Hey Jian...Was It Worth It?

I'm probably legally required to state that Jian Ghomeshi is innocent of all charges against him until proven guilty in a court of blah blah blah.

In certain particularly heinous cases, the accused documents his crimes.  I'm thinking here of Paul Bernardo, who videotaped his.  Ghomeshi's not playing in that league, of course, but he did show a video of one of his 'conquests' to his bosses, of all people, in some kind of insane effort to prove that his actions were consensual. Just in case it's not clear: Ghomeshi kept a video on his phone depicting serious bruises he had inflicted and texts that mentioned a cracked rib. Who's stupid enough to record activities like that? It'd be like--well, can you imagine if the mayor of, say, Toronto allowed himself to be videotaped smoking crack cocaine?

Even more insanely, Ghomeshi's attempts to reframe his activities for public consumption seemed  to work for a while. Linden MacIntyre, in his  attack against the CBC's 'toxic atmosphere', had this to say about that:

And unfortunately, when the abuse continuum results in the kind of behaviour that normal people normally abhor, the normal people in charge of institutions, and who feel responsible for the appearance of institutional success and integrity, will far too often feel inclined to minimize and tolerate, condone -- and in the worst-case scenario -- cover up behaviour that is abusive.

Ghomeshi later put up a rather blatantly PR'd defence of his sexual proclivities on Facebook for all the world to see and pick apart. I shudder to think what Paul Bernardo's Facebook timeline would have looked like. You *know* he would have had one...a narcissist who maintained such an outwardly charming persona? Tailor-made for social media.

I wonder at what point Ghomeshi really realized it was all falling apart.

I don't think it was when he engaged two different public relations firms to armour-plate his image. I don't think it was when he launched what he had to have known was a frivolous $55-million lawsuit against his former employer. (The suit's been withdrawn, as anyone with half a legal brain cell knew it would be). That was all part of the dance of public relations, nothing of substance. Maybe  it was when those PR firms dropped him like a hot potato. That might be when it became real to him...when he was no longer allowed to be the star of his own show.
 Now that he's charged with four counts of sexual assault and a charge of 'overcome resistance - choking' (an obscure, rarely seen charge that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison), Ghomeshi stands on the precipice of losing everything. Regardless of the trial's outcome, he's already lost his career, and much more important to him, his image. He could lose his freedom, too, for a long, long time, if he is found guilty.

Was it worth it, Jian?

This is the thing that puzzles me. I know that my sense of consequence is finely honed, but it seems inconceivable to me that someone could engage in all the rough sex Jian admits to, not to mention the random pre- and post-coital assaults he's accused of, without at least thinking it might come back to bite him in the ass one day. Anyone committing a crime, or even an ethical fault like lying or cheating on his wife, must first either convince himself his actions have no consequences, or that those consequences aren't as important as the lie or the orgasm. Since all actions have consequences--we learn this in preschool, or at least I did--it's got to be the latter. So again, Jian...was it worth it?