The Audacity of E. Jean Carroll

Her lawsuit against Trump was about more than defamation. It was about the worth of a woman, long past middle age, who dared to claim still had value.

Today she’s typically described as a former advice columnist — but that term doesn’t really do justice to E. Jean Carroll’s career pre-Donald Trump.

Long before she was one of the longest-serving advice columnists in America, Carroll blazed trails as a gonzo-style journalist The New York Times once called “feminism’s answer to Hunter Thompson.”

She profiled Lyle Lovett for Esquire and went camping with notorious New York curmudgeon Fran Lebovitz for a cover story in Outside. She wrote a famous piece on Dan Rather, appeared in the “Best American Best Crime Writing,” and was the first female contributing editor at Playboy — back when people really did read it for the articles.

E. Jean Carroll leaving federal court. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Today, at best, she’s “former Elle advice columnist” E. Jean Caroll. At worst, she’s the crazy Trump rape lawsuit lady. Or, as she put it in court recently: “Previously, I was known simply as a journalist, and now I’m known as the liar, the fraud and the wack job.”

For weeks now, there have been endless predictions about what the outcome of Carroll’s lawsuit against the former president might mean for him — his candidacy, his many ongoing court cases, his wallet, his ability to shut up.

Now that we have a verdict, we’ve gotten the answers, or at least some of them: He will be $83.3 million dollars poorer and seems to have stopped insulting her as a result. For now, at least.

But as I sat in court in Manhattan last week, five years after I first interviewed Carroll, watching Mr. Trump glare and mumble at the back of her head — she sat two rows in front of him, pin straight in her chair, the first time she’s been near this man in nearly 30 years — I couldn’t stop thinking about something else this trial seemed to be about: the value of a woman, long past middle age, who dared to claim she still had value.

Just how radical was it for Ms. Carroll, 80, to demand that she was worth something?

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