Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey at the Miscellany Room.

Can you stomach another article on Epstein?

This one is a Mother Jones interview with Stuart Pivar, who described himself as a close friend of Epstein, until he realized what Epstein was up to. Though he still continued to engage in some fairly gross apologetics for him, so I take the claimed separation with a grain of salt. (Pharyngula readers may recall that Pivar once sued PZ Myers for calling him a “crackpot.”)

Some notable excerpts. Those dinners with scientific stars:

There were lavish dinner parties with the likes of Steven Pinker and Stephen Jay Gould during which Epstein would ask provocatively elementary questions like “What is gravity?” If the conversation drifted beyond his interests, Epstein was known to interrupt, “What does that got to do with pussy?!”

Ha ha. Let’s get back to the important topics, amiright? Hmm — one wonders what the women scientists at the party thought of such…. ha, just kidding, obviously there weren’t any women scientists present. Which should have been a red flag to these distinguished male scholars, shouldn’t it? How come they didn’t wonder why Epstein didn’t cultivate any distinguished women scholars? It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy the social company of women, after all.

As I said, Pivar’s claim that he stayed away rings a little hollow, given his attitude towards Epstein’s behavior:

What’s the difference between the punishment which befalls a murderer and a serial murderer? It’s the same. If Jeffrey Epstein was found guilty of fooling around with one 16-year-old trollop, nobody would pay any attention. The trouble is, what he did was quantitative and not qualitative.

What Jeffrey did is nothing in comparison to the rapes and the forceful things, which people did. Jeffrey had to do with a bunch of women who were totally complicit. For years, they went, came there time and time and time again. And if there was only one of them who did it, no one would have noticed—except he made an industry out of it. And why did he make an industry out of it? Because Jeffrey was a very, very, very sick man. For some reason that doesn’t get understood. Did you ever hear of nymphomania?

Ah yes, it was just 16-year-old “trollops,” they don’t count for anything. Why, everybody fucks one from time to time, you just shouldn’t make a habit of it, and anyone who does is obviously just ill, not evil!

He didn’t struggle with it. He was in a position financially to yield to it, big time. But nevertheless, he could not help himself. I’ve seen him do things which he couldn’t—couldn’t help himself, he was afflicted with it. If he had tuberculosis it wouldn’t be called a perversion, would it? Because he coughed too much?

Oh, indeed. Quite an apposite comparison. “(cough, cough) Oh, I’m so sorry, I seem to have gotten my penis in your teenaged vagina. Ooopsie.”

Anyone who did one thing, let us say, to some 16-year-old trollop who would come to his house time after time after time and then afterwards bitch about it— why, no one would pay attention. Except Jeffrey made an industry out of it.

The nerve of those 16-year-olds!

There are plenty of people with satyriasis like there are plenty of nymphomaniacs, except very few of them have the money to, let us say, treat themselves to sex three times a day with young girls. That was what he had to do. Other people, there are plenty of cases, presumably, if you want to read up on the subject—it’s called satyriasis, right? It’s the male version of—did you ever meet a nymphomaniac?

Ah, yes. “Treat yourself” to sex with young girls, just, you know, in moderation!

It goes on from there, often in circles. Pivar repeats himself, lectures the writer on how he should have talked to a psychologist about satyriasis, and read Kraft-Ebbing’s work on sexual perversion, threatens to sue the writer, etc.