Read Online So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson - Free Book Online

think I could. And I think that would mean I’d survive better than you.”
    â€œSo what would Jon Ronson’s apology speech be?” Jonah said. “What would you say?”
    â€œRight,” I said. “I’d say . . . okay . . . I . . . Hello. I’m Jon Ronson and I want to apologize for . . .” What
would
I say? I cleared my throat. “I just want everyone to know that I’m really upset . . .”
    Jonah was listening patiently on the line. I stopped. Even though I was just play-acting, I felt wiped out. And I hadn’t really even got anywhere in my attempt.
    â€œWhat happened to you is my worst nightmare,” I said.
    â€œYeah,” Jonah replied. “It was mine too.”
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    F our more months passed. The winter became the early summer. Then, unexpectedly, Andrew Wylie began shopping a new Jonah Lehrer book proposal around New York City’s publishers.
A Book About Love
. The proposal was immediately leaked to
The New York Times
. In it Jonah described the moment he felt “the shiver of a voice mail message.”
    I have been found out. I puke into a recycling bin. And then I start to cry. Why was I crying? I had been caught in a lie, a desperate attempt to conceal my mistakes. And now it was clear that, within 24 hours, my fall would begin. I would lose my job and my reputation. My private shame would become public.
    Jonah then described leaving St. Louis and returning to Los Angeles, his suit and shirt “stained with sweat and vomit.”
    I open the front door and take off my dirty shirt and weep on the shoulder of my wife. My wife is caring but confused: How the hell could I be so reckless? I have no good answers.
    â€”J ONAH L EHRER’S BOOK PROPOSAL , AS LEAKED TO
The New York Times
,J UNE 6 , 2013
    The New York media community declared itself resolutely indifferent to Jonah’s suffering. “‘Recycling bin’ is a hilarious choice of detail for the compulsive plagiarist,” wrote
Gawker
’s Tom Scocca. “And, obviously: Bring us two witnesses who saw you puke when and where you claim you puked. Or don’t bother.”
    And then, to my amazement,
Slate
’s Daniel Engber announced that he had spent a day combing through Jonah’s proposal and believed he had uncovered plagiarism within it.
    Surely Jonah hadn’t been that insanely reckless?
    â€”
    When I read Engber’s article closer, things didn’t seem quite so clear-cut. “A chapter on the secret to having a happy marriage,” Engber writes, “comes close to copying a recent essay on the same subject by Adam Gopnik, Lehrer’s onetime colleague at
The New Yorker
.”
    Gopnik: In 1838, when Darwin was first thinking of marriage, he made an irresistible series of notes on the subject—a scientific-seeming list of marriage pros and cons . . . In favor of marriage, he included the acquisition of a “constant companion and friend in old age” and, memorably and conclusively, decided that a wife would be “better than a dog, anyhow.”
    Lehrer: In July 1838, Charles Darwin considered the possibility of marriage in his scientific notebook. His thoughts quickly took the shape of a list, a balance sheet of reasons to “marry” and “not marry.” The pros of wedlock were straightforward: Darwin cited the possibility of children (“if it please God”), the health benefits of attachment and the pleasure of having a “constant companion (& friend in old age).” A wife, he wrote, was probably “better than a dog anyhow.”
    Gopnik: And the Darwins went on to have something close to an ideal marriage.
    Lehrer: This might seem like an inauspicious start to a relationship, but the Darwins went on to have a nearly ideal marriage.
    And so on, for a few paragraphs. Engber wasn’t totally sure this