MWmetalhead wrote: ↑Fri Jun 18, 2021 7:29 am
BTW, that is an excellent report from WUOM you posted, Matt.
The piece of shit "news" organizations in Detroit - especially TV - are completely incapable (and probably unwilling) to do such in-depth reporting.
I couldn't agree more, MW. Myth Albom's column yesterday in the freep was a joke, as is most Detroit reporting I see from across the country.
This was written by David Briggs in the Toledo Blade. The article was behind a paywall that I somehow got thru so I am copying/pasting.
Briggs: The demythology of Bo Schembechler and the real story at Michigan
In light of new accusations and in the interest of pulling readers and viewers into a complex story, the recent coverage of the sex abuse case at the University of Michigan has been distilled almost entirely into a debate on the legacy of Bo Schembechler.
As in: How should Michigan confront the allegations that its iconic late football coach blindly enabled former team doctor Robert Anderson and his decades-long reign of terror?
Should it take down the statue of Schembechler outside the football complex?
Rename Schembechler Hall?
Disassociate from the most celebrated figure in its modern history entirely?
These are worthy questions, to be sure, and if Schembechler indeed gave terrifying new meaning to the old “Bo Knows” advertising campaign — as the investigative report commissioned by Michigan states is the case — the answers are clear. The man who preached the team, the team, the team, would have been a wolverine in sheep’s clothing, a fraud of the highest order who put the brand above the welfare of his athletes.
I don’t dismiss any of this.
And if these reconsiderations are important to the victims — more of whom came forward Wednesday in a news conference outside Michigan Stadium — they should be important to us.
Yet, in a way, the one-track media coverage feels dismissive just the same.
Because the bigger, most important story is not one of the mythology and symbolism surrounding a man no longer with us.
In Michigan and beyond, it’s the courage of those who are, the survivors who continue to cast a klieg light on the top-to-bottom failings of the schools, churches, and institutions of power that have so devastatingly betrayed so many, and hold them to account.
In the Big Ten alone the past decade, we’ve seen it at Penn State, Michigan State, Ohio State, and now Michigan.
The latter two scandals may have received only a fraction of the national attention, because the victims were mostly college-aged male athletes.
But that makes the pain no less real, the voices no less important in recalibrating a culture that still has a long way to go.
How long?
Consider what these men are up against. The past week has offered a reminder, affirming the forces that conspire to silence victims of sexual abuse.
It began last Thursday, when Schembechler’s stepson, Matt, and two former Michigan football players — three of more than 850 victims who have accused the late Anderson of sexual assault — held a press conference to tearfully detail not just the abuse but the coach’s cold, willful ignorance.
Matt Schembechler flashed back to 1969, when as a 10-year-old in need of clearance to play tackle football, he said his father sent him to the Wolverines’ team doctor. There, he remembered, Anderson fondled his genitals and digitally penetrated him, leaving him unsettled and humiliated.
“When Bo got home, I told him what happened,” Matt said. “It did not go well. Bo’s temper was legendary, and he lost it. He screamed, ‘I don’t want to hear this. I’m not hearing this.’ I tried to tell him repeatedly, but my effort earned me a punch in the chest.”
The two former Michigan players, offensive tackle Daniel Kwiatkowski (1977-79) and running back Gilvanni Johnson (1982-86), recounted telling Schembechler about repeated similar experiences.
“Bo looked at me and said, ‘Toughen up,’” Kwiatkowski said.
Since the news conference, the three men have heard it all, as have other victims, including Jon Vaughn, the former Michigan star running back who told reporters Wednesday that Anderson “regularly raped” him and asked him to provide sperm samples. The story has predictably devolved into a referendum on the credibility and motives of the accusers.
Never mind the report paid for by Michigan said Schembechler was clearly told by at least four people Anderson molested them during routine exams, and yet — like other university leaders complicit in the cover-up — took no action.
They’ve heard, “Why now?” and that they should have stood up to Anderson themselves — as if the power dynamics at play were that simple — and that it was a different time.
They’ve heard they’re in it for the money (which supposes that more than 800 people must be lying so they can sue their alma mater, including billionaire Michigan regent Ron Weiser.)
They’ve heard Michigan radio voice Jim Brandsatter say, “I don’t want to attack the victims, but ...” and many more willing to finish the sentence.
They’ve heard full-throated defenses of Schembechler, including by Jim Harbaugh, whose comments last month further splintered the Michigan football family.
Harbaugh could have expressed his love and reverence for Schembechler — a sentiment shared by many hundreds of former players — and his concern about the allegations. Instead, he made no mention of the victims and said, “[Bo] never procrastinated anything. I mean, he took care of it before the sun went down. That’s the Bo Schembechler that I know. Nothing was ever swept under the rug or ignored. He addressed everything in a timely fashion.”
And we wonder why more victims don’t come forward.
Yet, the survivors at Michigan still did, same as they did at Penn State, Michigan State, and Ohio State, to name just a few of the institutions that when confronted with horror looked only to protect the facade.
The brand. The brand. The brand.
“We will no longer be anonymous, we will no longer be faceless, we will no longer be silent,” Vaughn told reporters. “We will fight for those who feel they don’t have a voice.”
The big story of the moment may be the legacy of Schembechler and his larger-than-life statue.
But it’s far from the biggest one.