No, they really didn't know. It's not like signing a check, that would have been done with a phone call, asking permission, though if it's a big deal they'd get some more official permission. This wasn't a big deal, it was a bunch of interrelated people, and not many of them. Phone calls.
They may not have knew what they were signing, but most likely they did sign it.
They didn't know their names were on it until N told them, but they knew what it was. One wasn't signing things, generically; the other had declined on reading it.
I think what happened is that our mutual friend had assumed they'd say yes, had wanted to be able to "produce" them, so had done it based on her erroneous assumption. Maybe she'd tried when she knew the situation to get their names removed but it had been too late. This is speculation. It isn't speculation, though, that she knew at the time we were there that the names were on the list, and she didn't say, "OMG, ___ and ____ didn't want to sign this, and I had their names put on it!"
People are fascinating. Agendas are fascinating. In this case, the motivation to sign something herself that she then had to disavow the contents and language of was certainly, first, to be PC (I am talking here about the Queen of PC) in general, I think, but specifically, N showed me, there was a potential professional payoff for her in getting 'in' with a subset of signers. Whether she was thinking of this consciously or not, I don't know. |
