And Then You Win: Te'o And The Media
I've been a little out of it the last few days. Not enough to not see every Manti Te'o fake dead girlfriend joke in the world come through my twitter feed, but out of it, more given to trying to keep various fluids in my nose than trying to figure out any deep takeaways from the fact that Notre Dame's star player had a fake internet girlfriend who fake internet died.
I had to get one in a hurry when I went on WTKA this morning, because everyone in the world is talking about it—I hopped into a minimart to grab something to eat and it was on, like, CNN. CNN 2012 is to CNN 1994 as TLC 2012 is to TLC 1994…
…but it's a big deal when your fake girlfriend turns out dead, I guess. So the brain went and processed and came out with these things.
THIS IS NOT SURPRISING, PART I. We are talking about a Mormon guy from Hawaii who turned down USC to attend a Catholic school in South Bend, Indiana, that had not ever been remotely competitive in a BCS game because of… nice grass or something. A mural on a building. Whatever causes people to go to Notre Dame minus the "I'm Catholic" angle. He left Hawaii for South Bend, Indiana. Clearly this is a gullible man.
THIS IS NOT SURPRISING, PART II. What percentage of massively credulous undergraduate population of Notre Dame do you think has an internet girlfriend? All of them. Every last person participating in the annual Dillon Hall tickle fight has an internet girlfriend they have never met.
She is a princess from Sub-Saharan Africa currently in boarding school, and she doesn't care that by even communicating with Wallace Anglerson The Third she risks her inheritance—her very place in society—as long as you keep talking about how bad the last season of Battlestar Galactica was. It's love. Her name is "Angel," except in one of those clicky languages. Here is a picture of her.
Te'o would tell his friends about his internet girlfriend, and they would say "my internet girlfriend is hotter." Jimmy Clausen had two, the cad. Six weeks after graduation it gradually dawns on them that some of the men they hung out with were actually girls.
It would be weird if Manti Te'o didn't have a fake internet girlfriend hailing from somewhere far away from South Bend. If Notre Dame's nickname had been updated to reflect changes in student demographics they would be the Fightin' Lonely Credulous Nerds.
THIS IS NOT SURPRISING, PART III. As Jonathan Chait points out, it wouldn't be an inspiring story about a Notre Dame hero if it wasn't fiction:
Fake, schmaltzy inspirational tales are the essence of the culture of the program. The inspirational story of Knute Rockne and his dying player, George Gipp, became a famous movie that helped enshrine Notre Dame football in the culture. In reality, Rockne was an ethically dubious sports gambler, Gipp a pool hustler, and the main events of the story — Gipp’s dying wish to “win one for the Gipper,” Rockne’s inspirational halftime speech —never happened.
Likewise, Rudy is the inspirational story of a walk-on who overcame the odds to play football at Notre Dame, but the story is also filled with falsehoods. Rudy, by the way, turned out to be a stock scammer.
The only thing that's strange about this is that Te'o's grandmother is not only hale and hearty today but also manipulating Vegas lines with his grandson's collusion.
THIS IS NOT SURPRISING, PART IV… ACTUALLY THIS IS A LITTLE SURPRISING. For a while now Deadspin has been a weird mélange of athlete dong pics, Drew Magary trying to one-up himself until his columns are just lists of insults followed by exclamation points, and the best dang investigative journalism around*. (They've cut down on the wantonly-screwing-people-no-one's-ever-heard-of-in-a-petulant-fit since the departure of AJ Daulerio.)
The best example: A couple years ago Tommy Craggs published internal MLB financial documents that revealed small market teams—including the Marlins, recipients of a new publicly-funded stadium—were simply pocketing revenue-sharing money instead of using it to improve the product they put in front of their fans. This pissed MLB off so much they tried to sue the insurance company they came from to find the person who leaked the documents so they could sue him. When's the last time something a newspaper wrote caused a major league to go on a suing vendetta? I can't recall.
Anyway, the jarring thing is this story comes immediately after the baseball writers refused to vote anyone into the hall of fame for using the PEDs they studiously ignored for a decade. Meanwhile the following Legitimate Media Organizations ran with Te'o's Fake Dead Girlfriend:
1. Us.
2. You (Jack Dickey and Timothy Burke excepted)
4. ESPN
7. The Chicago Tribune
8. The Chicago Sun-Times
9. The Sporting News
10. USA Today
11. The Boston Globe
12. CBS Sports
13. The New York Post
15. Yahoo
16. The Associated Press
17. The Palm Beach Post
18. The Miami Herald
19. The Tampa Bay Times
20. Grantland
21. The Los Angeles Times
Go home newspapers, you're drunk.
If you're not going to call, to confirm, to make sure someone actually exists, what do you have left? If Deadspin has you beat on the low end and the high end, what is your purpose?
“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”
Remember when writers at regional Iowa papers looked down their nose at bloggers and their unverified voracity?
In the new "journalism of assertion," as the report calls it, information is offered with little time and little attempt to independently verify its voracity. [sic]
I don't either. Long time ago, in a different media place. The only people still pretending sportswriters aren't PR are the baseball writers, long may they stew in their curly-haired uselessness.
IN CONCLUSION
I have met my wife.
*[With apologies to Charles Robinson.]
January 17th, 2013 at 1:30 PM ^
things can go to hell in a handbasket quite quickly. Given who Te'o is, lots of people would willingly play "telephone" with the story and pump hot air into what may have started as a seemingly small exaggeration of the truth. I doubt Notre Dame's SID would go on their own fact checking mission instead of running with the story to further pump up the Te'o for the Heisman story.
January 17th, 2013 at 1:41 PM ^
January 17th, 2013 at 1:43 PM ^
I used to mock History for being the Hitler Channel because all they did was show WWII documentaries. I had no idea how good I had it.
January 17th, 2013 at 2:03 PM ^
Some say I'm a provincial putz.
I'm not sure if it says more about me or society in general that what moved my needle (NTN) the most in this whole stupid fiasco was the realization of what TV used to be. I cry for my wife's soul daily as she loses brain cells to Real Housewives, Pregnant Teenager (or whtever the fuck it's called), and Honey motherfucking Boo Boo.
January 17th, 2013 at 2:18 PM ^
January 17th, 2013 at 2:57 PM ^
Honey motherfucking Boo Boo.
LOL ... and I repeat, LOL!
January 17th, 2013 at 4:26 PM ^
Boo Boos fat ass trailer trash mom can go to hell...I know that was OT but I really needed to say that
January 17th, 2013 at 1:48 PM ^
Same goes for the National Geographic channel... All shows are about either smuggling, drugs, or fetishes... Can't wait for when they put it all together and have a groundbreaknig show about drug addicted smugglers with fetishes
January 18th, 2013 at 7:36 AM ^
H2 FTW!
January 17th, 2013 at 1:42 PM ^
was:
"You know who's really breathing out a huge sigh of relief this morning, don't you?
The Heisman Committee."
If Teo had won the Heisman Trophy, aww man....
January 17th, 2013 at 1:46 PM ^
By its very nature, and mostly because it is a human activity, even good, responsible journalism is subjective. You have the truth, and then you have somebody reporting on usually several people's view of that truth, all different, and trying to consolidate it into one narrative. From there, it is reported, disseminated, and seemingly becomes The Truth, a thing that is theretofore much harder to rein back in. When you invite the lords of profit into this activity, things can get very messy indeed. Bottom line: You're mostly better off just minding your own business.
January 17th, 2013 at 1:49 PM ^
Great piece of work. Most interesting thing to me is how no one stepped back and said "Really?" Hindsight, to be sure, but still pretty surprising.
My sense is that Teo got behind this thing, and let it spiral. Any evidence that he or his crowd were complicit in using this to foster his Heisman hopes would be devastating to him and ND.
January 17th, 2013 at 2:17 PM ^
January 17th, 2013 at 2:22 PM ^
I like the write-up, though I've read other places that there might be a little Transformers action going on here - more than meets the eye. I'm happy that Brian did not go into another possibile reason why a star athlete at a religiously-conservative school, with a different, equally-conservative religious background, would create a fake girlfriend for public usage, since I personally think that rationale is silly and needlessly dramatic compared to other options. The issues that revelation opens up, ones that I'm not sure a large swath of sports culture is willing to talk about, need to (hopefully) be addressed at some time in the future.
January 17th, 2013 at 2:31 PM ^
"What percentage of massively credulous undergraduate population of Notre Dame do you think has an internet girlfriend? All of them.
"All of them...who aren't four-year starters for the football team on full schollie.
Other than that, nice work.
January 17th, 2013 at 2:37 PM ^
The LennayKay Twitter account's official statement (just tweeted):
My statement: This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but I have been told by Alabama's offense that Manti Te'o is not real.
January 17th, 2013 at 2:46 PM ^
Negative number times a negative number equals a positive?
January 17th, 2013 at 2:53 PM ^
According to some SBN research, the account is a fake.
January 17th, 2013 at 5:13 PM ^
We're getting into some weird territory here, debating whether or not an account registered to a fictitious person is "real" or a "fake".
January 17th, 2013 at 7:05 PM ^
January 17th, 2013 at 3:00 PM ^
Angel and Wallace Anglerson, III split up over Christmas break, as her strict regal upbringing prohibits her from maintaining simultaneous intimacies with multiple prospective consorts. (She told me he was a totally unsuitable match for her in any case, as (unlike me) he is almost entirely ignorant in Caprican Royal Court protocol).
January 17th, 2013 at 3:10 PM ^
I have met Brian's wife as well. I poked her and she was aware of the poking. She is real.
January 17th, 2013 at 4:12 PM ^
You dog.
January 17th, 2013 at 5:11 PM ^
But are YOU real?
Maybe you're both imaginary and I'm crazy - ha!
January 17th, 2013 at 3:23 PM ^
January 17th, 2013 at 6:27 PM ^
January 17th, 2013 at 6:34 PM ^
January 17th, 2013 at 7:02 PM ^
January 17th, 2013 at 9:35 PM ^
This is incredibly dumb. What person in his right mind would ask Te'o to produce proof of his dead girlfriend? Why would anyone be suspicious at the time that he wasn't telling the truth?
January 18th, 2013 at 12:22 AM ^
Because credibility is incredibly important in journalism? Because one wrong fact and your entire article is easily dismissed? Newspapers have departments of fact checkers who make sure that sources are real, events actually happened, and dates are correct. That all of them missed this while one of the blogs they made fun of for being full of unverified voracity broke the story is huge.
January 18th, 2013 at 9:14 AM ^
But I kind of agree with AC1's post also. It is somwhat rude to ask someone to produce proof of their dead loved one. There's no reason, however, that the journalist couldn't have done some research on their own by checking public records for obituaries. Who was the person who originally reported it? He/she should also be under some serious scrutiny right now, not just the kid.
January 18th, 2013 at 3:33 AM ^
January 18th, 2013 at 10:47 AM ^
Doesn't MGoBlog cater to the internet friends crowd? Just sayin'
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