No baseball
Jameis Winston’s deal with Bucs reportedly includes a clause that prohibits him from playing pro baseball.
“Zeitgeist” means the prevailing cultural mood of an era. I hate using such $3 words as much as I hate defending Jameis Winston, but “Morning Joe” leaves me no choice.
MSNBC’s morning show convicted Winston of rape on Monday. The opinion was based on “The Hunting Ground,” a movie that hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski apparently saw during the weekend.
“It’s impossible to watch her, it’s impossible to watch her parents, it’s impossible to look at the events without looking at Winston and looking at the people in Tallahassee who let this young girl down. Who was shoved into the bathroom and her face shoved into the floor and raped and nobody, nobody supported her in Tallahassee because they had a national championship to win,” Scarborough said.
It’s also apparently impossible for opinion-makers to escape their intellectual bubble and conceive that a man accused of rape might be innocent or that sports organizations might not automatically be complicit.
That’s the zeitgeist of our time and Winston has become the poster thug.
Joe and Mika showed they are no different than millions of others who’ve spent months debating Winston’s culpability. They inevitably came down on the side that fits their preexisting worldview.
You know, FSU fans think Winston was railroaded. Feminists think he’s a menace to society. Selfrighteous TV hosts are dismayed the NFL would touch such a scoundrel.
I say that as someone who enjoys his cup of “Morning Joe,” the only MSNBC show that allows diversity of thought. My non-intellectual mindset presumed the hosts were smart enough to see “The Hunting Ground” for what it is.
It’s a documentary on campus rape, with the Winston saga comprising 15 minutes. It has a distinct point of view and should not be considered evidence worthy of presentation at trial.
The movie was the first time Winston’s accuser, Erica Kinsman, publicly told her side of the story. Her story deserves to be heard, but that’s all it is — her side of the story.
The movie never mentions the conflicting testimony or the forensic and toxicology evidence that didn’t support Kinsman’s claims. It highlights the initially botched police investigation. It does not mention that state attorney Willie Meggs, after his investigation, said Kinsman was “not a witness that we believed we could put on the stand and vouch for.”
Nor does it mention the FSU code of conduct hearing, during which Major Harding, a retired Florida Supreme Court Justice, heard from Winston and Kinsman, various other witnesses and reviewed more 1,000 pages of testimony and evidence. Harding found Winston did not violate the code of conduct.
None of which proves Winston did not commit rape on Dec. 12, 2012. But it should raise serious questions, especially from somebody who considers themselves a responsible quasi-journalist.
“After all these charges,” Scarborough said, “not allegations, but charges.”
Actually, Winston was never charged with anything.
“The No. 1 draft pick, after all that talk about the NFL this last fall, they were going to look at character and character was going to count finally and not just athletic prowess,” Scarborough said. “Well then, the NFL doesn’t care about rape charges or character.”
So what was the NFL supposed to do with Winston? Not draft a top quarterback prospect who’d been cleared by two investigations?
It’s the same mindset that convicted Duke lacrosse players and Virginia frat boys. Scarborough didn’t even use the “alleged” qualifier when rendering his verdict:
Kinsman was shoved to the floor and raped. Winston did it.
Scarborough knows this because he saw it in a movie.
He really needs to put a bit less zeitgeist in his Morning Joe.