iâve got a conscience. My very first thought every morning is what Iâve done wrong. That sounds self-pitying and Iâd like you not to use that quote, but thereâs no other way around it.â
âIf it felt really important to use that quote, could I?â I asked him.
Jonah sighed. âI mean, it depends how you use it, but Iâd prefer you not use it,â he replied.
I use the quote here because it seems important, given that so many people imagine Jonah has some neurological lack of conscience.
âRegrets of the sort I have are all-consuming,â Jonah continued. âI think about what Iâve done to the people I loved. What Iâve put my wife through. What Iâve put my brother through. What Iâve put my parents through. That is haunting. Long after I get over the loss of my status, and the loss of my career, which I enjoyed, I will never . . . Life is short. And I have caused tremendous pain to the people I love. I donât know what that feelingâs called. Remorse sounds about right. Thereâs a tremendous amount of remorse. And as time passes, that isnât going away. It is miserable and haunting.â
I heard Jonahâs daughter crying in the background. We talked about the âslippery slopeâ that led to the fake Dylan quotes. It began with the self-plagiarismâwith Jonah reusing his own paragraphs in different stories. I told him I didnât consider that the crime of the century. âFrank Sinatra doesnât only sing âMy Wayâ once,â I said.
âThe self-plagiarism should have been a warning sign,â Jonah said. âIt should have been a sign that I was stretched. If I needed to recycle my own material, why was I bothering to write this blog post in the first place? Look, we can debate the ethics of it. And Iâve certainly heard lots of debate about this. But at the time I didnât think it was wrong. If Iâd thought it was wrong, I would have taken some trouble to hide my tracks.â He paused. âIt should have been a huge flashing neon sign telling me, âYou are getting careless.â Youâre taking shortcuts and not noticing, and shortcuts become habits, and you excuse them because youâre too busy. I wasnât turning anything down.â
âWhat would have been wrong with turning things down?â I asked.
âIt was some toxic mixture of insecurity and ambition,â said Jonah. âI always felt like a fad. I felt like I was going to be hot for a second and then I would disappear. So I had to act while
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