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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For the last few minutes of the show today, we're going to turn to the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial. Wait, what? That on this show? Yes, because this is more than just celebrity gossip. We're going to talk about what it means in the context of MeToo. If you've been studiously avoiding the people pages and celebrity TV shows on this, here's a little background.

Back in 2016, Heard filed for divorce from Depp, accusing the actor of verbal and physical abuse. Then in 2018, Depp filed a libel suit in the UK after a tabloid labeled him a wife-beater. Depp eventually lost that case after a judge found that the tabloid's words were substantially true. That's all in the past. Now, in the ongoing case, Depp is suing Heard over an opinion essay she wrote in The Washington Post back in 2018, that he considers defamatory. Now, if you spend any time on Twitter, you may be familiar with the #Justice for Johnny Depp, or the derision of Amber Heard that's become so prevalent.

My next guest is Michelle Goldberg, New York Times op-ed columnist, who's written about what she calls the industrial scale bullying that the actress has been subjected to, and the backlash against MeToo that this trial has come to represent, as she sees it. Let's talk about that now with Michelle Goldberg, whose column in The Times is called Amber Heard and the Death of MeToo. Hi, Michelle. Always great to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Michelle Goldberg: Hi, thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: By way of background, what is this trial even about in the first place, besides the one sentence or so I gave it?

Michelle Goldberg: Well, ostensibly, that is what the trial is about, which is why it's bizarre that the judge, I think, has allowed it to go in all of these lurid directions. Just as an amateur looking at this, legally, it seems like Depp has no case. He already lost in the UK, where it's much, much easier to prove libel because the burden of proof is on the defense.

She also said that she was a public figure representing domestic abuse or domestic violence, which is factually true, even if Depp is innocent, because the verdict in that case was well known. She was talking about what she symbolized. I think what this is really about, one of the texts that came out in the course of that case was him texting his agent that Heard needed to be globally humiliated. You saw her during this trial basically just saying she wants to move on with her life, begging Johnny Depp to leave her alone. I think this is about him not letting her do that. It's also become the symbol of a huge vicious backlash against MeToo.

Brian Lehrer: You write, "If Depp somehow prevails, one can expect similar lawsuits against other women who say they've survived abuse," and that the musician Marilyn Manson has already filed defamation suits against his ex-fiancée, Evan Rachel Wood- I think in this case Marilyn is the guy and Evan is the girl, right?

Michelle Goldberg: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: -who was one of a number of women who accused him of sexual violence. How much do you fear that this defamation case will create a "legal playbook" for other abusers to silence their victims, as the culture critic Ella Dawson wrote on Twitter last week?

Michelle Goldberg: Yes, I think that that's absolutely what it's going to do. There's already a lot of reasons that women don't come forward. If coming forward and saying I was a victim of abuse, even without naming your abuser, opens you up to a defamation lawsuit with all the costs and time, money, reputation that that entails, it's going to give abusers, I think, another tool to keep their victims in line.

Brian Lehrer: That's a precedent that powerful, famous men have long-established, right?

Michelle Goldberg: Yes, absolutely. What's so bizarre is that so much of what's going on in this trial are things that we thought had been revealed and reckoned with, with MeToo. The fact that people saying, "Well, why didn't she leave if it was so bad?" Combing through the victim's history to impeach her, show all the ways that she didn't respond as we think a victim should. Every trope that people had uncovered in the course of the MeToo movement is being recapitulated here as if that movement never happened.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we have time for a couple of calls on what the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation case says about the state of MeToo, with New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg. 212-433-WNYC. Have you been following the case, listeners? Have you been drawing conclusions from it that are more than he said, she said, who do you believe, et cetera? 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Let me get your take on the pop culture aspect of this. The internet has taken such an interest in this trial. There's so much support for Johnny Depp on Twitter and so much vitriol directed at Amber Heard. You say in your column, "The volatile actress who at times was violent toward Depp and who never made good on a promise to donate her entire divorce settlement to charity, is very far from a perfect victim." The scolding of Amber Heard doesn't even seem to be that whether her words were defamatory, right, which is the case. Many of the people expressing their support of Johnny Depp reject even that she could have been a victim in the first place, is the way it looks.

Michelle Goldberg: Yes, absolutely. You see weird conspiracy theories. There was a makeup brand that made a TikTok purporting to disprove the way that Amber Heard says she had covered up her bruises. There's a makeup artist who testified that they did cover up Amber Heard's bruises. Again, it's just this carnival of hatred. It's not just on the internet, it's Saturday Night Live, it's the comedian Chris Rock, it's just all of this pent up anger and frustration, which by the way, I think there's a lot of in show business towards the MeToo movement, is being directed at this woman who is, in some ways, is easy to hate because she's extremely beautiful, she's edgy, she's, as I said, volatile, and unlike Depp, people don't have this really intense parasocial relationship with her.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, it isn't just the web, and it isn't just Saturday Night Live, which was roundly criticized for a really weird sketch parodying the trial, but also interesting to me is that there have been a number of segments on Fox News dedicated to the case that totally take Johnny Depp's side. I happened to run into one on Laura Ingraham the other night, where it was like a person on the street segment where they had a reporter out there, who do you believe? Who do you believe? Who do you believe?

Of course, everybody believed Johnny Depp and was trashing Amber Heard. There are right-wing commentators like Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro, who have waded into the controversy with their takes. I'm just curious if you ever thought about why right-wing media is seizing on this case. Johnny Depp himself is by no means a darling of the Right.

Michelle Goldberg: I think that for them and for the Men's Rights Movement more broadly, they see it as a way to discredit MeToo and harness a backlash to MeToo. That's why The Daily Wire, I believe, Ben Shapiro's outlet, has paid for a bunch of Facebook ads promoting its Johnny Depp-Amber Heard coverage, partly just because I imagine it's good for traffic, but also it's helped juice these algorithms that keep spewing content about this trial into people's various social media feeds.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Alexis in Red Bank, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alexis.

Alexis: Hi, guys. I am astonished at how effective this has been at squashing the #MeToo. I have a 16-year-old son. I had not been following the story. I knew nothing about it. He came down maybe a month or two ago and said, "Mom, have you heard all of this? Amber Heard is doing all these terrible things to Johnny Depp." I said, "Where are you getting your information?" Of course, some of it is a TikTok kind of thing or junk stuff online. I said, "Let me look into it."

I started going to Better News sources, New York Times, et cetera. I said, "No, Jack. You're misreading this." I kept sending him information. "Oh, you're just a feminist. Mom, you're a feminist." Then even a person I know that is a professional, a social worker, expressed a similar thing that my son did. I've been spending time trying to unwind my son's teenage brain around this. It has been very effective and so sad.

Brian Lehrer: Can I ask what you've said to your 16-year-old son?

Alexis: I said, number one, Jack, a woman has no real reward in bringing this kind of information forward. Her name will typically be dragged through the mud. It's very painful. Statistically, 90% of all domestic violence victims are women. That is a statistical fact. I would be hard pressed to believe-- if you're going to give me evidence, you're going to have to give me a lot of evidence to prove the woman is not telling the truth. Additionally, the man's already been convicted. This is American, the fact that we just accept in this country that lies can be spread and there's no consequence even by our last president. People just lie and say things and young people are left to parse out the truth. It's sad.

Brian Lehrer: Alexis, thank you so much for your call. Michelle, even if we don't get to any other call in this segment, how interesting was that, to hear how a mother was trying to enlighten her teenage son about this?

Michelle Goldberg: Well, I think Johnny Depp's communications team has been extraordinarily effective in flooding the zone on social media, in muddying the waters about what actually happened. I would suggest that anybody who has real questions about this case, go read the findings in the British court case. They're available online and clarify a lot of the issues that are in contention.

There's been bots that have been promoting pro-Depp content and pro-Depp spins on various altercations. Her team, for whatever reason, has just been caught flat footed, but when you actually dig into it, you'll see a lot of evidence that-- there's evidence that she hit him, absolutely, but there is a lot of evidence of him abusing her as well.

Brian Lehrer: Rick in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Rick.

Rick: Hi. How are you doing? I just wanted to approach it from a different angle. You guys keep talking about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, but everyone is forgetting about that poor Latino maid that had to clean up the bed in which, allegedly, Miss Heard says that she did her business in the bed and left it for another woman to have to clean up. There's this disconnect in the MeToo movement between class and race.

We keep talking about poor Amber Heard, that she's been abused by the system, she's abused by Johnny Depp, but no one talks about that poor maid who was just doing-- she took the picture because she was outraged. It turns out, if it's to be believed, that Amber Heard admitted to Johnny Depp's bodyguard that she's the one that did that as a joke. My mother was a maid. My mother worked as a maid.

Michelle Goldberg: This is not to be believed.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead, Michelle.

Michelle Goldberg: Well, I just wanted to say--

Brian Lehrer: Rick, thank you for your call. Go ahead.

Michelle Goldberg: I think the maid who has to clean up excrement, does she deserve our sympathy? Absolutely. I write about this particular incident in my column because I don't think it is to be believed. What makes more sense to people out there, that she did this as an act of revenge in a bed that he wasn't even supposed to be returning to and then admitted it to his bodyguard or that their incontinent dog had an accident in the bed? You can see what the court in the UK that looked into this found more likely.

You can conclude what do you think is more likely just knowing human beings and what a 30-year old woman's sense of humor typically is? It defies logic. I think that it was part of a campaign to humiliate Amber Heard, to link her name to something disgusting.

Brian Lehrer: A little pushback from Alyssa in Queens. Alyssa, you're on WNYC. Hi, we've got about 30 seconds for you.

Alyssa: Okay, I'll try to be quick. I absolutely think it's troubling how everyone has rallied around Johnny Depp in this case, but I think that Amber Heard is somewhat of a complicated individual. I actually, as a armchair psychologist, believe that this assessment of her as having personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder seems viable and possibly true. That makes her an imperfect vessel for all of us who believe women and want to believe her and find that she is potentially also culpable in some of the things that happened.

Brian Lehrer: Alyssa, thank you. I will say our caller board is split on this, Michelle. Some are agreeing with your take and some more like Alyssa.

Michelle Goldberg: Absolutely. This has really split people, like I said, it's really been astonishing to me the extent to which people have rallied to Johnny Heard. I think what Alyssa said, I don't know about Amber Heard having these personality disorders, she is indeed a very imperfect victim, which is what made her, in fact, the perfect vessel for MeToo backlash.

Brian Lehrer: Michelle Goldberg, New York Times columnist. Her column last week, Amber Heard and the Death of #MeToo. Thanks, Michelle. Always appreciate it.

Michelle Goldberg: Thank you so much.

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