Archive for the ‘Truly horrible behavior’ Category
Notre Dame Football and Rape Victims — Why You Should Care
There’s a scandal that’s been long a-brewing in Notre Dame . . . and no, it’s not related to star football player Manti Te’o or his fake girlfriend.
No, it’s much worse than that.
It’s about at least one rape, by at least one Notre Dame football player, that’s apparently been covered up by higher-ups at Notre Dame. It’s about that coverup, and about how the Athletic Director of Notre Dame, Jack Swarbrick, would rather discuss the Te’o situation, bizarre though that is, than the reputed sexual assault (or assaults). And it’s about the abuse of trust by Catholic priests, who are in positions of power in the Notre Dame hierarchy and are apparently much more concerned about the big money coming in via Notre Dame’s football program than any justice for rape victims.
Now, you might be asking, “Why do you keep saying ‘victims’ in this case, when only one (unnamed) football player has been implicated in the latest scandal?” Well, it’s simple. As Melinda Henneberger, herself a Notre Dame graduate, reported in the National Catholic Reporter back on March 26, 2012:
On her way back to St. Mary’s College from the University of Notre Dame, just across the street in Notre Dame, Ind., freshman Lizzy Seeberg texted her therapist that she needed to talk ASAP. “Something bad happened,” read her message, sent at 11:39 p.m. on Aug. 31, 2010. A sophomore in their dorm bolted from her study group after getting a similar message. When they talked a few minutes later, Lizzy was crying so hard she was having trouble breathing: “She looked really flushed and was breathing heavily and talking really fast; I couldn’t understand her. I just heard her say ‘boy,’ ‘Notre Dame,’ ‘football player.’ She was crying and having the closest thing to a panic attack I’ve seen in my life. I told her to breathe and sit down and tell me everything.”
Lizzy Seeberg”s story is the main one under discussion, as she reported the crime to the police. She wanted justice to be done. But then, as Henneberger’s account clearly shows, Lizzy Seeberg was pressured by various people at Notre Dame (mostly students) to drop the case.
Instead of dropping it, she committed suicide.
But Henneberger uncovered other current troubles. As she wrote later:
Lizzy wanted it to be better for the next woman. But one subsequent case, never reported until now, involved another young woman who decided that you really don’t mess with Notre Dame football. A year ago February, a female Notre Dame student who said another football player had raped her at an off-campus party told the friend who drove her to the hospital afterward that it was with Lizzy in mind that she decided against filing a complaint, that friend said.
So, did you catch that? Here another woman was raped, but did not go forward with her story because she, too, was afraid of being pressured.
Here’s another tidbit from Henneberger’s article:
One Notre Dame parent and longtime donor I interviewed, who asked that his name not be used because his daughter had reported being raped by a fellow Notre Dame student, said a top university official told him Lizzy was without question the aggressor in the situation: “She was all over the boy.”
So it’s obvious that the Notre Dame higher-ups appear to be seriously into blaming the victim. But they didn’t want to have to admit that’s what they were doing, which is why it was all innuendo, rumor and guess.
In a sense, Lizzy’s ordeal didn’t end with her death. The damage to her memory since then is arguably more of a violation than anything she reported to police — and all the more shocking because it was not done thoughtlessly, by a kid in a moment he can’t take back, but on purpose, by the very adults who heavily market the moral leadership of a Catholic institution. Notre Dame’s mission statement could not be clearer: “The university is dedicated to the pursuit and sharing of truth for its own sake.” But in this case, the university did just the opposite.
Henneberger also wrote a column for the Washington Post (her regular gig) explaining why she would not be rooting for Notre Dame in the BCS National Championship. As she put it:
It’s not only what I believe went on at that off-campus party, or in the room of the player Lizzy accused, that makes it impossible for me to support the team, though that would be enough. The problem goes deeper than that, and higher, because the man Lizzy accused had a history of behavior that should have kept him from being recruited in the first place. And as bad in my book as the actions of those young men was the determination of the considerably older men who run N.D. to keep those players on the team in an effort to win some football games.
Among those being congratulated for our return to gridiron glory is ND’s president, Rev. John Jenkins, who refused to meet with the Seeberg family on advice of counsel, and other school officials who’ve whispered misleadingly in many ears, mine included, in an attempt to protect the school’s brand by smearing a dead 19-year-old.
And that smearing was brutal. This was a young woman who volunteered her time at her local church. She was a political conservative (not that it matters). She was someone who firmly believed she should save her virginity for marriage, all according to Henneberger’s NCR report.
Yet she was called “mentally unstable.” A sexual innocent, she supposedly was “all over the boy.”
And this caricature of a young woman is something most rape victims will recognize, especially if they’ve tried to report a sexual assault at Notre Dame. According to Henneberger’s report:
In 1974, a South Bend woman who was hospitalized and then spent a month in a psychiatric facility after reporting being gang-raped by six Notre Dame football players was described by a top university administrator as “a queen of the slums with a mattress tied to her back.” No charges were filed, but the accused were suspended for a year for violating school rules. At the time, even so revered a figure as Holy Cross Fr. Theodore Hesburgh said: “We didn’t have to talk to the girl; we talked to the boys.” Hesburgh, who is 94, made that remark to Notre Dame alumnus Robert Sam Anson, who in his student days had founded the campus newspaper. Anson quoted Hesburgh in a story very much like this one, written 35 years ago.
Those who argue that, if anything, Notre Dame is too hard on its athletes regularly cite the 2002 expulsion of three players and a former player accused of gang-raping a woman, though none of them served a day in jail. But their accuser insists they were only expelled after officials failed to dissuade her from going public: “First they said, ‘No one’s going to believe you.’ ” When she went to South Bend police anyway, Notre Dame officials “treated me horribly at every opportunity. I had PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] and I was afraid they [the players] were going to come after me again, but [school officials] wouldn’t let me park my car on campus because they said that wouldn’t be fair to the other students. When I tried to make an appointment with the counseling center, they called me back and said they couldn’t see me because of pending legal matters, though the legal matter they were talking about was the state versus these four rapists.”
So the anecdotal evidence is overpowering. But you might be asking yourself, why isn’t there more of a paper trail regarding all of these various accusers? (Much less a public outcry on the level of, say, the Penn State debacle of a year ago, something the Nation’s Dave Zirin wonders about as well.)
It’s simple. The town of South Bend, Indiana, doesn’t have much in the way of industry any longer. It’s economy is dependent upon Notre Dame, and to a substantial extent, on how many fans come to see Notre Dame’s football team every year.
Because of this, there’s a motive for covering things up. There’s a motive to say, “No, that couldn’t have possibly happened here,” even when it’s obvious that something bad has happened. And it sounds like from Henneberger’s exhaustive report at the National Catholic Reporter that Notre Dame, systematically, has done its level best to silence as many rape victims as it possibly can.
And I’m not the only person to feel that way. Henneberger, in her Washington Post column, talked with Kaliegh Fields, a St. Mary’s junior who attempted to help Lizzy Seeberg back in 2010. Pay close attention to what Fields has to say, as her final question is the one that’s been perplexing me ever since I started reading about Lizzy’s plight:
“I’ve watched almost every game this season and there’s not a single time that I don’t feel extreme anger when I see [the accused] on the field,” said Kaliegh Fields, a Saint Mary’s junior who went with Lizzy to the police station. “Once I start thinking about the people who put the school’s success in a sport over the life of a young woman, I can’t help but feel disgust. Everyone’s always saying how God’s on Notre Dame’s side,” she added. “And I think, ‘How could he be?’”
So after all this, you might be wondering why you should care about what’s going on at Notre Dame besides its football program. Or besides the current scandal with regards to Manti Te’o and “did he, or did he not, know that his girlfriend wasn’t real.” Or besides the fact that this one place, South Bend, Indiana, is dependent upon Notre Dame and its football program to stay alive in these uncertain economic times.
But if you have read everything I’ve posted, and honestly cannot understand why I’m hopping mad that Lizzy Seeberg did not get justice done . . . well, as Mr. T used to say, “I pity the fool.”
And the longer I think about it, the more I agree with Dave Zirin: the Notre Dame football program should be given the NCAA’s death penalty, because there’s something wrong when life becomes far less important than football.
Even at Notre Dame.
Suzy Favor Hamilton Outed as Vegas Call Girl
This afternoon (December 20, 2012 to be exact), news broke that Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton — one of the biggest female sports stars to ever come out of Wisconsin — has admitted to working as a high-priced call girl for a shady Las Vegas outfit called Haley Heston’s Private Collection.
Here’s a link to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s story and a relevant quote:
Suzy Favor Hamilton, a three-time Olympian who capitalized on her wholesome image as an elite runner, mother and wife to land lucrative endorsement deals and motivational speaking engagements, has admitted to leading a double life for the last year as a high-priced call girl.
In a stunning confessional via her Twitter account, following a story published on thesmokinggun.com, Favor Hamilton wrote that she was drawn to escorting “in large part because it provided many coping mechanisms for me when I was going through a very challenging time with my marriage and my life.”
The 44-year-old Favor Hamilton, a Stevens Point native and former University of Wisconsin track star, admitted to working as “Kelly Lundy” with Haley Heston’s Private Collection, one of Las Vegas’ premier escort services, in the thesmokinggun.com story.
“I do not expect people to understand,” she wrote on her Twitter account. “But the reasons for doing this made sense to me at the time and were very much related to depression.
“I have been seeking the help of a psychologist for the past few weeks and will continue to do so after I have put things together.”
What troubles me here is not just that Favor Hamilton is a married woman with a seven-year-old child, though that’s bad enough.
Nope. What bugs me is that Favor Hamilton is quoted as admitting that her husband “tried to get (her) to stop” and that he “wasn’t supportive of (her) need to do this at all.”
Which, mind you, is the way most husbands are likely to behave when it comes to thinking about their spouse being a paid escort who gave away the “full girlfriend experience” and was rated quite highly by The Erotic Review, which is called by the Smoking Gun article that the Journal-Sentinel references as “the Zagat guide of the escort business.”
So it seems that Suzy Favor Hamilton has more than a few problems here — she’s been working as an escort when she’s not destitute (her husband is employed, she owns a realty firm and they live in a $600,000 home), she’s been fighting depression for the past year or more and if her marriage isn’t in trouble because of all this, she must have the most supportive husband in the history of the universe.
While I have never understood the need for men or women to go outside their marriages, I do know that not everyone is meant to be monogamous. So for those people who have admitted open marriages and the like, I made up my mind a long time ago not to judge them even though I freely admit that I don’t get it.
So the sex part of the equation isn’t what is so very troublesome, even though I don’t really understand what would drive a high-powered woman like Favor Hamilton to go outside her marriage and have a number of risky sexual encounters for money.
It’s the lack of trust issue that bothers me more.
Favor Hamilton is someone who’s had a squeaky clean image. She’s had endorsement deals with Disney, various running firms, has been a model in more ways than one and has been someone female runners have looked up to for the past twenty years or more in Wisconsin and much of the Midwest.
So apparently, in order for her to somehow feel better about herself, she had to throw this all away and construct an alter ego of “Kelly” the escort. Who was willing to do just about anything if the price was right because she still had the body and panache and knew how to speak the high-powered language of well-heeled men in order to better separate them from their money.
Why this intelligent, beautiful woman couldn’t find herself in some other way, I just don’t know. Why would she would risk her career for this, much less her marriage? Why would she ever entertain such a thing, considering that it’s well-known that women who become prostitutes (the not-so-nice name for “call girls”) rarely retain custody of their children?
And what about the IRS audit that has to be on the horizon? Because it would be ridiculous to assume that she’s declared all of the money she’s made as a $600-per-hour escort on her tax forms.
All of this happened because Favor Hamilton apparently enjoys risky sex in extremely expensive hotel rooms with men she doesn’t really know.
This seems so off-the-wall, so uncharacteristic, and so utterly absurd that I feel like I’ve fallen into a parallel universe.
Yet it’s the truth.
Suzy Favor Hamilton, runner and Olympian, mother and realty owner, is also a call girl.
What a terribly sad thing to have happen . . . and she did it to herself.
Sandy Hook Massacre: Why did this happen?
Ever since the news broke last Friday morning about the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, I’ve been struggling to find the words to describe how upset I am, and I just haven’t been able to find them.
I want to say something, anything, that might give some comfort to the victims’ families . . . but I have drawn a complete blank.
Because how can anything — anything at all — comfort the parents of the twenty innocent youngsters who lost their lives?
And how can anything comfort the loved ones of the six courageous and heroic adults — including the school’s principal, the school’s psychologist, and several teachers — who gave their lives so the lives of innocent children may be spared?
This is the third time in the past six months that we in the United States of America have had to confront a mass shooting. First, there was the shooting in Aurora, Colorado in July. Next, there was the shooting at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin in August.
And now, this past Friday on December 14, we had in some senses the worst killing of all — the killing of extremely young children (none older than seven). Along with six of the adults who were there to teach, protect, guide and nurture them. And the shooter’s mother.
Here’s a link that will take you to a list of most of the victims, and give a bit of biographical information about them:
After reading that, the only question I had left is this: when will the killing end?
Because it just does not seem right to have incident after incident where nothing gets done. It just does not seem right, or ethical, or just, or anything that anyone with any brains and sense should ever want to see.
Some have already politicized this latest event. These who’ve done so basically fall into two camps. One camp is screaming at the top of their voices, “Hands off our guns!” Which does not seem sensible, especially as the shooter’s mother had guns in the house (at least four) and regularly took her troubled young son to the shooting range with her.
The other camp wants gun control now, thank you, and has seized on this terrible thing as a way to get what they want in a way to perhaps bring about a good thing from such a monstrously awful event.
I have sympathy for the latter position, and almost none for the former (not in this context, assuredly). Yet I think the answer lies in better mental health treatment, for one . . . and getting rid of guns won’t solve that part of the problem one bit.
Plus, some of the pro-gun lobby’s arguments are correct.
If someone wants to kill and can’t get a gun, he will use a knife. (As did a man recently in China, wounding twenty-three.) Or a bow and arrow. (As did a young man on November 30 in Casper, Wyoming; he killed his father’s girlfriend, then went to his father’s place of business — a local community college — and killed his father, then killed himself.) Or bombs in a rental truck, as did Timothy McVeigh . . . or God/dess alone knows what.
But that doesn’t mean we should tamely sit by and do nothing, not after we’ve just seen twenty-seven people killed for no good reason.
Most especially when twenty of them were seven years of age or less.
I do not wish to play politics with such a tragic thing as twenty-six innocent people dying in, of all places, an elementary school. Just because they were there to either teach children, nurture children, or learn something should not have been enough to sign their death warrants.
But something absolutely must be done. Because we cannot allow innocent children to be killed for no reason whatsoever.
I normally have sympathy for the mentally ill, even severely mentally ill types like it sounds like the latest shooter, Adam Lanza, probably was. (And I’m decidedly not talking about his Asperger’s Syndrome; I’m talking about the behavioral issues he’d have likely had whether he had AS or not.) But in this case, I can find no mercy in my heart for him — far less mercy than one of the parents of the victims, Robbie Parker, who’s already expressed sympathy for the surviving family members of Adam Lanza.
Mr. Parker is a far better person than I.
My focus is elsewhere, because I just do not understand why any responsible parent, such as Nancy Lanza has been described, would ever allow a troubled young man like her son to get a hand on any of her guns.
Much less teach him to shoot them herself, as it appears she did.
As it stands, Adam Lanza should never have had access to his mother’s guns. He should never have been able to stockpile so much ammunition, either. And I absolutely cannot comprehend why on Earth he’d wish to take the lives of twenty children who’d never done anything to him — could never have done anything to him — nor the lives of six innocent adults plus the life of his mother, either.
But he did have access. And he did do these horrible things, though it’s possible that the six adults kept him from killing even more innocents — I’d like to think so, anyway.
We must do something to prevent the Adam Lanzas of the world from doing these horrific things, which is we must start with mental health treatment. We won’t be able to prevent all of the possible violence, no.
But we may be able to prevent some.
And we assuredly will change the lives of at least some people for the better if we make sure that health care spending — particularly on mental health — becomes a priority in this country.
I’m tired of doing nothing to stop these random killings. And I’m incensed that it’s now led to this — twenty-six people dying, in of all places, an elementary school.
So, when will the killings end?
I don’t know.
But I do know we must try to put a stop to them. Because this is intolerable.
——–
Edited to change title (so more people can find this blog post), and to add a link to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough’s stirring soliloquy about the terrible tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and why we must have at least some better control over our guns in order to protect the most vulnerable among us — our children.
US Rep. Scott DesJarlais: One of the Most Hypocritical Reps in America
One of the political stories that’s been flying under the radar in Wisconsin this week is the bad behavior and utter stupidity of Republican United States Representative Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee. DesJarlais, a medical doctor, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, has done the following things:
- Carried on at least two sexual trysts with patients
- Had at least three sexual encounters with co-workers
- Slept with at least one pharmaceutical representative
But what’s making the news more than DesJarlais horrendously bad judgment is this: he’s a pro-life legislator. But he encouraged his ex-wife to have not one but two abortions — one of which appears to have been medically necessary, while the other probably wasn’t — and didn’t tell his constituents a thing.
All of this came out due to the lengthy transcript of DesJarlais’s 2001 divorce trial; the transcript had been requested by the Times Free Press prior to the election, but as it hadn’t been completely typed up, it didn’t get released until two days after all the votes had been counted.
But DesJarlais didn’t pay a price at the ballot box, possibly due to the fact that much of this wasn’t public knowledge. As the Washington Post account puts it:
DesJarlais . . . (won) reelection with just slightly less of the vote than he took in his first campaign in 2010. He defeated state Sen. Eric Stewart (D) 56 percent to 44 percent.
However, DesJarlais’ medical license should be in jeopardy due to these recent revelations, as DesJarlais most definitely violated most of his professional ethics — not to mention whatever is left of his good, common sense.
Some of what DesJarlais admitted to during his divorce trial is so repugnant that it’s hard to even fathom it. As the Times Free Press article points out:
The transcript reveals new details about DesJarlais’ interactions with a 24-year-old-patient, who claimed she became pregnant with DesJarlais’ child during a brief fling in 2000 that ended with the doctor pressing her to have an abortion.
DesJarlais, who is now 48 years old, admitted in court to urging the woman over the phone to get an abortion, but said the whole conversation was a scheme orchestrated by him and his wife — with whom he had reconciled — to get the 24-year-old to admit she was not really pregnant.
So, did you catch all of that? DesJarlais, who was married at the time, slept with a much-younger woman and apparently got her pregnant. Then he pressured her to get an abortion.
Mind you, the last part isn’t even the worst part, though it is extremely hypocritical due to DesJarlais’ strong pro-life stance.
Nope.
The absolutely worst part of this extremely repugnant episode is that DesJarlais got his own wife to help him pressure this poor young woman.
(Why DesJarlais’ then-wife did that, I’ll never know.)
All of this adds up to one thing — this man, Scott DesJarlais, should not be a United States Representative. Not in Tennessee.
Not anywhere.
DesJarlais has a terrible attitude, as he seems to believe that he’s above it all. And that he’ll get away with it all, too . . . all of this because he was voted back into the US House of Reps.
For the moment, it appears that DesJarlais will get away with it. (As in, keep his current job; I would hope that the Tennessee Board of Health will finally strip DesJarlais of his medical license.)
However, it may not be all gravy for DesJarlais in the next election cycle as the Times Free Press article states:
But according to Republican state Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey, the congressman’s political life could be endangered in 2014. Asked before Thursday’s disclosures how many Republican senators he expects might challenge DesJarlais in the 4th District primary, Ramsey quipped, “How many live in it?”
While this may hold some promise for 2014 and beyond, that does nothing for the poor people of DesJarlais’ district right now. Instead, they’re stuck with one of the most hypocritical members in the House.
Aand considering how many hypocritical people sit in that chamber right now, that’s really saying something.
US Senate Candidate Todd Akin of MO Believes “Legitimate Rape Victims” Won’t Get Pregnant
Folks, I’ve seen some bad politicians in my lifetime. And I’ve seen some stupid ones, too. But rarely have I seen such utter stupidity — not to mention total ignorance of biology — on display by a bad politician as with the comments of United States Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), currently running for the US Senate against incumbent Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO). Akin believes that victims of “legitimate rape” are not likely to get pregnant because apparently the female body “will shut (stuff like that) right down.” Here’s his full comment, in context, from a recent post at Talking Points Memo:
Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri who is running against Sen. Claire McCaskill, justified his opposition to abortion rights even in case of rape with a claim that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy.
“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
Akin said that even in the worst-case scenario — when the supposed natural protections against unwanted pregnancy fail — abortion should still not be a legal option for the rape victim.
Obviously, Akin is plain, flat wrong. (Not to mention unlettered, ignorant, and in need of a basic health refresher course.) Pregnancy can occur with any unprotected sex between two people, and while rape is much different than “unprotected sex,” rapists don’t usually wear condoms, nor do they worry about birth control.
You’d think all of this goes without saying, but apparently to someone like Akin, it doesn’t.
Look. As President Obama said today, “rape is rape.” Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, too, has condemned Akin’s statement, calling it “insulting” and “inexcusable.” Good for them.
Indeed, many in the GOP has condemned Akin, yet the main problem the GOP has right now is that Akin, along with GOP VP candidate Paul Ryan, himself a US Rep. from Janesville, WI, tried to get a law through the House of Reps. that used a similar term — “forcible rape” — to limit government aid for abortions.
Here’s a link to one of the best articles I’ve managed to find yet regarding why Akin’s shocking remark may torpedo the GOP’s chances in Missouri and elsewhere; the upshot is that Akin knows Ryan well, and because of what amounts to secondhand contamination — and well-known, long-held similar views with regards to rape — this may hurt the GOP Presidential ticket in the fall.
Conservative commentator John Podhoretz, writing in Commentary Magazine (here’s the link), describes Akin’s remarks thusly:
The moral, intellectual, and spiritual ignoramus who spoke those words is Todd Akin. He won the Missouri primary two weeks ago in a three-way race against two other conservatives, taking 36 percent of the vote—his two major rivals together won about 60 percent.
The PJ Tatler bluntly says this about Akin’s remarks:
This isn’t a gaffe. It’s a nuclear bomb.
Exactly so.
My advice to Akin is this: withdraw from the US Senate race while the getting’s good. (As I understand it, Akin has about a day to withdraw, then the Missouri GOP can field another candidate. Anyone would have to be better than this guy.) Then figure out a new line of work, hope your Congressional pension will be good enough for you to while away your golden years, and do your best to stay away from microphones for the good of all concerned.
I’d also suggest taking that refresher course on basic human biology, too, as that might keep you from making any more small-minded and uninformed comments. But that’s only something you should do if you wish to rejoin the rest of the human race as an informed, thinking, and feeling human being . . . no pressure.
Plagiarism, Pt. 2 — Zakaria Cleared, Reinstated by Time and CNN
Well, folks, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised — yet I am.
It appears that Fareed Zakaria, who blatantly plagiarised from a column by the New Yorker’s Jill Lepore for his most recent column at Time magazine, then got suspended last week from both CNN and Time (my earlier blog post about this is here), will resume his jobs in September.
Here’s tonight’s article from the Huffington Post, which states:
Fareed Zakaria is off the hook at both Time magazine and CNN after he admitted plagiarizing a New Yorker column last Friday.
The upshot of the article is, Time and CNN both have agreed to let Zakaria keep his jobs even though Zakaria most definitely plagiarised from Lepore. Zakaria’s employers view this as an “isolated” incident, even though Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic pointed out back in 2009 that Zakaria had also plagiarised him without attribution.
Basically, Zakaria is getting away with doing something unconscionable, merely because he is a celebrity. This should not be tolerated, but apparently in today’s hyper-conscious celebrity culture, the bigwigs at Time and CNN just don’t care.
And by refusing to can Zakaria due to his plagiarism, it’s obvious that journalistic ethics — writerly ethics — have gone out the window at both CNN and Time. Despite the fact that they’re supposedly devoted to the news. Despite the fact that they should wish those who report the news for them will be honest, fair-minded, and at least have the common courtesy to properly attribute their sources.
I’m shocked that Time and CNN have chosen this course. They’re both news-oriented organizations. The people who work for them should be above reproach.
Yet Zakaria no longer can be considered above reproach, if indeed he ever was — which is why he should’ve been fired without delay no matter how high-profile he is and no matter how much of a celebrity, either.
By retaining Zakaria despite his blatant plagiarism, both of Zakaria’s employers have proven that the almighty dollar matters far more to them than the truth. Or ethics. Or even common sense.
Even in this day and age, wrong is wrong — and we all know that what Zakaria did is plain, flat wrong.
Usually, committing blatant acts of plagiarism is the one thing that can get a reporter, host, or “basic writer” fired without an appeal. It’s utterly wrong that Zakaria didn’t even have to sweat a little bit before he found out that he would, indeed, keep his jobs.
Instead, it appears he got what amounts to a “get out of jail free” card from his employers.
That’s wrong.
That’s shameful.
And it should not be allowed to stand. Period.
Update on Oak Creek Shooting; Other Updates
This is yet another day where I don’t really have time to write a full blog post, but do have a number of things to say. So let’s get to it.
First, the latest update regarding the Oak Creek, WI, shooting that left six innocents dead and three innocents wounded is as follows: the Federal Bureau of Investigation has revealed that the gunman, Wade Michael Page, actually took his own life after being shot by the police. Funeral arrangements are being made for the six dead; of the three who were severely wounded, two are still in critical condition, while the third, a local policeman, is recovering with amazing speed.
Second, the Racine Concert Band will have another concert this Sunday at the Racine Zoo. (Showtime is 7 p.m.) I’m to play alto saxophone this week, after playing clarinet last week . . . I view myself as the Vinny Rottino of the Racine Concert Band (with tongue planted firmly in cheek).
Speaking of Rottino, here’s a nice write-up about him that I somehow missed last week from the Let’s Go Tribe blog. This blog discusses Rottino’s career and how he’s always hit, but how his defense isn’t quite major-league ready except at first base and left field — but because Rottino’s not a prototypical power hitter, and those positions usually are played by people who are, that’s why Rottino rarely gets a chance to bat in the major leagues.
I’ve not seen Rottino play third base or right field, but I know that Rottino has a good arm and is an extremely smart player. He’s made himself into a decent catcher despite learning to play the position late (he took it up when he was 24 or 25); he rarely makes baserunning mistakes or fielding miscues. And as I’ve said many times, I believe Rottino will hit if he’s given a chance at the major league level, especially considering the fact that he’s hit everywhere else.
Also regarding Rottino, here’s a link to an article from November of 2006 from the Baseball Prospectus, written by Kevin Goldstein that I somehow missed previously. Goldstein says bluntly:
If you aren’t rooting for Vinny Rottino, there’s something very, very wrong with you. Undrafted out of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, the Brewers signed Rottino in 2003 as a local product who could fill some organizational holes, yet all he’s done is hit at every level, including a .314/.379/.440 mark at Triple-A Nashville this year, good enough to earn him his major-league debut.
Note Goldstein’s first line: “If you aren’t rooting for Vinny Rottino, there’s something very, very wrong with you.” (I couldn’t have said it better myself.)
Mind, Goldstein also pointed out (later in the blurb) that Rottino’s glove is not major-league ready (or that it wasn’t in ’06, at any rate), particularly at the catching position. But it’s been six years, and there has been massive improvement in that area; in addition, Rottino’s overall defense has improved, something that few other baseball players can say.
I keep wondering if Vinny Rottino has read Malcolm Gladwell’s book OUTLIERS. This is relevant because Toronto Blue Jays OF José Bautista, adjudged a late bloomer by many, found Gladwell’s book extremely helpful.
I reviewed OUTLIERS over at Shiny Book Review a while back. What I appreciated most about this book was how Gladwell pointed out that the best way to position yourself for victory in anything is to persist. Providing you have the talent, the skills and the smarts to begin with, persistence is the only thing that will set you apart from the crowd, regardless of your chosen field. Add to that the fact is that sometimes people give up on themselves too early due to forces beyond their control, and it’s obvious what a gifted player needs to do if he or she hasn’t yet made it: just keep trying.
Rottino has shown the value of persistence in his ten-year-long minor league career. He’s improved his skills throughout, and has continued to hit at every level. And by doing this — working on his craft, and refusing to give up — Rottino has put himself in a position to win. Which is all he, or anyone else, can do.
I have a lot of sympathy for Rottino, because my journey with regards to publishing has been slow. Yet all I can do is show that I do have the talent and just keep trying; this means I have to keep writing and editing, keep networking with other writers and editors, etc. And of course continue to review books, as half the time this is how I end up getting to know a new and interesting writer.
Rest assured that I will do, in my fashion, what Rottino has done in his — keep getting better, and keep putting myself in a position to win.
My beloved husband Michael would expect no less.
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