David Mills
In Kasper’s Bad Excuse, I quoted the German website Kath.net’s report on Cardinal Kasper’s implausible excuse for the derogatory remarks he made about his African peers. Why would he lie about this when he should know how easily his lie could be exposed? He’s a pro. He knows that loose lips sink ships, not least his own.
There are reasons. For one thing, figures like Kasper are used to being favored and protected by the press and are shocked when a journalist doesn’t treat them with the deference they, from long experience with a compliant and often fawning media, expect. The media treat their liberal heroes well. The reporters and editors they know always make them look good and don’t report anything that would make them look bad. Their trust is imprudent but habitual. Then they forget this when playing away from home.
And for another, in my occasional experiences as a journalist, I’ve found that many people — even the pros — get expansive and therefore indiscreet in conversation, even with a journalist sitting there with a tape recorder going. When you publish what they said they deny they’d said it because they’d either genuinely forgotten or they had no idea what else to do. Or, see above, their experience of the press had trained them to think they could just bull through and things would work out. Lots of people won’t want to believe the story and others don’t trust journalists and maybe some other story will come along to push this one off the news pages. This is all especially true when they’ve said something as embarrassing as Kasper’s patronizing remarks about Africans, which is too painful to admit.
Over-trusting the press with your less publicly acceptable beliefs is one of the dangers of being a public figure, especially one the world approves.
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