Off Message

by A. C. Fuller

Some bloggers and online commenters interpret them as noises of pleasure, dismissing the video as a typical night on most college campuses. Whether or not DB and the woman were drunk, these commenters argue, the scene is clearly a random hookup at a college party—something that happens thousands of times a day.

  Others argue that the video is proof of rape. In their view, the woman in the video was drunk and therefore could not consent. Full stop. No, she's not tied down and no, there's no gun to her head, but that doesn't make it not rape. These commenters hear the noises of the woman quite differently, as muffled signs of resistance, or even attempts at specific words like "Stop" and "No."

  The morning talk shows have taken time out of their celebration of New Year's Day to argue about the video. Some picked up the rape accusations being made online, others wondered aloud whether the video would damage DB's career—which is about to get a major boost from the release of the fourth Atlantis movie. Others wonder whether the video will sink his Ameritocracy candidacy. One pundit on cable news even suggested that DB himself may have leaked the video because, "In today's era of fallen morality and toxic self-aggrandizement, when has a sex tape actually hurt someone's career?"

  Personally, I don't know what to make of the video. The first time I watched it, it looked like two drunk people having bad sex. The second time, I felt icky, probably because I imagined myself in the woman's position. Even if she had been into it, she didn't appear fully engaged. Possibly because she was drunk, or possibly because that was her style. Either way, it didn't look like much fun.

  I had a similar encounter in college with a guy named Dexter, who ended up being my boyfriend for eight months after what I thought would be a one-night thing. In our case, it was definitely consensual. I'd been crushing on Dexter all semester and I initiated everything, but I was tipsy and he was drunk, which led to awkward and disappointing sex. And it's possible that's what the video of DB shows.

  After reading through a few hundred Twitter comments, though, I can see the rape angle as well. In the video, DB's red face and sloppy movements make it clear he's drunk. He's twice the size of the woman who, though not passed out, doesn't seem to have been in a position to resist.

  If the woman in the video was a friend of mine, my first action would have been to call her, to ask her what happened. Did she consent? Was the sex her idea? Does she even remember it? But, like the rest of America, I have no idea who the woman in the video is. And, like me, America is going crazy for the answers.

  I open DB's Twitter feed on my phone. His most recent tweet is from last night at nine, before the video leaked. It's a photo of DB sipping a fruity red cocktail on a dark beach, lit only by tiki torches. The caption reads: "Happy New Year from California!" The tweet has forty thousand likes, and the replies are a mix of happy messages from fans sent before the video leaked, and notes of both hate and support from afterwards.

  I'm driving myself crazy trying to track all the tweets about the video, so I text Peter, someone who might have actual information.

  Me: Any word from DB?

  Peter: No.

  Me: Are you okay?

  Peter: No.

  I'm not sure whether to ask him what I want to ask him. I want to be sensitive to the fact that his friend is going through a very public catastrophe, but I also want to know what happened before and after the snippet of video, and I know that Peter and DB were college roommates.

  I get right to it.

  Me: Were you at that party?

  Peter: I've been racking my brain and don't remember. I honestly don't. He and I partied together but…it was twenty years ago. I don't know.

  Me: Do you recognize the girl?

  Peter: She looks vaguely familiar, but no. I'm not sure.

  I walk a lap around my office, looking through the glass windows that separate it from the open space that takes up most of the second floor office. Damon, our front-desk guy, talks on two phones at once, while our tech staff, led by Benjamin Singh, huddles in the corner, trying to ignore the chaos. Benjamin's dark brown hair hangs in his eyes, and he looks more annoyed than usual. He should be thankful, though. This isn't a tech crisis that will fall in his lap. It's a PR crisis that will fall in Steph's, and mine.

  Steph is in crisis mode, pacing from desk to desk, giving directions and taking a phone when someone hands her one. When she stops to talk with one of our interns, I glance at the TV mounted on the wall behind her. The chyron at the bottom of the screen reads: SEARCH BEGINS FOR GIRL IN DAVID BENSON SEX VIDEO.

  I sit behind my desk and welcome Post-it onto my lap.

  Me: This is just beginning, isn't it?

  Peter: Yes.

  Me: Ugh.

  Peter: I hate to say anything before I talk to him, but you're going to want to have Steph, or a lawyer, go over the personal conduct clause in your candidate registration materials.

  Me: We don't have one.

  Peter: ?????

  He doesn't need to say more. Our lack of a personal conduct clause is something Steph and I knew could come back to haunt us, but we only realized this after hundreds of candidates had registered. At that point, we didn't want to go back and change the rules retroactively. We have strict rules about financing an Ameritocracy campaign—candidates can only use their own money. We adhere to the Constitutionally mandated rules for becoming U.S. President—candidates must be thirty-five years old, born within the United States, and have resided here for a minimum of fourteen years. But we have no rules for personal conduct.

  When I started Ameritocracy, it seemed like the obvious decision. In U.S. politics, candidates aren't eliminated because they smoked pot in college or cheated on a spouse. They're not even eliminated when there are accusations of corruption, bribery, or even sexual assault. Our political system leaves those decisions up to voters. And voters have made their preferences clear by electing men—and it's usually men—with all sorts of stains on their personal records. We've elected tax cheats, marriage cheats, accused child molesters. Hell, in the 1960s Mississippi elected a congressman accused of murdering a black man for the KKK. The point is, when I started Ameritocracy, I didn't see any reason to enforce a stronger standard on my candidates than the U.S. election system does.

  If DB turns out to be a rapist, things will get dicey. And since DB isn't answering questions, Steph and I will be forced to. I already know what they'll be.

  "Did you see the video?"

  "How do you interpret it?"

  "Is one of your top candidates a rapist?"

  "Does Ameritocracy condone rape?"

  "Are you going to give millions of dollars to a rapist if he wins?"

  It's too early for any of these questions, but they're why Steph and I need to issue a statement. Through the window, I wave to get her attention.

  She hurries into my office and sits across from me. "Things are crazy out there."

  "And still nothing from DB or his manager. I've been checking Twitter."

  When he sees her, Post-it leaps off my lap, steps on my laptop, crosses my desk, and jumps onto her lap. After absorbing love from Steph for a few minutes, he'll return to my lap. This is our routine most mornings.

  Steph pets Post-it, who purrs softly. "What are you thinking?"

  "We need to issue a statement. We can't control what DB does, but we can't spend a week answering calls and emails about this. Especially because we don't actually have any information."

  "Well, we have some information—the video—but you're right. We need to issue a statement so we can focus on the debate."

  A little under two months ago, the first Ameritocracy rally was a huge success. Our diverse field of candidates connected with the country and our leading candidates began attracting attention from mainstream media outlets. We avoided a debate format because we were worried it would force our candidates to answer tough questions they weren't yet prepared to answer. Now our first real debate is about a month away, our candidates have had time to prepare, and we've settled on
a unique structure designed to make the Republican and Democratic primary debates look like badly-staged political theater. We're holding the debate in Iowa, the night before the Iowa caucuses, partially to steal the media attention, and partially to troll the Republican and Democratic parties.

  I think for a moment, then say, "How about we issue a statement something like this? 'Ameritocracy is aware of the video purported to be of David Benson, which was released on Twitter last night. We cannot confirm or deny the authenticity of said video, and have not spoken with Mr. Benson. At this time, we are unable to furnish any additional information about—'"

  "Mia, are you listening to yourself?"

  "What?"

  "You're doing the thing you hate most."

  She's right. It sounded horrible as it came out of my mouth and, seeing the look on Steph's face, I know it was worse. "You're right, but I don't know what else to say."

  "Orwell would be rolling over in his grave. How about something more like, 'We're deeply troubled by the video and—'"

  "Are we 'deeply troubled' though?"

  "I am."

  "I don't know," I say. "Are you sure about what's going on it the video?"

  "Not sure, but it doesn't look good."

  "No," I admit, "it doesn't look good, but that's not enough to condemn someone. If we say 'deeply troubled' on Ameritocracy letterhead, that's basically calling him a rapist, given the way the national discussion is going right now."

  "We can't just not address it."

  Post-it jumps off Steph's lap, then meanders across the desk, shedding hair onto my laptop on the way. I pull him onto my lap. "Why do we have to be in such a hurry to judge everything?" It's a rhetorical question, more to the universe than anyone else.

  Steph answers anyway. "Because that's the world we live in now. Everyone has to get their take out there, filtered or not, immediately."

  "Okay, but can we not do that? I know it's a bland, meaningless statement, but I'm not comfortable commenting one way or another before we find out more information. Maybe the girl comes out tomorrow and says she was raped. If so, we believe her. We condemn it. We…well I don't know exactly what we do because we don't have a personal behavior clause in our candidate agreements. Probably wouldn't matter because DB would plummet in our rankings. But maybe she says something else. Dude has been the hottest guy in the room in every room he's been in since he was twelve. Maybe she got him drunk so she could get his pants off. Maybe the woman was the victim, but I'm not yet comfortable saying so."

  Steph raises an eyebrow. "You really think she's going to release a statement tomorrow saying 'I scored with David Benson and would like to formally request a high five'?"

  "Look, the truth is we don't know what happened. We. Don't. Know. What. Happened. I'm not willing to encourage an internet mob. Not before hearing from the woman in that video."

  Steph nods, and I know I've convinced her. "Fine. Write up your gobbledygook."

  "It will be the single most oatmeal-filled thing ever to hit our website. Not counting Thomas Morton's videos, obviously."

  "Say nothing, but take a full page to do it."

  I laugh, but only because of the absurdity of what I'm about to do.

  I issue my mealy-mouthed, milquetoast statement, then head back to Twitter. In the last hour, new rumors have cropped up that DB has a history of sexual misconduct. A former classmate tweeted that he was known to get women drunk and sleep with them. An intern who worked with him on a cheesy baseball flick called Bases Loaded, back when he was nobody, claimed that he grabbed her butt in front of the craft services table on set. Her tweet included a picture of her and DB standing next to one another in an all-crew photo taken at the end of shooting.

  In a widely shared Instagram post, a male actor I've never heard of claimed that DB made a pass at him at a Hollywood party in 2015, when the actor in question was still seventeen years old. This story sparked a new swarm of outrage, both at DB and at the actor, who people excoriated for publicly "outing" DB as bisexual, a rumor I've just now heard for the first time.

  The Twitter wars leave me feeling crummy, so I direct all my focus on work. Work I can control. We're getting a ton of questions about how this scandal is affecting our top-ranked candidates, so I pull up the current list, where DB has slipped to number four. We have well over a thousand candidates registered, but the top dozen or so are sufficiently far ahead that it would take a major upset to eliminate any of them completely. A major upset or a huge sex scandal, anyway. I go over the recent data so I can answer the questions I have answers to, as a way of not thinking about the ones I don't.

  1. Robert Mast

  Mast is either a rock-ribbed patriotic war hero, or the military-industrial complex in human shape, depending on who you ask. Establishment Republicans and right-leaning pundits have tried to draft him for a presidential run for years, despite the fact that he'd never stated publicly that he was, in fact, a Republican. By most standards, he's our most electable candidate because of his exemplary record of military service, his ability to articulate traditional American values, and his constant presence on cable news. Commentators are fond of comparing him to Eisenhower, a universally-respected general reluctant to enter the political sphere. But those on the left are fond of shooting down this comparison, arguing that Mast is less an Eisenhower-style centrist and more an Andrew-Jackson-esque bloodthirsty warmonger. Either way, with DB's fall from grace, Ameritocracy is now his to lose.

  2. Maria Ortiz Morales

  Morales squeaked into our top ten before the first rally and climbed steadily over the last months, largely due to a series of speeches called "Compassion in the U.S. Military," which won her many left-leaning voters without losing her the support of the veterans groups who backed her from the beginning. A left-leaning independent congresswoman from Ohio who lost a leg fighting in Afghanistan, Morales is the highest-ranking elected politician in our competition. She's the left's answer to Robert Mast.

  She even appeared alongside Mast in a CNN special on military preparedness, where she held her own despite the fact that he's got twenty years of experience on her.

  3. Tanner Futch

  The bombastic voice of the alt-right spent much of the last two months promoting his candidacy on social media while continuing to host four hours of drive-time radio every day. Increasingly, commentators describe him as holding down the votes of "values voters," a phrase so meaningless it makes the public statement I just issued read like the Gettysburg Address.

  On Christmas Day, an audio recording of Futch auditioning for a college radio station leaked. In the four-minute clip, he called Mexican immigrants "a bunch of lazy, bean-eating wetbacks" and argued for a federal deportation policy that shocked even the far right. The sentiments were nothing new for Futch, but the level of vitriol, combined with the racial slur, caused the internet to sit up and take notice.

  Around the office, we were sure the clip would sink his candidacy, but it had the opposite effect. Though the hate for Futch increased on the Ameritocracy message boards and elsewhere, so did the love. Now, his reputation as someone who "tells it like it is" has been cemented. To those who share his views, he's reached Messiah status.

  4. David Benson

  Our Hollywood hunk entered only two months ago, but rose to number one like a rocket. Already a known supporter of the Democratic Party, DB had campaigned for dozens of candidates, both nationally and in California. He had donated millions of dollars to pro-choice organizations and tweeted constantly about overcoming the pay gap for women in Hollywood. He had a reputation for being articulate, committed, and somehow humble despite his massive fame. Until the video leaked, I would have bet money on DB and Robert Mast finishing first and second in our competition.

  5. Marlon Dixon

  Dixon rose briefly after the rally, but dropped as DB siphoned the support of left-leaning voters. He fell out of the top ten in early December, but jumped again when he got arrested. For the thirteenth time.


  Earlier in his career as a pastor, he'd been arrested for breaking local ordinances against feeding the homeless. This time, he was arrested for violating a federal immigration law that forbids citizens from harboring known illegal immigrants. After receiving a tip from a local sheriff that ICE agents were planning to raid a small farm in southeast Texas, Dixon mobilized six members of his congregation, who together drove three large vans all night, arriving outside of Beaumont at dawn. From there, they stowed nineteen Mexican farm workers in the vans and drove them ten hours back to his church in Abilene.

  Dixon hid the workers for seven days, even when ICE agents came to question him.

  Eventually, the men and women turned themselves in, having secured a deportation lawyer with Dixon's help. After Dixon was released on bail, he made sure the public heard all about the story, leaking video of the entire ordeal on the website of his Church. Though some accused him of over-the-top self-promotion, most of his fans agreed that he not only stuck his neck out for the less fortunate, he raised awareness nationally by letting people know about it. Tanner Futch spent an entire radio show excoriating him.

  6. Cecilia Mason

  Our billionaire real estate developer with center-right views dropped only a few spots, largely due to the ascendance of Morales and Mast. More and more, her candidacy seems to have peaked as younger, more dynamic candidates make their case to our voters.

  7. Justine Hall

  Our liberal independent mayor of Denver stayed in the top ten because of a series of position papers she laid out on how to create a green economy. On our site, as in politics in general, position papers usually get ignored, but because she had success with similar programs in Denver, the New York Times took the opportunity to run a front-page story on Ameritocracy. Steph and I shared a bottle of champagne that night, and the story brought with it an influx of new voters. Many of them chose Justine Hall.

  Hall also did well with a series of town-hall meetings in Denver. People flew in from all over to attend, which she spun as a big economic win for Denver, establishing her as a pragmatic left-leaning candidate with economic savvy. The meetings weren't big on sound bites, but they were great for well-informed discussions of policy and empathetic understanding of the issues people care about, like jobs, healthcare, and local schools.