Wow.

Congratulations, Jaycee. You left the yard.

Holy googily moogily.

This guy, I think we can all agree, deserves the title of jackass.

inappropriate One entry found.

    * Main Entry: in·ap·pro·pri·ate
    * Pronunciation: \ˌi-nə-ˈprō-prē-ət\
    * Function: adjective

: not appropriate : unsuitable – see picture below

— in·ap·pro·pri·ate·ly adverb

— in·ap·pro·pri·ate·ness noun

Mark Whicker
Columnist
The Orange County Register

Not the correct way to go about this at all. In fact, leave the poor woman out of any article. Leave her alone, don’t write about her, and let her adjust completely away from any media outlet.

Tabler, I’ve dogged you in the past for your cleveland.com crusades, but I officially revoke any criticism. This is literally the worst piece of journalism I’ve ever seen in my life.

I’m trying to put myself in his head. He was probably thinking to himself one day, “lol, Magic Johnson is a billionaire and AIDS doesn’t even bother him. Barry Bonds took steroids. Damn, how time flies! Looking back can be so crazy! I feel that, upon reflection, my feelings and thoughts toward events that took place in the past have changed significantly as I, myself, have changed. Boy oh boy! I’m going to write a piece recapping things near-and-dear to me: sports and my own personal journey through time and history, recalling the actions of other strange men. But how can I pitch this piece? I know, framed narrative! See, we have this…this woman, and she’s in…a time capsule of sorts! Her unimaginable ignorance about current events in the last 18 years mimics the naivete of my youth! I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”

No words.

I actually feel bad for him more than anything. Something was lost along the way in his life that clearly left him without a sense of what good taste is.

Wow

I literally can think of nothing to say.

Servite is the origination of Ryen Frangarkster, right?

I saw this elsewhere today and yeah, it is a doozy. One can only hope that writing something like this gets you fired. And not just fired, but out of the profession altogether.

A comment on ShysterBall

Greg Simons said…
I sent this e-mail to Mark Whicker:

Mark,

Wow. Just…wow!
"Now, that’s deprivation."
and
"Congratulations, Jaycee. You left the yard."
That’s possibly the most revolting article hook I’ve ever read. September 11 is only a couple days away. Are you going to do a tie-in with that, too?

—-
He replied thusly:

The revolting thing is that you would equate a column that celebrates the release of Jaycee Dugard, and tries to put the length of her 18-year
kidnapping in a context that everyone can understand, with a terrorist attack that killed 3,000 people. And then you draw a value judgment about me based on such a preposterous parallel.

Wow, indeed.

MW

Should this link be pulled so as not to give the dude any more traffic?

Olbermann is getting ready to hammer this guy on MSNBC.

Whicker naturally is shocked at the reaction … full story.

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.

Whicker issues a rather lame apology which will appear on the front page of tomorrow’s sports section along with a few sample emails from angry readers. He obviously still doesn’t get why his column was so offensive.

Alternate ways / intro’s for a “look what’s happened in the past 18 years” piece:

“It’s been 18 years since my chin and neck were separate body parts. The last time I grew a goatee and it didn’t look like neck-beard the following still hadn’t happened in professional sports……”

or

“I had a sense of decency 18 years ago. At that time, I was still getting wedgies at the hands of the jocks I was writing about. Since that time, here’s what else has happened…”

Feel free to add your own.

Even putting aside the horrible judgment used here, the points he made about the past 18 years in sports were stupid and uninteresting. Just a complete and utter failure.

Not enough editor bashing.

A perfet 10 on the Insensitivity Meter.

Andrew Leonard points out, the newspaper continues to make more money due to the notoriety of the piece:

I’m betting Whicker’s column has a good chance to the most read thing he’s ever written in his two decades as a sports writer. And by my count, there are at least five different advertisements being served on the Web page containing the column. Which means that the O.C. Register is probably generating some revenue from the column’s notoriety. Whicker apologized for his column, but if the O.C. Register was feeling any real shame at all, it should strip all the ads off that page in perpetuity.

I started reading the column, and didn’t immediatly recognize the name of the girl. When it became clear to me I felt sick. I now need a shower.

Nice work, douche!

Turns out this type of writing isn’t a first for Whicker. This article from Poynter Online (which I found at ShysterBall) discusses a passage he had written almost two decades ago:

This isn’t the first time the columnist has penned something like this. In 1991 he followed up on journalist Terry Anderson’s release after being held captive in Lebanon for close to seven years by writing about all the sports news he had missed:

“Cleaning out the notebook while hoping Terry Anderson didn’t have overdue library books: How long was it? When Anderson was captured, Wally Joyner was in Triple-A. Michael Jordan was finishing his rookie year. Ted Tollner and USC were Rose Bowl champs. Doug Flutie was the reigning Heisman Trophy winner. Jennifer Capriati was 9. And Cal State Fullerton was coming off an 11-1 football season.

“Wow! That long? On the other hand, Jack Morris had pitched his team to the most recent World Series victory, and the Clippers were missing the playoffs. So it was only yesterday.”

Of course, all the outrage over his story is the internet’s fault:

Whicker said he didn’t get any feedback on the Anderson column, which was published long before the paper started posting stories online. He doubts this week’s column would have gotten as much attention were it not for the “speed and the enormity of the Internet.”

“I’m a little saddened by the tone of some of the responses because I think it says a lot about what’s out there in computer-land,” Whicker said. “I’ve had some e-mailers say, ‘Why don’t you write about 9/11 while you’re at it?’ Another person said, ‘Why don’t you write about the Holocaust next?’ I think that’s a really obscene thing to say.”

Whicker said that as of Tuesday night, he had received just one critical e-mail about his Dugard column. By Wednesday night, after people had tweeted and blogged about it, he had about 100 e-mails in his inbox.

I just love the use of the word “computer-land” — it’s like there aren’t thousands of real people upset about this article.

Hmmm, looks like there was a Neyer blog post on it, but now it’s gone.