UBT: David Harbour’s Non-Apology Apology
David Harbour offers a non-apology apology for cheating on Lily Allen, as told to Esquire Spain magazine. Hey, life is all a wonderful tapestry of whatever. Interpret meaning as you will.
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Non-apology apologies are something of a staple energy source for the Universal Bullshit Translator. When called upon for some gesture of accountability, cheaters usually toss some word salad at their audience. The audience receives it in gratitude. At last! The Great One has spoken! And EXPLAINED! The beauty of word salad is, it can be anything you want it to be. Sorry? Sure. I also see regret, constipation, and the profile of Teddy Roosevelt. It’s all in how you look at it.
Which brings us to today’s Faux Remorse FW in the News Cycle.
David Harbour has a kinda sorta apology.
Is he sorry for cheating on his wife Lily Allen? The important take away is that mistakes were made, but not really. Because mistakes are all part of the beautiful tapestry of entitlement that makes fuckwits FWs.
Cosmopolitan magazine reports:
Now, David appears to have broken his silence on the subject of their break up, reflecting on his “pain, slip-ups, and mistakes.” While speaking with Esquire Spain in an interview published yesterday, but notably conducted in September, before Lily’s album release, David was asked if there was anything he would change about his life.
Zooming in on the “question of regret,” the 50-year-old admitted that he would change “either everything or nothing.”
Look, if I could change everything I would. I’d reincarnate as a pectoral sandpiper, a bonobo monkey, or an elephant seal. Creatures whose entire life’s purpose is to shag and acquire harems. Currently, however, I have to pause for film roles and voice over work.
Life is binary. You either change EVERYTHING. Your very molecular structure! Or nothing. No need for discomfort or personal growth. As you were! #TeamNothing
Accept your path.
He added: “You either accept your path completely and realize that even the pain and the slip-ups and the mistakes are all part of the journey, and that there’s truth and growth, wisdom and deeper empathy and connection in all that.”
I accept me. I like me.
Pain, slip-ups and mistakes are all part of the journey. It’s not as if you make choices. Ooh, here we’re coming upon the Dark Slip-Up Forest. Venture forward! I wonder what we’ll encounter next? Is that Pain lurking in the bushes? Let’s follow the Yellow Brick Road to find truth and growth. And the wizard will give us empathy!
David then described his life as “like a house of cards.” He said that the “minute you try to change one thing, you kind of have to change it all.”
I could try and change, but what’s the point? I’m not an elephant seal. I’m a horny, unethical man who speaks in riddles.
Speaking about his career as an actor, David said his purpose is to incorporate his life into “something that [he] can give to other people so that they can have a cathartic response to their lives.
Lily, I hope my dick wandering has given you a cathartic response to life.
I wasn’t cheating on you, I was giving to other people. And lying about it. What matters is my charity.
“If you’ve never been through anything, what do you really have to offer?” he asked.
My fuckwittery makes me more valuable, not less. I have THINGS TO OFFER! Cognitive dissonance. Syphilis. What do you have? You’ve never been through anything. Heck, if you’re not putting people through things, are you really even living?
Exactly.
As sorry as I feel for Lily, when I saw her strutting at some event in what appeared to be a bra and slip, my sympathy waned for her just a titch. If this is how she counters her grief by appearing in public in her underwear I sort of say they deserve each other, cheating or no cheating. Take a page out of Tiger Woods wife response, vent your anger (golf club) and then walk away with dignity. But walking around like a porn star doesn’t do it for me. Have some class.
Ok now I feel bad I called the selfie by one of Harbour’s purported OWs thirsty and lame. That was harsh. Truth is, it’s kind of a vulnerable and lonely and validation-seeking thing to do. But I was not slut-shaming her.
It’s Lily’s JOB to dress that way, hello! And she looks amazing.
I think one of the hardest things to cope with post betrayal, was other people’s opinions of how I responded/dealt with my ex’s betrayal. I would have loved to behave classily, but I was walking (sometimes crawling) wounded. An abandoned, frightened child. There’s no shame in my game now though. I did what I needed to do to survive.
Sorry I have to do some ethical parsing here. I’m finding this kind of victim blaming. It’s not just that modern recording artists aren’t really “people” but corporations with boards that make decisions about what they say, do, sing, wear, etc. The removal of one piece of clothing could increase the “board’s” profits by millions and extend the artist’s career by years. But there’s also the fact that she could walk around naked and there would still be no excuse to abuse her, at least from the perspective that cheating is abuse.
The one part of this story that seems more ironic than tragic is that Allen herself apparently cheated on a past relationship. But that still doesn’t remove a micron of responsibility from what Harbour did the same way violent prison guards are still criminal even if they’re torturing murderers on death row.
Hypersexuality is a common response to sexual abuse trauma. I had it . There’s a new novel called She Used To Be Nice that focuses a bit on it.
Immediately after being told I was being left because I was a bad wife, I had a (3-4 month) intense internal bout of hyper sexuality in the form of heightened libido the likes of which I never experienced before or since…it was frightening in its intensity.
It was by the Grace of God that I didnt make any terrible decisions or act-out. At its worst, it manifested as a horizontal Pick Me Dance towards Cheater (which is a truly bad idea but generally not disastrous). At about the same time, I was briefly pursued by a person who had a crush on me and if I had allowed myself to walk that ill-advised path, the outcome would have been absolute social, professional, spiritual and personal disaster and humiliation.
It was a long time before I learned that the intense libido was likely a trauma response and Im so thankful that I didnt mistake the interest from the inappropriate person as a deserved-solace of any sort. (Life eventually got much better but in the right way in the right time).
Lily didnt hurt anyone walking around in her underwear and I hope that is the worst she will have to deal with right now.
(I hate even telling this story, but if I help prevent disaster for one chump, its worth it)
The beauty of word salad is, it can be anything you want it to be. Sorry? Sure. I also see regret, constipation, and the profile of Teddy Roosevelt. It’s all in how you look at it.
So, so funny. The UBT always makes my day.
More from the interview:
David revealed that the focus for his next 50 years of life is to create “more stories that are complex and rich and make you feel all the feelings and lift you up.
“Then of course there’s personal stuff that I want to do, and people that I want to love, and be good to and nurture, things like that,” he concluded.
“Things like that” apparently does not include integrity, and people he wants to be good to and nurture apparently does not include his wife.
As a side note, I was interested to read that Lily and David met on the celebrity dating app Raya. That may explain some of the weirdly mismatched celebrity couples we see.
The Roosevelt quip is sheer genius.
Wait, are their dating apps for everything these days? Mensa members? Cat burglars?
Gotta love these Schrodinger’s sociopaths. You can never guess if their consciences are dead or alive… or both at the same time!
Like, is the rambling defensiveness a way of beating back vestigial guilt? Or is it just hollow PR to reduce the social stigma of their offenses so they don’t get canceled and can still get laid? Or bits of both?
Anyway, I find these weirdos fascinating but probably not in the way they’d prefer. I just want to pin them to foam boards like insect specimens and pick them apart for posterity.
I was offering PLENTY to my partner, family and friends and it didn’t require me to betray, lie, gaslight and abuse my wife and family. Champion FW bullshit.
I found out (late) that Lily Allen is / was also a cheater. While she was married, she says: ““I slept with female prostitutes when I was on tour because I was lost and lonely and looking for something. I’m not proud, but I’m not ashamed.”
I mean … people like her, and her STBX, have endless justifications side-by-side with self-pity. A decent person can only do one thing — steer clear.
I thought they had an agreement that as long as it was a sex worker, sex with someone was allowed, NOT a connection/relationship. Sounds like a minefield to me, but if there was agreement, that’s different from cheating. Not sure, but that was what I’d understood.
I’m talking about her first husband, not David Harbour. She put that quote in her 2018 autobiography, regarding her first marriage.
Oh wow! It’s amazing the ability cheaters have to reimagine the truth! I’m so disappointed. I feel chumped by Lily now! 😂
I don’t know who this person is. Other than he appears to pretend for a living. No matter though since they’re all some degree of faking their way through our real lives as proven by this statement:
“David then described his life as “like a house of cards.”
No, it wasn’t “like” it most certainly was a “house of cards.” Each card representing a lie or misdirection carefully placed with the intention to manipulate. He comes off as being proud to be an actor on the stage of his own life. How sad.
I have some acting experience. There’s this false notion that some actors and acting coaches have that you can use life experiences to draw on to inform your acting. Of course, this ignores the fact that all acting is playing pretend. An actor could just choose to IMAGINE using a veneer of faux empathy to cover up their pure narcissism. They don’t actually have to go out and cheat. Think about it. How many actors actually serve on police forces before playing a detective? How many actually go to war before fighting the bad guys? How many actually successfully charm Penelope Cruz into a threesome, instead of just following the script? It’s all imagination! I hate these kind of actors like Harbour who turn every one of life’s tragedies into a piece of their work product. I pray only that HE gets cheated on next. Maybe he can use that for some material too. What a jackass.
Ahh, the black and white, binary thinking of the personality disorder. “The only thing in the world that gets to be complicated is me. Everything else is in two broadly defined categories that I determine once and then you never leave it. B-T-Dubs, you will never be in the favorable category”
So majestic in nature!
I enjoy how the whole thing is couched as “the breakup”. Not “hey Stranger Things, you somehow betrayed somebody in something called an open relationship. What’s that like?” They probably soft balled him because he’s making money right now. He’ll be in a few movies before Big Hollywood forgets him and he’s selling selfies at comic book conventions.
If we are going by the model of “integrating his lived experience into his roles”, all of that Netflix and MCU money comes from playing “the very capable but still sort of dumb fuck-up.” Kind of tracks. Enjoy your typecasting!
Stay Mighty to the rest of you!