Goldberg: Herschel Walker may be lying about an ex-girlfriend’s abortion. Does it matter?
I have a confession: my wife and I have known each other since college, and when, as a newlywed, Shelly and I moved from Seattle to Los Angeles, I took her to see Walker do a concert. When she came out and we talked later, she told me she’d dated Walker in college, and that he was a bit of a jerk, and that she’d probably end up with him. He’d had a big, black-and-white picture of that woman on his wall and had made sure she was the one he married, and Shelly, like many young women in this era, had the sense to let such a thing go. She’d kept the pictures in a drawer in her old dorm room and never told me.
I was shocked. I had no idea he’d even looked at these pictures. And I wondered if my wife’s revelation was the product of an unconscious need to put the past behind, or if, like me, she didn’t know she’d ever fallen in love with Walker at all.
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I knew then that it had to be more than just the fact that Shelly has a huge crush on a famous musician who’d had an affair with one of her best friends. No, I could see it clearly. The woman in the pictures was Walker’s ex-girlfriend. What exactly happened in the past was irrelevant. For whatever reason, Walker had decided to tell Shelly the truth about the ex-girlfriend.
The more I think about it, the more certain I become. Walker, a major film star in the 1920s, was an iconic figure in the late 20th century, with a film career that included more than 750 films that were released in his lifetime. He has a legendary streak of success. His fans will continue as long as their memories of his career endure. And then, if Shelly and I, and others we’ve talked about this with, had any sense, they would have recognized his fame, his public image, and his fame’s impact on their lives.
The first time I met Walker, I was in college and