Allow me to begin today – - on the feast day of Patrick in Ireland – - with a comment on the sentencing of the slimeball who stalked and videotaped a naked Erin Andrews in a hotel room. A judge sentenced this clearly sick hominid to 27 months in prison; he will have to pay $5K in fines; and he will pay $7,366 in “restitution”. Before anyone asks, I have no idea how an amount as precise as $7366 can be ascribed to “restitution” in this matter; if you want an answer to that one, go find a judge and ask him/her. This guy stalked Erin Andrews – - and evidently other women – - for the purpose of taping them in “the altogether”. He will spend the next 27 months stalked by other men – - hopefully nicknamed “Tiny” – - who have other ideas about what they might want to do to him. Am I sorry about that outcome? Not in the least – - except I might have wished that it would have been for 5 years and not 27 months.
I understand that Erin Andrews’ privacy and her reasonable expectation of her privacy were violated. I understand that she felt and still feels humiliation regarding the videos this ne’er-do-well posted on the Internet for all to see. I understand that she has to continue to stay in hotel rooms around the country in order for her to do her job as an ESPN commentator. Having said all of that, I think that Erin Andrews and her representatives (legal and PR types) need to take their foot off the gas for a moment here.
Prior to yesterday’s sentencing, Andrews – via her attorney – said that she wanted this two-legged skunk to pay her $335,000 in restitution. Just as I do not understand $7366 as an appropriate amount of restitution here, I also do not understand $335,000 as an appropriate amount of restitution here. Those illicit and shameful recordings did not ruin Erin Andrews’ “employability” by ESPN. Erin Andrews will not spend the rest of her life working outside her chosen field of endeavor because this human worm posted nude pics of her on the Internet. At the sentencing hearing, she said:
“You violated me and you violated all women. You are a sexual predator, a sexual deviant and they should lock you up.”
No problem there… Then, she also told the judge that she fears for her life every time she “enters a hotel”. Excuse me; I just got off the train. Erin Andrews was violated by a sick human being – - not by a hotel. Maybe she will need some counseling to separate those two things in her psyche, but a judge should not base his decision(s) on the fact that she seems not to be able to separate those variables at this moment in time. Or – - perhaps it is more advantageous for her to acknowledge that inability at this time in the event that she decides to file a civil lawsuit against this reprobate for a larger monetary restitution.
Bottom line here:
1. The sicko is going to jail where he belongs.
2. It is now time for Erin Andrews and the rest of us to … move … on.
Jim Mora, Jr. has moved on. This week, he surfaced again in the coaching ranks. After the Seahawks fired him in January, Mora was well under the radar with regard to the NFL and collegiate coaching carousels. Now, he is back in coaching – - at Bellevue High School in suburban Seattle as an assistant coach. This is probably be the largest gap between levels of coaching assignments season-to-season for a football coach since Gerry Faust went from the head coach at Archbishop Moeller High School in Cincinnati to the position of head coach of Notre Dame back in the 1980s.
For years, the baseball poets portrayed Billy Beane (Oakland A’s GM) as a genius/prodigy/harbinger-of-a-new-age in baseball. Moneyball made him out to be at least 30 IQ points smarter than any of his counterparts in baseball; it was so easy for him to fleece them. That image has to be reconciled with the less than sterling results posted by the A’s on the field in the past several seasons; and maybe, Beane’s signing of Ben Sheets to a one-year contract for $10M will do even more damage to that image.
The A’s do not lavish that kind of money on players. As soon as the signing was announced, more than a few writers opined that the idea was for the A’s to have the recuperating Sheets on the roster for a few months and then trade him away to a contender to get more prospects or affordable players. Let us suppose that was the “grand scheme” by the “baseball mastermind”.
So far in Spring Training, Ben Sheets has made three appearances and his ERA is a stratospheric 37.41. In a game earlier this week, Sheets faced 10 batters, got no one out and gave up 10 runs before the manager took pity on him and brought in someone else to finish the inning. Surely, things can change between now and the baseball trading deadline in July; but for the moment, Ben Sheets and his $10M contract would probably not bring a bag of fungo bats in a trade.
This next item is not a sports item, but it is sufficiently off-the-wall that I have to comment on it. A woman in New Jersey says that she is on a course to eat her way to her “fantasy”/goal of weighing 1000 pounds. Yes, she hopes to weigh half a ton – - about the weight of three NFL nose tackles combined. Just a guess here, but when her guidance counselor in seventh grade told her that she needed to set goals in her life to give her something to aim for, that counselor did not have this kind of nonsense in mind.
Even as we speak, this woman has the record in the Guinness Book of World Records for the heaviest woman to give birth. She was a svelte 532 pounds back in 2007 when she dropped her papoose. Today, she tips the scales at 604 pounds on her way to 1000 pounds whereupon she will need a team of piano movers just to get her out of bed and onto a gurney such that she can be taken to a hospital for any random cardiac “event” in her life. In terms of the ongoing health-care debate, this woman is a walking “pre-existing condition”…
The name of this genius is in the story about her quest. That is a good thing. Had it not been there, I would have thought that this is what had become of Sally Struthers in the days since M*A*S*H went off the air…
Finally, here are two Winter Olympics commentaries from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:
“Think I’m missing the Winter Olympics more than I thought I would. Sweeping out my garage Saturday, I found myself crouching and moving the broom in short, rapid, side-to-side strokes.”
“Miami/Fort Lauderdale ranked 56th — dead last — in Winter Olympics TV ratings. Are we really shocked why? Bulletin: We have no snow here! Most Winter Olympics sports are bizarre to us. The exception is biathlon, the sport that involves cross-country skiing and shooting guns. We know that one well. Other than the cross-country skiing part.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…
Comments
Curm, Sally Struthers was in All in the Family,not M*A*S*H. Though she looks well on the way to 200 pounds, at least. Or do you mean Loretta Swit?
That fat lady is probably vying for a reality show, and may be on her way to dying on a reality show.
It seems that Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington has tested positive for cocaine, perhaps in some emphatic gesture to Josh Hamilton. This may be baseball’s version of what some wag once called the Dallas Cowboys: South America’s Team.
Where I work a positive drug test means a positive firing……WTF?!?!
Ed:
You are absolutely right – - All in the Family and not M*A*S*H. Talk about getting synapses crossed… Mea culpa!
Rich:
If the Texas Rangers – - for whatever reasons – - chose not to fire Washington over that test result, that is their business. What I do not understand is how MLB could have let him go without so much as a token suspension. I am still waiting to hear a good explanation for that.