Les Wexner's friend Jeffrey Epstein was a scumbag. Does that mean he owes us a pound of flesh?

Ray Marcano is a long-time journalist with writing and editing experience at some of the country’s largest media brands.

As we know it, Les Wexner, the New Albany billionaire, had a very close relationship with the sex-trafficking sleaze Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein was Wexner’s close business partner for decades starting in the 1980s, and participated in a number of multi-million dollar deals with the owner of the L’ Brands company.  But when Epstein’s sexual misconduct and brutality of girls and women came to light, Wexner cut ties with him.

Now, as released court documents highlight that relationship, some want Wexner’s name removed from buildings at Ohio State University.

“Some” might be a little generous. There’s a Change.org petition that has a little more than 500 signatures and OSU’s undergraduate student government passed a resolution during the 2022-2023 school year to remove his name.

That’s quite enough of an uproar. There’s no way OSU should —or would — remove his name from its buildings.

Let’s start with the would.

What's the chance OSU will remove Les Wexner's name from the Wexner Center for the Arts and the Wexner Medical Center?

OSU removing Wexner from, say, it’s medical center is as likely as Mitch McConnell and Mike Johnson holding a joint news conference announcing they’re all of a sudden backing Nikki Haley as the Republican presidential nominee. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

More: Are alleged sex claims enough for Ohio State to sever ties with Wexner and his millions?

The “should” debate is one based on emotion. Since he has ties with a horrible, terrible, disgusting excuse of flesh, Wexner should be punished for the sin of poorly picking his friends.

Let’s punish Wexner for bad judgment.

No concrete evidence has come forward that Wexner in any way knew, supported or approved of Epstein’s heinous acts.

Rather, the evidence suggests that in 2007, after Wexner begin to get wind that something was amiss, he told Epstein to take a hike.

Now, here we are 17 years later, and people want to extract a pound of flesh.

Why?

The proverb, “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” dates back to 1670 and means that what’s good for one is good for all.

Associating with a bad actor does not mean Les Wexner has done bad acts

That’s the proverb we should remind ourselves here. Unless you’re the saint of all saints, we’ve all had relationships we’ve come to regret. We’ve associated with people we later found to be untrustworthy, criminal, or perverted. Sometimes, out of misguided loyalty, we stick with them.

Since we’re not billionaires in the public eye, we keep those associations to ourselves because if people knew they’d question our judgment, think less of us, and might even cut ties.

Wexner doesn’t have that luxury.

He’s an expert at living under a microscope — who in that position isn’t? — and has a keen awareness of how one slip up can destroy decades of good will. So, when he found out that his friend and collaborator was a world-class deviant, he kicked him to the curb.

What else do you want?

Taking Wexner’s name off a building might make a few people feel better but what does that really do?

It doesn’t change what happened to Epstein's victims, but it would obscure what we, as of now, know.

Wexner took a stand against evil.

That’s worth a name on a building.

Ray Marcano is a long-time journalist with writing and editing experience at some of the country’s largest media brands.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Will Ohio State cut ties with Les Wexner over Jeffrey Epstein scandal?