I wish I could look away from the still-unfolding story in the Les Moonves matter but it ain't easy. You look at this guy who was fabulously wealthy, wildly successful, happily (supposedly) wed, not bad-looking, often charming and versed in what some might call "people skills" and (again, supposedly) pretty damned smart. Then you try to reconcile that with what he did and all the damage he did to himself and everyone around him — his victims, especially — and it just doesn't reconcile.
It's like the Cosby matter but without the drugging part. Both men might as well have gone out and started robbing 7-Eleven stores for all the sense their crimes made. You wonder if anyone around them who knew about it — and clearly, some did and did nothing — at least said, "Les [or Bill], you know there are hookers for that kind of thing. Why don't you spend five minutes' income on one of them instead?" Never having tried either, I guess I don't see how paid sex could be any less satisfying than coerced sex.
Is it a frustration that all that power was not absolute power? That it was a thrill to feel that no one could say no to them, not even over that? I have encountered people who seemed obsessed about controlling everyone around them, whether they did it by threats, money, personal charm or some bizarre combo of two or more. I'm not expecting an answer to any of this and maybe that's because there isn't one.
I keep thinking back about a line that the playwright Alan Jay Lerner once said: "There are some people in this world who are absolutely brilliant at playing the clarinet and nothing else." Just because you are smart about one thing doesn't mean you aren't an idiot at something else. Maybe that's all there is to this. Maybe.