RIP Mike Penner

That's what turned me sour at the end.

 

This is the problem, though, the issue with the whole situation, at least as we (don't) know it. If it helped so much for Mike to become Christine, well, then, what happened?

This is the question that must, and has not been, answered or attempted to be resolved or explained in any way, by anyone.

And Reilly didn't do his real due diligence, either. He doesn't appear to have called Penner's family, or anyone else who might have been in the know, and asked that very question, and it has left a crucial gap in everyone's knowledge or understanding.

The stuff about his possible issues with his gender transition(s) is, at this point, mere speculation. Sure, it probably had to have been part of the problem, but we don't actually know that.

I'm sure Reilly meant exactly what he wrote. We did start hearing less from Christine in mid-2008, because that's when her Woman In Progress blog was stopped (and pulled), apparently at her/Mike's request.

That's how Reilly knew that. Everyone knew that.

And, here's what I'm guessing happened since then: Reilly, unfortunately, and like many of us now regretting this fact, probably made no recent attempts to contact Penner.

He simply knows that Penner wasn't returning emails/texts on the basis of what else was written in the days after Mike's death. If you'll recall, Scott French wrote that he had made an attempt to contact Mike, and that Mike hadn't gotten back to him, and that Scott had then just let it go, thinking that Penner would get in touch when he could and/or when he was ready to do so.

My guess is that Reilly read that column, and, as columnists often do, applied/attached the facts of the situation to their own offerings, without making his own efforts to report or find things out for himself.

That's it. Nothing new, no real effort to further the story, and no real reason to write it, other than to write something, long after the fact.

 

That was a good column. Might have been great if he didn't have to cram it in the short attention span newshole.

 

I can't believe Reilly would phone it in at this stage of his career.

 

I don't think it's fair to say Reilly phoned it in. It was a powerful column that gave as much of a glimpse of Mike/Christine's mindset as Reilly appeared to be able to get.

I suppose he could have asked the family for more details but, for one thing that could have been a little too delicate a situation to push, and for another, for all we know he did that, but didn't get much information other than Mike became tuned everyone out for a while.

The point of a column isn't always to break new ground. It's to provide your perspective on a topic that means something to you. No one else can offer that. I think he did that extremely well.

 

Agreed. This one was personal for Reilly, and I think he handled it with great touch. I wish I could criticize him for it, because it's a gas of a sport. But this time Rick came through.

 

Stitch used blue font, so I think he was speaking well of Rick and the article.

 

The Mike Penner story is a true tragedy.
I hope somebody does a 2 hour documentary on Mike/Christine. It would be interesting.
RIP Mike.

 

Conversely, the blue font means he WASN'T surprised Reilly phoned it in.

 

I personally liked the column ... a lot.

 

I guess part of my problem with it, besides the issues stated earlier, can be traced to a paragraph that Reilly, himself, wrote: about how Mike/Christine instantly became the most famous transgender person in the world.

Based on what happened after that, especially the end result, it seems obvious that Mike did not want to be that, and had some serious problems with it.

By writing/publishing something about it so widely, especially so long after his death (which I know probably couldn't be helped, thanks to the print cycle of a magazine), Reilly -- how ever unintentionally -- feels to me as if he's being a little exploitive of what, for most people is a curiosity, an unknowable situation.

In doing so, he has violated an obviously demonstrated, and desperate, need/desire for privacy on the part of Mike, and now, his family, about something that's intensely sensitive and, almost by definition, not widely known or understood.

The problem is not with the quality or what I'm sure is the intended spirit of the column. It is with the more basic fact that it was done at all in this particular case.

 

I have kind of had the feeling that we'll one day see a long-form magazine piece on Mike end up in a "Best American Sportswriting." Not sure if any magazine writer will get the info or access they need if Reilly didn't get it himself, but it's otherwise there for the taking.