This is a horrible and insensitive sports column

Dark Knight

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http://www.ocregister.com/articles/w...5260-never-one


Monday, September 7, 2009

Many odd things have happened in sports the past 18 years


Whicker column: Here's a primer for someone who has missed nearly two decades.


Mark Whicker
Columnist
The Orange County Register


It doesn't sound as if Jaycee Dugard got to see a sports page.

Box scores were not available to her from June 10, 1991 until Aug. 31 of this year.

She never saw a highlight. Never got to the ballpark for Beach Towel Night. Probably hasn't high-fived in a while.

She was not allowed to spike a volleyball. Or pitch a softball. Or smack a forehand down the line. Or run in a 5-footer for double bogey.

Now, that's deprivation.

Can you imagine? Dugard was 11 when she was kidnapped and stashed in Phillip Garrido's backyard. She was 29 when she escaped. Penitentiary inmates at least get an hour of TV a day. Dugard was cut off from everything but the elements.

How long before she fully digests the world she re-enters? How difficult to adjust to such cataclysmic change?

More than that, who's going to explain the fact that there's a President Obama?

Dugard's stepfather says she's going to need a lot of therapy — you think? — so perhaps she should take a respite before confronting the new realities.

So, Jaycee, whenever you're ready, here's what you've missed:

(The columnist runs down about 2 dozen sports stories from the past 18 years, making jokes about most of them)

•And ballplayers, who always invent the slang no matter what ESPN would have you believe, came up with an expression for a home run that you might appreciate.

Congratulations, Jaycee. You left the yard.
---------


In case you want to contact the writer: mwhicker@ocregister.com

ETA: He has apologized: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/column-apologize-readers-2557723-register-most
 
Maybe he truly doesn't get it after all and was likely forced to apologize. This is from an article just last night:

Whicker's reply to my e-mail is below, in full:


1. It was my concept, which was to (1) celebrate the release of the girl and (2) show just how long 18 years in confinement really is, in the context of sports, which is something sports readers understand, presumably.. If you say "18 years" that's a little abstract and incomprehensible. If you say "Michael Jordan hadn't won an NBA championship yet," that's a little easier to fathom.

2. I don't think writing about something in a sports context "trivializes" it at all. The idea that sports writers should ignore the outside world went out a long time ago.

3. I am quite surprised by the angry tone of the reaction. Some have asked me why I didn't make light of the 9/11 attack or the Holocaust while I was at it, ignoring the fact that this woman is alive. For 18 years the family didn't know if she was or not. Obviously I mis-read the emotional component of this story because the reaction really has been quite extreme. I think the intent of the column was still valid. I could have changed some ways of expressing it to make it more palatable, I suppose.


But if Whicker is surprised by the tone of the reaction, he shouldn't be. The Dugard case is a shocking, horrible story, and it's not at all surprising that people who read Whicker's clumsy attempt to use it as fodder for a sports column are shocked and horrified.

Update: Whicker has published an apology. [FONT=&quot]He also e-mailed me after this post was published, saying, "Thanks for ripping me. I'm really happy I devoted part of this very hectic day responding to someone who had as little interest in my viewpoint as the crazies out there."[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
http://backporch.fanhouse.com/2009/...ipped-as-worst-ever-quite-surprised-by-react/

Thousands of people in the media are unemployed and this guy has a job?
 
He wasn't just showing his insenitivity. He was showing his ignorance on the case. What makes him think she would even have any interest in the sports scores? Jaycee was in the house when she participated in the printing business. Not enough I know, but if they got the paper I would have to expect that she had access to it. They did get books for her, so she was allowed to read. She used the computer in teaching the girls. So if she had any interest in sports, she probably could have looked up the sports news.

So insensitive and ignorant is how I would characterize that article.
 
I can sort of see what this guy means and how's he's keeping it all related to sports. We really don't know how much access to any internet, tv, or newspapers that Jaycee or the girls were allowed. It's already been stated that the abductor told someone that they did not allow tv in the home. It really is true that Jaycee or the girls were never allowed to join a soccer, basketball, or softball team. I'm sure they were never taken to any type of games either. Heck, they surely never even attended a real Sunday School class or Girl Scout meeting. It is shameful.
 
<snip> I can sort of see what this guy means and how's he's keeping it all related to sports. We really don't know how much access to any internet, tv, or newspapers that Jaycee or the girls were allowed. It's already been stated that the abductor told someone that they did not allow tv in the home...

There's a TV in this photo that looks like it's hooked up to an antenna (?).

32house_1471749i.jpg
 
Good call, My2sis.

The more you look at the photos, the more you see.

I am just noticing a "Dummies" series book - under the thick Gardening binder on the chair.

On the shelf just behind the chair is something that looks like a dark roll of tape - maybe duct tape????? It's upright. Does anyone have any ideas about that?

BACK ON TOPIC - In the backyard there are 3 (?) bikes and a plastic "toddler" tricycle, a swingset, a trampoline, and an empty swimming pool. I have NOTHING good to say about the Garridos, but it would appear that these are the recreational, sports items allowed Jaycee and the girls.

To me, the most incredibly insulting and thoughtless line in the article is the following:
"Dugard's stepfather says she's going to need a lot of therapy — you think? — so perhaps she should take a respite before confronting the new realities."

Sarcasm about comments made by Jaycee's stepdad is NOT warranted. What's happened in sports in the last 18 years is hardly relevant, given all the healing that needs to take place. Jeez. What a jerk.
 
<snip> On the shelf just behind the chair is something that looks like a dark roll of tape - maybe duct tape????? It's upright. Does anyone have any ideas about that?...

I noticed that, too and it made me sick to my stomach! Yes, it's a roll of duct tape.
 
what an I to the D to the iot!!!! I mean a REEEAAALL idiot!

Ya think this lesson in manners and sensitivity was one learned by him or rather shed off like water on the feathers of a duck??....??

I say duck.
 
Has it really been verified that he let the girls have full computer internet access? I find that almost unbelieveable, and will only believe it once I hear it from law enforcement. The internet opens up the whole world and even the ability to look up one's own name. If he did allow it, it's very scary to think that he was that confident. He certainly didn't allow Facebook or anything though or I'm sure someone would have found it by now.
 
In an interview, OC Register Editor Ken Brusick conceded to DailyFinance that the piece was an embarrassment to the paper. Whicker, who writes 200 columns a year, made a "bad call," he said, adding that the editors involved failed to "rescue" the columnist. When asked whether the editors failed to catch the error in Whicker's premise, Brusick said, "I don't know what was going through their minds."
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/09...nfamous-jaycee-sports-column-isnt-just-stupi/
 
Don't forget people react to and deal with these kind of events differently.
For some people it's just easier to turn to humour to put it in their kind of perspective, and to make them deal with it easier. It doesn't mean they're respectless, they just have a hard time processing the facts, and before they can, they joke about it. It doesn't sound right to us, no. But everybody deals with hard stuff in stages, and different stages.
Personally, I think it was horrible too, but obviously it wasn't written for me.
If I understand correctly, the writer has since apologized?
 
Don't forget people react to and deal with these kind of events differently.
For some people it's just easier to turn to humour to put it in their kind of perspective, and to make them deal with it easier. It doesn't mean they're respectless, they just have a hard time processing the facts, and before they can, they joke about it. It doesn't sound right to us, no. But everybody deals with hard stuff in stages, and different stages.
Personally, I think it was horrible too, but obviously it wasn't written for me.
If I understand correctly, the writer has since apologized?

He's made a public apology, but it's basically of the "I'm sorry you chose to be offended" variety. His emails to those who contacted him to complain demonstrate he's hardly contrite.

I think it's incredibly sad that this "man", who WASN'T locked away and violated for 18 years, shows such a staggering lack of awareness that he cannot comprehend the profound insensitivity of his words. You'd think HE was the one who was deprived of social contact with the outside world for two decades, he's so thoroughly clueless.

What a :loser:
 
Don't forget people react to and deal with these kind of events differently.
For some people it's just easier to turn to humour to put it in their kind of perspective, and to make them deal with it easier. It doesn't mean they're respectless, they just have a hard time processing the facts, and before they can, they joke about it. It doesn't sound right to us, no. But everybody deals with hard stuff in stages, and different stages.
Personally, I think it was horrible too, but obviously it wasn't written for me.
If I understand correctly, the writer has since apologized?

Humm. Ok the article was written wrong.

One question. Is no one allowed to write something celebrating her release? Or are we only allowed to focus on the horrible history?
 
Humm. Ok the article was written wrong.

One question. Is no one allowed to write something celebrating her release? Or are we only allowed to focus on the horrible history?

Was that piece intended as a celebration of Jaycee's release?

Because it certainly sounded like a trivialization of her time spent in captivity to me. To imply that box scores, Michael Jordan's record, or the obsolescence of domed stadiums should in any way, shape, or form, be of the slightest concern or consequence to a child who is repeatedly raped and held against her will for nearly 20 years is an insult to anyone with an IQ above room temperature.

I for one would love to see a column that sincerely celebrates Jaycee's release, and not a tasteless excuse for a recap of every major sports headline of the last 18 years.
 
This article is an example of when the "not-too-bright" try to be clever and completely miss the mark. Newspaper readers will see more and more of this as experienced higher-paid journalists are replaced with younger, cheaper writers. There is an old adage: Pay peanuts - get monkeys.
 
That was really in poor taste. And to make it worse, the "apology" seems not heartfelt as much as driven by public opinion & the necessity to make nice-nice.

Journalism?
Hooey!
 

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