American are so big on their superstar, we believe that they represent the perfection that most people cannot obtain. We forget that they are human and can easily make the mistakes that ordinary people make. Just because a person meets someone famous doesn’t mean that are willing to have sex with that person. When people hear that their favorite athlete, someone they look up too, is involve in a case where it might be a possibility that they did something wrong wrong people automatically put on defense mode. They try to come up with every reason not to believe that their hero did not break the law so they target the other person which in the case was the assaulted women. I think that people should take a step back and look at the situation from outside. They should gather the facts that they have and try and be rational about what happened and act mature enough to have a open mind for the situation.

I hate gossip blogs and for those who called the woman a lying golddigger are just trying to blend in with the rest of the crowd. Comments against the victim such as “Oh she wanted it, or he would never do that” all fall into the assumptions people make when an athlete or someone else famous are accused of rape. Everyone assumes that because he is famous that this woman is lying about being raped. It sucks because I do not know if she was, I was not there but either was anybody else except for the two of them. It seems to me that every time someone is famous is accused of rape or something of that manner, they are always innocent. But when it comes down to an every day person raping a woman that person should go to jail forever or that act was so wrong. It is such a hypocritical topic and brings about a lot of controversy on the issue.

In one of the blogs someone wrote, “This is a bunch of Crap! This was a casual enounter at best between a man an a woman that lead to more. He did nothing wrong but be a popular athlete and she is a gold digger! How lame is that, i was “raped” but i wont report it to police because im afraid the casino will fire me, HAVE A SPINE AND STAND UP FOR YOURSELF IF ITS TRUE” First off, the people who made comments about the video were obviously highly uneducated. Half of the postings do not make any sense and I do not think they even know what they are talking about. They were not in the hotel room at the time so therefore should keep their negative comments to themselves.

As for the sports reporter Erin Andrews and the peeping-tom videographer who got footage of her in what she believed was the privacy of her hotel room walking around naked claiming she did this to get ahead as a sportscaster, unreal. Not a feminist at all, but I feel as though women are targeted more for their actions.

This journal entry is written in regard to the post Sam made about the woman filing a suit against Ben Roethelisburger. Initially when I heard about it (the whole rape story) I was one of the people that that author talks about in her article. Whatever, money grubbing woman trying to take advantage of a famous and well-thought-of football player. I never thought of it in the way that Sam described in his post. In fact I rarely even thought of it at all, mainly because I happen to watch ESPN a lot and ESPN decided that Brett Favre’s current job status was way more important and completely stopped reporting on the situation. I never even found out what happened with this case before reading Sam’s post and the subsequent links that he included in the article.

I didn’t like that article very much, the one that was included in the blog post. I felt that it was very subjective and that it came down rather harshly on pro athletes. It seemed to me like the author was attempting to say that women never attempt to take advantage of professional sports athletes’ high salaries and the various other perks of being famous. For example, the Kobe Bryant fiasco of a few years ago was a case in which the woman (who had had sex with other people than just Kobe that night) was attempting to take advantage of her situation. I’m not saying that this is always the case, of course, but there are occurrences like this on both ends of the spectrum.

I don’t really see how anyone can tell, or make any judgment whatsoever about this case though (or most cases like this for that matter). It reminds me to Michael Jackson’s troubles. The media has way to much power in situations like this, whatever they say seems to translate directly into the majority of the public opinion. I personally don’t believe that Michael touched those kids, but who can really ever know what happened. The problem with situations like these is that they’re extremely private, I never want people watching me having sex and most people are the same way. Sex is a private act for the vast majority of people, and the only ones who know what really happened (and sometimes this doesn’t even apply) are the two people who are actually having sex with one another. None of us will ever really know the truth of what happened as long as both the woman and Big Ben are disagreeing on what actually happened.

Do I think that sports athletes are more glorified, sexually, than they should be? They probably are. But circumstances like these are so difficult to judge effectively when there’s no way of proving what happened. I’m not going to pass judgment either way, because I have that luxury. However, I think that the people passing judgment on YouTube, especially the ones who’s comments Sam posted in the blog, are out of line. Some of the things they said about this poor woman, whether she was raped or had consensual sex, are despicable. There aren’t many things that piss me off more than people hiding behind the cloak of Internet anonymity, and using their advantage to say terrible, disgusting things that they would normally never say to someone’s face.

Of course, I’m a white person. I’ve never really been hated on by anybody because of my race, other than some playful ribbing by some black friends. I have no idea what it’s like to be discriminated against, since I’ve lived in a majority white environment for almost my entire life (I really can’t think of a single time where I was actually in the vast minority for more than a few hours, which I find to be kind of alarming). So my opinion isn’t of the highest value with regard to this situation. But I think that the only way to destroy the divisions between us is to increase the amount of exposure we all (different races) get to one another, and to be okay with said exposure. Before I met any black people I never really had any opinion about them. After I met them I was, honestly, kind of afraid of them (that’s something I’ve never really put into words before). Then throughout high school I started making black friends, and having them over to my house, and learning that the skin color difference really didn’t make any difference. Then I learned that the statement at the end of my last sentence was totally wrong. It might not seem like there’s any difference from my point of view, but since I started taking SOC 119 my perspective on race has totally changed. I never really understood just how different the worldview is for black and brown people compared to white people and it makes me a little sad and a little angry/unsettled that this entire race of people starts out so far behind mine.

The last paragraph was really off-topic with regard to the post but I feel like I had to qualify where exactly my position on race relations is at the moment. I can understand this man’s sentiment that he doesn’t think that these people should bring a child into the world. But really, that’s not his decision to make and he (like me) has no idea what it’s really like to be a mixed child. Ironically, before I took SOC 119 I would have called this man a racist, but now I can understand why he doesn’t want these people to get married. I still disagree with his decision, I don’t think it’s okay. But like Sam said in the class on ethnocentrism, I don’t agree with it, but I understand it.