If Jessica Krug really cared about people, she would have said nothing
Instead, she wants to be the villainous star in a drama of her design
Jessica Krug isn’t black. That was the big news yesterday, because the George Washington University professor was pretending to be black — and Latino — as she wrote, taught, and profited on her minstrelsy.
My mother, a pastor and counselor, once said, “when people have affairs, they should never confess it to their partner. It only serves to hurt the victim, and no good comes of it. An affair is between the cheater and their conscience.”
That is what I was thinking as I read Krug’s lengthy, unprovoked mea culpa on Medium. How many people did the mea culpa hurt and insult that would never have heard about her and her actions had she simply disappeared?
Imagine, if you will, an alternate universe in which Krug stopped pretending she was black, resigned her teaching post, disappeared, and maybe even gave a percentage of her income to charity. People would have forgotten her in a year, and she would have been able to deal with her conscience in her own way.
That isn’t what she did. She wasn’t about to be forgotten. She made the story about her, her guilt, and how awful she was. “Me, me, me. Cancel me. Look at all the horrible things I did. I’m not a vulture, I’m a leech. How will I ever live with myself? Look at all the people I hurt. I am trying to figure it all out, and where I go from here. I have mental issues, but that’s no excuse.”
And why? Nobody asked her for a confession.
Was she trying to get ahead of the news? Were people going to out her? If so, was it necessary to make a confession, even then? No. Krug simply feels she’s celebrity enough to make an apology statement, like a public figure caught on a hot mic using a pejorative. So, she did, and now she is a celebrity.
Krug’s statement was part apology and part altar call, with the mood of a suicide letter. Her confession was not to Christ, but to the unnamed, unfaced adjudicators of internet social justice. She knew that unlike Christianity, there’s no mechanism for grace and they stood ready to rip her to shreds. That’s what she wanted.
Attention.
Me, me, me, I, I, I.
Sound and fury.