(RNS) — Props to the folks who created a “Walk of Shame” for Jeffrey Epstein’s high-profile friends in Washington’s Farragut Square the other day. I’m afraid, however, that this isn’t the walk these Epstein friends have actually been taking.
Rather, theirs has been a Walk of Misjudgment:
- Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said meeting with Epstein was “a serious error in judgment.”
- Hyatt Hotels Chairman Thomas Pritzker said he “exercised terrible judgment in maintaining contact” with Epstein.
- Nobel Prize-winning Columbia University professor Richard Axel’s association with Jeffrey Epstein was also “a serious error in judgment.”
- International Peace Institute President Terje Rød-Larsen said engaging in a personal financial relationship with Epstein was “a grave error of judgment.”
- Messages from Miroslav Lajčák, former United Nations General Assembly president, discussing women with Epstein showed “poor judgment.”
- New Age guru Deepak Chopra said messages to Epstein (including “God is a construct. Cute girls are real.”) “reflect poor judgment in tone.”
- And former Prince Andrew, Duke of York, referred to his “ill-judged association with Jeffrey Epstein.”
- To his credit, I suppose, after calling his communication with Epstein “a major error in judgment,” former U.S. Treasury Secretary and Harvard University President Larry Summers did tell The Harvard Crimson he was “deeply ashamed of my actions” (which included asking Epstein for help in pursuing an amorous adventure).
But other than Summers, feelings of shame do not feature in the apologetic pronouncements that have been issued from the FOJ.
We might ask how exactly they think their judgment missed the boat. Was it on the order of “I failed to realize that my connection to Epstein would eventually see the light of day”? Or maybe it was simply along the lines of the old Yiddish proverb, Ven der putz shteht, ligt der sechel in drerd — “When the penis stands up, the brain stands down.”
I’m not suggesting these FOJ should voluntarily admit to criminal wrongdoing, to the extent it might apply to them. Or that they should say, à la the late televangelist Jimmy Swaggart on being caught with a prostitute, “I have sinned.” Especially if, like Chopra, they believe God is a construct.
But acknowledging some actual moral failure might be in order. Such as, “It was immoral of me to continue to have dealings with Jeffrey Epstein after he served time for procuring a minor for prostitution in 2008.”
So far as I can tell, no FOJ has said anything of the sort. Rather, their apologies have been largely in keeping with Lajčák’s exculpatory: “There were no girls … the fact that someone is communicating with a sexual predator does not make him a sexual predator.”
To be sure, admitting misjudgment may be better than mendaciously claiming, as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently did, that he “spent zero time” with Epstein after getting a house tour from him in 2005, and seeing his infamous massage table, which Justice Department records contradict. Or than President Donald Trump asserting, as he did to reporters on Air Force One last month, that he’d been “totally exonerated” by the Epstein files.
But not a whole lot better.
