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A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY EDITION

“Hello Babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies - ‘God damn, you’ve got to be kind.’”
-Mr. Rosewater

You might as well quit working in journalism if for a brief second, before thinking about it rationally, you weren’t a bit jealous of Christian Franek and his Wynalda interview. He got a story that saw publicity and reaction from the largest outlets. For a hot second, everybody knew Franek and the FulhamUSA blog. But once I actually read the interview, I wondered, will his 15 minutes be filled with fame or infamy?

Did the interviewer have the right – ethically for now, possibly legally down the road – to record, write, and print certain words uttered by Eric Wynalda? According to Eric, no. According to the blog editor, yes. FulhamUSA is standing by the story’s legitimacy. Short of a jury trial we’ll likely never know for sure, and even then it’s largely a he-said-she-said, but the fact remains it’s not a matter of whether Wynalda said what he did or whether the interview was recorded, only that he was quoted at all for something that was not meant for public consumption, again, yes, according to Wynalda. For this alone, it seems FulhamUSA is at least naïve if not vindictively self-serving. So maybe there is worth to journalism school after all.

Should Wynalda have known better? Yes, and he admitted as much. But that doesn’t get the author or website off the hook. It’s not about political correctness, it’s about journalistic integrity. As I was preparing this column, the full-time soccer scribes over at Sideline Views scooped me, but there was no jealousy this time around. I was thrilled someone was taking up the cause. I couldn’t agree more with Andrea, Luis, or a reporter’s response.

In a news cycle that has seen Don Imus fired, Duke Lacrosse players vindicated, and the NFL throwing down a landmark ruling on personal conduct, where does this little soccer blemish end up? Although under very different circumstances, all of these incidents have something in common – moral and ethical judgement. Pacman Jones hasn’t been convicted of anything, yet he’s suspended for a year pending appeals. Being a bigot is not illegal, nor should it be under Free Speech laws, but that isn’t helping Imus. The Duke players apparently are innocent of anything illegal, but many believe something unseemly went down at that team party.

The court of public opinion is now in session. Calling Franek to the stand. The one proven fact in all of this seems to be that he misrepresented 90:00 magazine for which he was not assigned to write for. He’ll likely never have that chance now, but that may not matter to him. Whether Wynalda wants to go after him or the blog by other means is still yet to be determined, but it’s my guess nothing will happen, the incident slowly fading away. Wynalda no doubt learned a lesson, but FulhamUSA and Frenak seem to have only been emboldened by the experience. It’s like Dateline NBC’s “To Catch A Predator,” only instead of disgusting felons getting the set-up, it’s innocent, if but a tad loose-lipped, announcers getting the ax.

The San Diego Union-Trubune’s Mark Zeigler wrote what seems to be the most prolific statement in regards to the issue at hand. Wynalda and Frenak will escape with cultish street cred. For Wynalda: saying what countless soccer fans are thinking; for editor and writer: taking the chance by putting it out there and thus sticking it to mainstream media and their silly ethics and commitment to research and fact-checking.

I can’t argue the cult status, though I find it hard to believe attacking Rome is worth much, even the time it takes to do it. Even in casual off the record conversatiion, Wynalda exhibits his immaturity along with his passion. Everybody knows who Rome is and what he is about, just as we do with Don Imus. Hating on soccer isn’t even close to targeting minorities, but both are based in educational deficits and kowtowing to your fanbase (that or it’s just plain ignorance; I’m trying to give them some competitive credit). Inasmuch, if by publishing (and supporting the publishing of) Wynalda’s supposedly off the record comments, certain people in the soccer world are no better and deserve just as little respect as the bigot on the radio and the TV host who vindictively baits his guests for ratings (let’s never forget Jim Everett).

Is this American soccer? Is this cult representative of our culture? God I hope not, but as the blogosphere makes it rain – the Pacman is dead. Long live the Pacman – I’m not so sure at the moment. Anyway, are people avoiding soccer because Jim Rome says it sucks? Is anyone doing anything because Jim Rome said to? Jim Rome is Burning? So, let him burn.

For someone who writes a blog, in this moment, I feel completely disconnected from the word, not because of its definition, but because of the lowbrow world it is often associated with. Deservedly or not, off-color subjects, bad language, and more serious offenses discredit the good work that goes on from time to time when we’re not just preaching to the choir or arguing over whose subjectivity is more objective. I file most of this under the armchair quagmire, in that blogs mostly aggregate news and comment on it instead of reporting something new. This process begs for new and noteworthy ways to take a tangent and often leads to humor, something not so easy to come by.

Every now and again a blog gets a scoop, and increasingly professional journalists are joining the blogosphere, whether by their own desires or those of their editors and publishers, though they’re still likely to hold their best work for more note-worthy print outlets, which not only ensure the writing is factual and properly obtained, but usually make it better. In blogs, the checks and balances are much fewer or non-existant, which begs the question: do we hold traditional blogs up to journalistic standards, or do journalists come down a notch or two thousand? It’s a scary world out there, with no easy answers, but clearly this is not going to work.

It’s the wild west web, and little more than your word protects you amid the lawlessness. Ideally that should be enough. If we all stop and think before publishing or posting or whatever the hell it’s going to be called when robots and computers take over the world, the correct answers will make themselves apparent. It’s not rocket science. It’s not even high school biology. These truths should be self evident for even the most independent of voices.

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