Mark Whicker, a sport columnist at The Orange County Register, had a terrible idea for an article: use the imprisonment, systematic rape, and forced pregnancy Jaycee Dugard was subjected to by Phillip Garrido as an excuse to talk about moments from the last 18 years of sports that Whicker wanted to rant about. Then, Whicker actually wrote this article. Someone actually approved it. And the Orange County Register actually published it. In case you needed evidence of the institutionalization of rape culture.
It doesn’t sound as if Jaycee Dugard got to see a sports page.
Box scores were not available to her from June 10, 1991 until Aug. 31 of this year.
She never saw a highlight. Never got to the ballpark for Beach Towel Night. Probably hasn’t high-fived in a while.
She was not allowed to spike a volleyball. Or pitch a softball. Or smack a forehand down the line. Or run in a 5-footer for double bogey.
Now, that’s deprivation.
Can you imagine? Dugard was 11 when she was kidnapped and stashed in Phillip Garrido’s backyard. She was 29 when she escaped. Penitentiary inmates at least get an hour of TV a day. Dugard was cut off from everything but the elements.
How long before she fully digests the world she re-enters? How difficult to adjust to such cataclysmic change?
More than that, who’s going to explain the fact that there’s a President Obama?
I’m sorry, how does any of this, including Obama’s presidency, matter in comparison to the hell Dugard was put through by Garrido? In what world is missing events in sports history the relevant “deprivation” Dugard experienced? How can a person write a sentence like this: “I know you’ve had trouble digesting all this so far, but they also built a basketball arena at USC. Honest to God.” You think the building of a basketball arena will be hard for this woman to digest? Seriously Whicker, how clueless are you?
Unsurprisingly, Whicker and The Orange County Register got a lot of negative, outraged feedback on the article. So Whicker issued an “apology.”
It was not my intention to do so. But it’s obvious that I miscalculated the effect the column on Jaycee Dugard, and the events that she might have missed during her captivity, had on those who read, buy and advertise in our newspaper. …
I’ll try to earn back the trust of those customers in my future endeavors.
Whicker is sorry he lost the paper paying customers and probably advertisers? That’s what he apologizes for? There’s no overstating how messed up Whicker’s priorities are. You know we live in an overwhelmingly oppressive patriarchal and misogynist world when Garrido can imprison Dugard for eighteen years and enough people can fail to understand the weight of the sexual and reproductive violence she experienced that both the original article and subsequent “apology” could be published.
Mark Whicker can be contacted at mwhicker@ocregister.com. Contact information for plenty more people at The Orange County Register responsible for the publication of these articles can be found at this page.
h/t to Vanessa’s friend Mary Alice.
Previously: Friday Feminist Fuck You: Philip Garrido
18 Comments
I hate to say this in these bad economic times, but people should straight up lose their jobs over this.
Bluebears – Screw the state of the economy. Whicker should lose his job no matter what the circumstances, as should the editors who let it pass.
And that’s what’s missing here – if this had been handled properly, Whicker and the OCR wouldn’t be suffering any public outrage over this at all. Because a responsible editor would have read this column and said, “No fucking way am I running this.” That’s what’s so pathetic and wrong about Whicker’s “apology.” The editors who allowed this column to run are completely absent. They offer no explanation for their judgment, and certainly, no apology. Whicker fucked up by writing something so repugnant, but they fucked up worse by letting it pass. And now that people are expressing outrage, they hide in the shadows while letting Whicker twist in the wind. Cowards and fools, all.
Whicker demonstrates his continued cluelessness, and an assistant sports editor attempts to cover for those responsible:
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=169823
I love how he says “I never made light about the fact that this woman was abducted…” and “I tried to incorporate some humor…” in the same statement. Also, he seems to think that the fact that you can’t quote him anywhere in his article saying “I’m mocking Jaycee Dugard” means that he didn’t do it. Fucking amazing.
I’m completely stunned. This is just bizarre. What person in their right mind would follow Jaycee Dugard’s story and think, “That poor woman missed so many great games!”? How does that even work? Did he have a concussion or something???
Thinking it is one thing, publishing it is a whole new level of jackassery. I just literally cannot wrap my mind around how this guy went from thinking this to publishing it. And then other people let him publish it! What?!
This is probably a sign that Orange County just shouldn’t exist anymore.
I need to go lay down…
If it was a concussion, it was a recurring one; the link that DanielJ posted says this isn’t the first time he’s done it. So not only is he an insensitive jerkoff, but he’s an unoriginal insensitive jerkoff.
OK, so it’s obscene to even suggest making light of 9/11 or the Holocaust, but it seemed fine to make light of 18 years of rape? WTF?
Oh totally. Thats why I wasn’t singling out the author. Multiple people saw that shit and approved it. They should all be gone.
what the fuck is this guy? because he simply cannot be human. And if he is human than I have just lost all hope for humanity. Really I would like to meet the person who thought it was a good idea to take an 18 year long captive who has finally been released from her make-shift prison and personal hell and turn it into a news story about sports. This is why sports should not be allowed in our culture. It shouldn’t be this thing that America idolizes over nor should it be something we wish our children will become. And this is why. An entire culture that is so overly misogynistic as to think that this is an appropriate way to talk about RAPE SURVIVORS for goodness sake like this have no place in our lives. Fucking get rid of all of it. NOW
I agree that the way in which Americans think about sports (especially professional sports) is very warped. But I don’t think we should do away with them because of this. Encouraging kids to aspire to be professional athletes is probably not healthy but there are a lot of positive elements to being involved in sports as a child.
I learned to assert myself thanks to my involvement in sports from a young age. I also payed my way through college thanks to sports. I admire athletes and I’m not a psychopath. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater…
Of course he can’t be human, he’s a sports writer. I’m only exaggerating a tiny bit.
In the thousands of things Jaycee Dugard missed in her 18 years of captivity, I doubt a football stadium or baseball game makes the top thousand. I doubt she ‘suffered’ from missing them either. She had enough to endure with the rapes and pregnancies and imprisonment- I doubt she even once thought “Oh, too bad I’m missing the sports news!”
This guy, his editors and anyone that approved this should be fired.
Joan
As if trivializing Jaycee Dugard’s absolutely horrific experience wasn’t enough, he also manages to throw in a little subtle racism AND a Magic Johnson AIDS joke! Also, he bemoans the fact that she never got to play sports, but EVERYTHING on his little list is about men’s sports!
WAY TO GO, ASSHOLE.
I think the fact that he is apparently just completely oblivious to the fact that she was raped is very telling. It’s like he just perceives this story as “well, she was abducted and kept from her family, but she’s home now and is fine,” and doesn’t even seem aware that she was raped repeatedly and forced to bear the children of her rapist.
Not only are all the events men’s sports, but all the sports he talks about her “missing out” on being able to participate in are “women-approved sports” – tennis, softball, volleyball, golf. Like it was just an extra little irritation on top of a whole pile of horrendous indecency, but why NOT mention how women are finally playing on division-1 college football teams? Or say she could have played regular baseball or basketball herself? Or even talk a little about any of those “women’s” sports?? Venus and Serena Williams, for srs? There is just nothing that isn’t inoffensive in this whole “article.”
Ill-advised humor made in bad taste? Absolutely.
Deserving of the vitriol displayed here? No.
“I’m sorry, how does any of this, including Obama’s presidency, matter in comparison to the hell Dugard was put through by Garrido?”
None of it has anything to do with Dugard’s hell. That’s the point of the “joke.”
Of course, the joke loses all of it’s supposed meaning when remembering Dugard was 11 years old at the time of her kidnapping, with little pop cultural knowledge, too little to fundamentally jar her when examining today’s pop culture.
Oh completely. He never says that she was raped. He says “kidnapped” and “abducted” but completely ignores rape. Then he says he thought it was a good thing that she was found alive as though that suddenly made it the appropriate time to remind her of all the sports opportunities she missed. It’s kinda the most mind-boggling thing I’ve ever seen.
Some people wrote to him and got infuriating responses.
http://community.livejournal.com/sf_drama/2473624.html?thread=383494296#t383494296
http://community.livejournal.com/sf_drama/2473624.html?thread=383712408#t383712408
(Some NSFW icons)