Dr. V's magical putter

She didn't seek out coverage, so no stories should be written about her fraudulent credentials, scientific claims and product? Who cares if she was worried about potential damage to her career? It deserved to be damaged, because it was built on lies.

She set ground rules because she knew the reporter would find out the rampant lies she was using to sell her product or that she was transgendered (hard to tell which one was of more concern).

And she was "gracious enough" to lie about her product. It's not like she was doing him a favor by giving him information that wasn't true.

If your argument was that the story wasn't worth telling, I disagree. And part of that story is that she used her name (Vanderbilt) to sell her product. Then, she bragged about being a Vanderbilt. To talk about that, you have to include that she changed her name, which would include that her previous name was a man's name.

I do agree with you that Hannan should be responding to questions from critics. There were plenty of missteps in that article and he should be accountable for them.

 

I really don't disagree with any of this except the bolded sentence, which is where my main objection to the story comes from:

Hannan treated her identity as a transgender woman as one of those lies.

Which, of course, is something that happens to transgender people just about every day. It's despicable to treat people that way, and there was no need for Hannan to add that element in order to tell the story he wanted to tell. He could have told the story he wanted to tell, exposing her fraudulent credentials as a scientist and as a faux-Vanderbilt, and still treated her transgender identity as something that was normal and human, no different than if she were black or Jewish or born in the Pacific Northwest.

Instead, he treated it like it was just another one of her deceptions. That's insulting. There's a long history of similar behavior against all LGBT people, used to foster abuse and discrimination, and Grantland/ESPN really should know better.

 

So you actually do agree with the line in bold, just not how he executing it.

I agree that he handled it poorly in writing by treating it as another deception, but the fact that the information of her transition ran in the article should not be out of bounds.

 

Whatever PR problems Richard Sherman has for his outburst yesterday should now be blamed on Erin Andrews and Fox Sports.

 

Pretty awful false equivalence.

 

Why? People are blaming the reporter for reporting the truth.

 

You're dense.

 

Please point out the lies.

 

I know you don't care about the people involved. Why address your denseness?

 

Let's address your denseness. What did the reporter do wrong? He dug for the truth. He found the truth. He reported the truth. Apparently you would rather read unchallenged lies?

 

Yes, that's correct. The fact that she was transgender is certainly fair game to write about — but I object to how he wrote about it. (And the fact that he outed her to the investor, which is a shitty move as a human being, but not as a writer.)

 

You're equating an NFL football player that took some flack on Twitter about a TV interview to a transgendered person that may (or may not) have committed suicide due to the actions of a reporter.

I'd say the stakes are a bit different.