" 'Fair' is what's down the road."

"I started reporting on Tara Reade’s story a year ago. Here’s what I found, and where I’m stuck." -- @lkmcgann https://t.co/ideuPoFhKA

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 7, 2020

When I was a pastor, and trying to find a call in another denomination, I went to the local Presbyterian judicatory (I've forgotten what they all call themselves. I spoke to the Lutherans and the Episcopalians, too. All fuzzy in memory now). What remains green in memory is the lunch I had with a Presbyterian minister who himself had once been a UCC pastor, and in fact had been an interim at the church I was then leaving, having been forced out by my Conference Minister (the Bishop, essentially, but not entirely) and the Church Council.  I can't remember who directed me to him, but they were anxious to have him meet me, and were going to go on his recommendation as to whether or not to consider me for one of their churches.  Obviously I was anxious to make a good impression.

We were strangers to each other, but he immediately lit into me as if I were Satan himself, come to corrupt his Presbyterian church with my heretical ways.  It turned out he'd left the UCC (I divined this from his ramblings) because he disliked their theology (more likely their politics), and was not about to let the UCC corrupt (his term, I remember it well) his Presbyterian church (even though I'd grown up in the Presbyterian church, one reason I went to the local Presbyterians).  He didn't know me from Adam's off-aunt, but he told me in no uncertain terms to never darken his sight again.   For good measure he insisted everyone at the church I was leaving, with which he'd had no contact for at least 30 years, was a saint of God and obviously I was unfit to be in their company, or his.  I don't even remember the man's name, but I remember who contemptuous he was of me.

I went home and told my wife about it.  I had a friend in ministry at the time, a Presbyterian minister, who had actually set up my first contacts with the Presbytery office.  He called to ask how the lunch had gone, since he knew the minister in question and held him in high regard as a kindly old gentleman.  I tried to couch my tale in as reasonable terms as possible, but I couldn't lie about what had happened.  I just tried not to embellish it.

It was pretty obvious he didn't believe me.  Shortly thereafter we lost touch, and then he moved on to another church in another city, without even calling to say good-bye.  So it goes.  I add that just to finish the story, not to blame or excuse him.  I thought about this story again only because of this passage from yet another analysis of the Tara Reade story:

If Reade had told a consistent story and shared all of her corroborating sources with reporters, if those sources had told a consistent story, if the Union piece had shaken loose other cases like hers, or if there were “smoking gun” evidence in Biden’s papers, her account might have been reported on differently in mainstream media a year ago. It is not fair to an individual survivor that their claims require an extraordinary level of confirmation, but it’s what reporters have found is necessary for their stories to hold up to public scrutiny and successfully hold powerful men accountable. So we are here.

If anybody tells a consistent story and has corroborating sources (friends told at or near the time of the event, witnesses, etc.), the account is taken differently by family and friends. Family and friends may be sympathetic, or may wonder how much of it is even true.

I've had experiences in ministry, more often among ministers and persons with authority over me as a minister, which beggar description and, in some cases, belief.  Some are "corroborated" by later actions, like the Conference Minister when I was in seminary who told me I wasn't cut out for parish ministry (I'm not sure he was wrong, in retrospect, but at the time it was a savage thing to say).  He opposed my ordination, though I was ordained in his Conference anyway.  The "corroboration" came a few months later, because he said that to me privately, with plausible deniability.  And then he was caught standing naked in his back door, exposing himself to the teenage girl in the house opposite.

Some of my experiences were not so "corroborated."  A hospital visit with the daughter of a comatose church member came back to me through a tale told by the mother (whom I knew; I met the daughter that day) that the exact opposite of what I did (talked extensively to the daughter, said a prayer for her father, left) was alleged against me.  You can't argue "that didn't happen" without people talking even more about what was said to have happened.  It's the original tar baby:  the more you punch it, the more stuck in it you are.  You end up wondering why people have so much time and devote so much energy to slandering you.  But outside immediate family, who might accept your story at face value, other people want more proof of what are, after all, incredible tales.  When was the last time you were the subject of absolutely baseless and absolutely vicious gossip?  If you don't think it happens, it hard to believe it happens.  If it's hard to believe it happens, it's hard to find credible a story of it happening to someone you don't really know that well.

Even now, you have to take my word for it.  Maybe I'm exaggerating.  Maybe I'm fabricating.  How would you know?

Is that unfair?  To whom?  To me?  Or to you?  Why should you believe me?  Why should my Presbyterian minister friend have believed me?  I told him a story about a man he knew that made no sense to him, that was completely outside the realm of his experience.  Why wouldn't he doubt me, instead of him?  Is it unfair that he did?

A story among family and closest friends is one thing, and even then family and friends may decide for themselves just how true they think the story is, and each individual come to different conclusions.  If the story goes public, not yet in the news but among non-family and non-friends:  employees, employers, neighbors, what have you, it might require a higher level of confirmation.  I don't know you that well, I don't know your friends and family, why should I believe you?  And if you think journalism requires "an extraordinary level of confirmation," you'll be stunned by what's required in a court of law.

Why is any of this "unfair"?  And to whom?