Jesse James was on “Nightline” last night and finally offered up a few answers for why he cheated on wife Sandra Bullock, whether he’s a big ol’ racist, and if he went to rehab for sex addiction. For starters, James says he was abused as a child and that much of his persona is a smoke screen to hide the fact that he’s a scared abused kid, whose dad broke his arm when he was 7 years old. Child abuse, he says, also contributed to his infidelity, telling ABC:
“I grew up with a huge amount of shame and fear and abandonment on my shoulders from a very young age and I think, you know, the way my mind rationalized [cheating], ‘Well, you know, I might as well do whatever I can to like run her off cause she is going to find out what I am anyway and leave me anyway … The struggle within myself for the things that I did … to damage marriage and my life and everything else, it’s all me. I’m doing it because, you know, I’ve basically never felt good enough for anyone.”
He says he is 100 percent sure that Bullock will divorce him and that there’s nothing he can do to change her mind, but that she said she was proud of him when he decided to go to rehab for his “non-traditional” sex addiction. What is that, you ask?
“I don’t think I have a sex addiction where I’m running around trying to have sex with everyone and I can’t stop … I think I do things to sabotage my life, including having extramarital affairs, texting, overworking myself, injuring myself, doing stunts and stupid things. I think I do a lot of things in my life that I shouldn’t be doing that aren’t conducive to being a perfect husband, you know, and the affairs are just one of them.”
Texting a lot is part of self-sabotage? Ruh-roh.
And as for that photo of him in Nazi regalia doing the Hitler salute?
“It makes me really sad seeing the photo and the way I look. I don’t even remember taking the photo. But it was just—I can tell by the look on my face it was a joke. That was funny then, probably for a minute. But then looking at it in the context of now and my life, it’s not funny … There’s not a racist bone in my body.”
I’m not sure that dressing up like a Nazi is ever really funny, but you know what? It’s especially not funny when the guy who’s doing it is also boinking a woman with a White Power tattoo. Just sayin’.
So, what did you think of James’ interview? Did you buy his insights into what led him to mess up his life? Or was he just making excuses and looking for pity? Watch the full interview on ABC.com.