Before I begin, I want to say that those demanding immediate judgment on celebrity misconduct allegations have a point. Accountability matters. That said, I have spent the better part of this week sitting with the profound discomfort of not knowing exactly what to think about famous people accusing other famous people of things, and I believe this makes me uniquely qualified to address what I'm calling the "empathy accountability gap."

Let me be clear: both sides are wrong here. Those who rush to judgment without considering all perspectives are wrong. Those who dismiss allegations without proper consideration are also wrong. And yet. I too am slightly wrong for even having an opinion about people I have never met. This triangulated wrongness, I would argue, positions me closer to actual wisdom than anyone taking a definitive stance. I have deliberately kept my television off for three entire evenings to sit with this moral complexity—a sacrifice that my late succulents would have appreciated, had they survived my tendency toward emotional overwhelm.

The real issue isn't whether Celebrity A did something to Celebrity B. The real issue is our collective inability to process celebrity misconduct with what I'm terming "empathetic absolutism"—the radical notion that we can simultaneously believe accusers, support due process, acknowledge our own voyeuristic complicity, AND recognize that our opinions about famous strangers reveal more about our own unresolved trauma than about objective truth. And yet. Those who prefer the comfort of certainty will dismiss this framework as moral relativism, when in fact it represents the most morally rigorous position available.

I've been thinking about this ever since my second divorce, when my therapist pointed out that my need to have opinions about everyone else's relationships might be connected to my inability to sustain my own. The empathy accountability gap isn't just about celebrities—it's about how we've forgotten that the most courageous response to public accusations might be admitting that our rush to have takes prevents us from actually listening. The readers who are brave enough to find this column challenging understand that true accountability requires interrogating not just the accused, but our own appetite for moral certainty in an uncertain world.

The real question is whether we still know how to talk to each other.