Politicians, pro athletes, and other celebs, when they get caught in embarrassing situations that they can’t deny or talk their way out of, often fall back on these personal ablutions:
That’s not me,
or
I’m not that person anymore.
I always found that to be…, well, just weird.
Some middle linebacker can be caught on video slugging his girlfriend during a hotel lobby argument and the call goes up for him to be fired or traded or, at very least, suspended. Or some action movie hero’s two-decade-old social media post is unearthed, showing him dropping the N-bomb. Or some state senator is accused by a passel of former aides of having regularly groped, salivated over, and otherwise nauseated the female members of his office staff.
After accusing their accusers of lying or being on the payroll of the opposite party or al Qaeda or the trans movement and finding those defenses aren’t working, these people will suddenly become contrite, turning the whole thing around in hopes of garnering sympathy, by writing it all off as the actions of a different person — really the same person, but committed ten or 15 years ago. Today’s me, they’re saying, should not be held responsible for the behavior of yesterday’s me.
The person saying it implies, Golly gee, look at how I’ve grown! Look at how evolved I am! You want to penalize me for the actions of an entirely different human being than the one I am today? How unfair!
Whenever I’d hear or read about the That’s Not Me alibi, I’d yell, Goddamn it, that was you! Look at the video! That’s your face! Or That was your Facebook page! Who else could it be?
Funny thing is, that defense, that alibi never works. The transgressor generally gets dumped or cancelled or otherwise penalized. Still, people continue to use the deflection to this day.
I mention this because I heard something like it again this AM on NPR’s Morning Edition. (BTW: I’m back to listening to radio news after Tuesday’s election results came in — there’s now at least a glimmer of hope in this lately benighted holy land and the day’s news won’t all be so crushingly depressing that I want to slash my wrists anymore.) Anyway, I was listening to an interview with Alanis Morissette and her new thing includes talking about menopause.
Believe it or not. Morissette is now in her 50s. She was the hottest young rock/pop star back in 1995 when her album, Jagged Little Pill, was released. It became one of the top selling recordings of all time. It even was made into a Tony and Grammy award winning Broadway musical. Morissette became a household name. She even played God in the 1999 Kevin Smith/Ben Affleck/Matt Damon movie, Dogma.
Alanis Morissette Was Huge in the 1990s.
That, of course, is back when Morissette was barely into her 20s, more than 30 years ago. She’s no longer the gamine or the ingenue. She is, in fact, a woman d’un certain age. (I promise those will be the last of the Gallic references herein.)
Morissette these days is staging an autobiographical live show called “Butterfly with a Machete,” in which, through song and storytelling, she explores the passages of her life in, her words, a “rock traumedy.”
Hooray for Alanis Morissette for embracing aging. She’s not getting her face surgically stretched out like a drumhead, pretending she’s still a waif. (Damn! I lied. But that’s not who I am!) Who the hell ever talks publicly about things like menopause? Well, she does. Kudos.
During the interview with Morning Ed host A Martinez, Morissette employed a variation on the That’s Not Who I Am chestnut. Menopause, she tells Martinez, ” is burning away everything that is not me.” In other words, all those feelings, urges, drives, rages, impulses, longings, etc. that marked her reproductive years, and the life she lived in service of them, were not her.
Who were they?
Look, Morissette’s not trying to weasel her way out of criminality, antisocial behavior, or workplace harassment, but there it is again, That’s Not Me.
Here’s how I see it: every single thing I’ve ever done was, indeed, me. All the rotten, selfish, lousy, cringe-worthy, mortifying sins I’ve committed — and there’s a lengthy list of them, trust me — was me. I didn’t matter if I’d done any of those things last week or when I was 13 years old. (I shudder just to think about myself at that age.) If I did it, it was me. Period.
I don’t particularly care for that me but, QED, it was me. As much as I like to trumpet my triumphs and decencies in order to proclaim who I am, I must in turn acknowledge my past faults and evils.
And, yeah, when I was still in my reproductive years (well, you know what I mean) I was driven by impulses that today seem laughable at best, unkind at worst.
No matter if my past too often makes me look like a dirty rat, I can’t deny it was still me.