I've Seen a Newspaper Controversy Before

On October 21st, 2003, I picked up Brandeis University's newspaper, The Justice. I was really excited because the first sports article I had written for the newspaper, a gloating piece about my Yankees (not my finest work by an means), was being published. It ended up being the single most-talked about sports section in the single most-controversial issue of The Justice.

Why? Because of an article written by a fellow Brandeisian, Dan Passner, on then-Cubs manager Dusty Baker. The article wasn't really all that well-written, but the last paragraph is what did Passner in:

As I often like to do, I will end with a quote. This one comes from noted campus civil rights activist Joseph Shmulewitz '06. I cannot endorse it, but I find it fitting. In response to the praise being heaped on the skills of Dusty Baker, Shmulewitz responded, "The only thing Baker has a Ph.D. in is something that starts with an N and rhymes with Tigger, the cheerful scamp who stole all of our hearts in the Winnie the Pooh series."

This set Brandeis ablaze. There were public forums, a student senate resolution (like that meant anything), late-night protests, Administration intervention, crying people, and even more ridiculous things than you could imagine. The controversy spread to Boston College, to the Boston Globe, and even the Jewish Telegraphic Agency got involved. There was a thirst for blood and for firings and for apologies. Passner was fired, 5 editors resigned, the Justice was forced to write a piece on their own controversy and publish all the angry letters-to-the-editor, as well as Passner's letter of apology.

It was a horrible thing that he wrote that had no place in any publication, but especially not The Justice. The editors should have picked that up but didn't. It was one of the more reprehensible things I had seen in a newspaper...

Until recently.

Mark Whicker for the OC Register wrote a column about all the odd sports things that have happened in the past 18 years and decided to exploit Jaycee Dugard's kidnapping and awful ordeal as a cheap hook. He ended his awful column (poorly written as well) with this pun, which has to go down as one of the worst:

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.

What has resulted has been a justifiable surge of backlash against Whicker and the newspaper. Twitter has been all atwitter about it from the start. ShysterBall calls it "maybe the worst sports column ever." Deadspin--which has seen it's share of bad journalism--calls it the "single worst piece of sports journalism ever committed to the page." Huffington Post called it the "single most tasteless sports column in the history of written language."

Whicker--a clueless man, evidently--was quite surprised by the public reaction. He shouldn't really be because he's done the same awful thing before. Still, he decided to blame it on the internet.

Eventually he wrote an apology which, to be honest, was ridiculous. He blames it on "miscalculation". Are you serious?

He should be fired and the editors who missed this should be as well. This is not a small miscalculation and heads should roll for this. Columnists sometimes walk the fine line and this jumped way over and this should serve as an example.

And it should end there.

Now I'm not trying to compare the two articles because they are both different but reprehensible in their own ways. But I couldn't help but draw some sort of parallel to that time in 2003 when the Brandeis campus was turned upside down. Let's just hope I never have to read something this reprehensible again.