My Thoughts On Essay Anne Vanderbilt

I am hesitant to write about Essay Anne Vanderbilt but I have been bothered by some of the responses I have seen, even from writers that I have a great deal of respect for. Be forewarned that this post is going to cover some uncomfortable topics. I would like to ask forgiveness in advance if I say something or phrase something inappropriately.

Friday evening, I was scrolling down my timeline on Twitter and started noticing tweets that did not make much sense to me. After following a few links, I finally figured things out. ESPN's Grantland had published an article a couple of days earlier titled Dr V's Magic Putter. I have no recollection of seeing this article when it was first published but that doesn't mean anything. I am not a golfer, pretty much have zero interest in golf equipment of any sort and would have passed by this article. However, when I started seeing the tweets, many of them with the hashtag #JusticeForDrV I read the article.

The best I can say is that I was horrified.

The article starts as a story about how the author had been watching a show and seen about a supposed wonderful new putter that was developed on 'scientific principles' that were flipping a lot of golfing conventional wisdom on it head. Then about halfway through, the article morphs from a story about a putter and how it was developed into an investigation of a "con" that includes the outing of a woman (the inventor) as transgender. The author, while investigating the credentials, ultimately outs the inventor to one of her investors! At this point, it was difficult to control my outrage. Then I read how Essay Anne Vanderbilt committed suicide after back-and-forth emails with Hannan after he had already outed her to an investor in her company.

It was tweets from sportswriter Dave Zirin that first got my attention and it was through other of his tweets that I read this article from Cyd Ziegler of Outsports.com titled How ESPN and Grantland desperately failed the trans community. Think Progress had this piece titled 10 Questions Bill Simmons And ESPN Should Answer About ‘Dr. V’s Magical Putter’ by Alyssa Rosenberg.

By Sunday night, ESPN issued a statement to Sports Illustrated's Richard Deitsch:

ESPN has offered a statement on Grantland's Dr. V story:

"We understand and appreciate the wide range of thoughtful reaction this story has generated and to the family and friends of Essay Anne Vanderbilt, we express our deepest condolences. We will use the constructive feedback to continue our ongoing dialogue on these important and sensitive topics. Ours is a company that values the LGBT community internally and in our storytelling, and we will all learn from this."

Monday afternoon, Grantland posted a piece from Christina Karhl, herself a transgender employee of Grantland:

We’re here because Essay Anne Vanderbilt is dead.

And she’s dead because — however loath she was to admit it — she was a member of a community for whom tragedy and loss are as regular as the sunrise, a minority for whom suicide attempts outpace the national average almost 26 times over, perhaps as high as 41 percent of all trans people. And because one of her responses to the fear of being outed as a transsexual woman to some of the people in her life — when it wasn’t even clear the story was ever going to run — was to immediately start talking and thinking about attempting suicide. Again.

Deadspin had this post last night from Tim Marchman titled How Grantland Screwed Up The Story Of Essay Anne Vanderbilt, Inventor:

The second is that Hannan crossed an ethical and moral line when he outed Vanderbilt to an investor in Yar Golf. There was no compelling reason to do so; it took the choice of whether or not to disclose her status away from Vanderbilt—a choice that is, barring fairly extreme exigencies, solely to be made by the person it most affects. As Christina Kahrl put it in her review of the piece that ran on Grantland, "revealing her gender identity was ultimately as dangerous as it was thoughtless."

My bold

Last night, Bill Simmons, the editor of Grantland posted a "Letter from the Editor." The thing that bothers me most is here:

To be clear, Caleb only interacted with her a handful of times. He never, at any time, threatened to out her on Grantland.

...snip...

Caleb’s biggest mistake? Outing Dr. V to one of her investors while she was still alive. I don’t think he understood the moral consequences of that decision, and frankly, neither did anyone working for Grantland.

There it is. At this point, it really doesn't matter that Hannan never "threatened to out her on Grantland." He had already outed her to an investor. Why would or could she believe he was not intending to do the same thing to the world?

Alyssa Rosenberg/Think Progress had a follow-up last night titled The 4 Most Important Points In Bill Simmons’ Apology For Publishing A Piece Outing A Trans Woman. For me, the outing of Essay Anne Vanderbilt is far and away the most egregious mistake in this whole mess. Reading Simmons' note and others, I get a sense of "Hannan made a mistake, but..." on something that should have no "...but...". Hannan made a grievous mistake, period. Everything that falls off after the outing - from the back-and-forth emails, the writing and editing of the piece, the suicide of Essay Anna Vanderbilt, the concentration on Vanderbilt's being transgender, the publication of an article that most likely would not have been published without the suicide - all go back to that bright line being crossed where he outed her in the first place.

There is no apology, there are no explanations, there are no mitigating circumstances that can erase that hard fact.

Sometimes You Just Have to Respond to the Stoopid

Now, some folks may have noticed (ha!) that I have not been posting too much these last few months. Those who actually know me understand that I've had a very good reason for this. However, I have still continued to surf the news sites each day and keep up with various blogs as well. I figure Mr Pierce does such a fine job eviscerating the Zombie-eyed-granny-starver and so many other idiots, that there really isn't much I can say and definitely can't improve on. As well, Dean Baker continues to easily refute the gibberish of so many Beltway Village Idiots Pundits and Politicians, so there's not much need for my rants.

So, I laugh when I see where someone has butt shot himself while thinking of all the "butt calls" I have received from family and friends. And I get a little sad when I see legislators in my home state embarrassing themselves with their diatribes against teaching evolution. (Note: Gravity is still considered a theory as well, maybe some of these folks complaining about teaching evolution "cuz it's only a theory" should maybe be invited to test that gravitational theory from the top of the capital building - rhetorically speaking of course.)

But then, I wind up reading something that is so incredibly stupid and disingenuous, that I am moved to take a whack at it on my own. Today, I reached this point when I read this idiocy from Robert Samuelson at the Washington Post:

Judging by the political reaction, you’d think that Paul Ryan’s budget takes a meat ax to Medicare and threatens economic havoc for the elderly. Just the opposite is true: The Ryan budget spares older people from almost any change or sacrifice — and that’s the problem. We have (and, to be fair, this is mainly the doing of Democrats and their intellectual apologists) made those 65 and over into a politically protected class, of which nothing is expected and everything is given.

It is impossible to have an honest debate about the budget — and government’s size and role — unless this changes, because aiding the elderly is now the main thing the federal government does. If you remove that, fearing a backlash from the 50 million or so Social Security and Medicare recipients, you condemn yourself to bad choices: (a) you can’t deal with deficits, which may crowd out productive investment and risk a financial crisis; (b) you must dramatically squeeze the rest of government, including the social safety net, defense and research; or (c) you must raise taxes sharply, which may further slow the economy.

Now, I am admittedly not an economist (thank doG) but by my rough count those two paragraphs contain maybe two semi-factual statements and about ten misstatements, mis-directs, and outright lies.

My first response after reading Samuelson's gibberish was to rush over to Beat The Press and see if Dean Baker had already taken Samuelson to task. Alas, Dean has been otherwise occupied with taking Casey Mulligan of the NY Times Economix blog and the Washington Post to task for their various misstatements and mis-directs. I imagine he can only deal with just so much stoopid and disingenuousness in one day before reaching his fill.

So if I may quickly:
The Zombie-eyed-granny-starver's budget and Medicare 'Plan' does take a meat ax to Medicare and threatens economic havoc on the elderly (via Kaiser Health News).

Samuelson proclaims that the Ryan budget "...spares older people from almost any change or sacrifice..." (this seems to be an article of perceived Conventional Wisdom among the Villagers and TradMed if this and this are indicators. But the devil as always is in the details as this from Think Progress explains. I would like to add that the attempt at generational war by proclaiming loudly that "55 and above are exempt from the changes" presupposes that those of us older than 55 have no desire to see these programs available to our younger family and friends. Please note, not everyone has an "I've got mine, fuck you!" attitude, m'kay?)

I am going to close this without attacking the rest of Samuelson's gibberish and try to re-store my blood pressure to a more manageable level. But I would like to say that Samuelson continues to act as if the social safety net spending, Social Security, and Medicare have been stand alone problems these last ten years while ignoring the destruction of the US and world economies by the Banksters and fraudsters on Wall St.

[/Harrumph harrumph rant]

And because I can: