Grantland.com (1 Viewer)

[dparker713]

Kahrl is an idiot. The educational background of Dr V is entirely relevant and can only be fully explained by reporting the sex change operation. Those were public lies and very much the purview of a reporter. Simmons should have stuck by the piece and his writer.

Huh? He easily could have written "there's no record of anyone with her name appearing. I asked her if her records would be under an alternate name and I received no response." Adding that Dr. V was transgender didn't add anything to the story's narrative. I think it was mainly added because it makes the story a lot more interesting, but it's not like it was necessary to explain the story.

It's a fair bit less likely that a mechanic/bar manager/bureaucrat has any sort of advanced degree in physics or spent any significant time working for the DoD on stealth technology.

 

[T Bell]

If you can't agree to Vanderbilt's conditions, then you shouldn't write the story.

Letting a subject control the scope of the story? Sounds great. Cause really, who wants to read anything more in depth than People magazine?

If you want to argue that it's perfectly OK to expose the private personal secrets of business people, that's fine. I wouldn't consider that to be responsible journalism, but I understand that it's an ethical grey area.However, it's absolutely unethical to agree to a person's conditions when you have no intention of honoring them. If Hannan wasn't willing to agree to Vanderbilt's request to "focus on the science and not the scientist", then he should have said so to Vanderbilt and then written the story without an interview.

The problem here is that the science and the scientist are very much commingled when you've got someone who has lied about their background as part of their qualifications and therefore sales pitch for this high tech putter.

Her gender orientation was not a lie. It was not deception. It was simply who she was. Hannan failed to grasp that. To him, Vanderbilt's gender orientation was on the same level as Vanderbilt's phony doctorate.I agree that the science and the scientist had become co-mingled, but there were more responsible methods for Hannan to investigate the story.

The change in identity (due to gender) was part of the deception - "Dr V" had incorporated that into her story.

You can quibble all you want but that part is indisputable.

Here's what Dr. V could have done - she could have gotten an agreement to disclosed the gender change off the record, and then told the story, and even told the story complete with the lies. In this day and age, however, it's completely naive to think that you're going to get famous and rub elbows with people who tout your strange story in order to make you some money, and yet be able to conceal selective parts of your history, especially when that history is a fraud which will only make people curious.

 

[Mr. Retukes]

The change in identity (due to gender) was part of the deception

This is an outdated viewpoint IMO.

 

[Daywalker]

I'm still waiting for an expert opinion on MOI. Crumby article.

 

[Daywalker]

Is the club popular today? Do Baddeley or any tour-pros have any comments on the club? What do experts say about MOI?

I can see why the editors passed on this article numerous times. A shady inventor of a not so popular club? Big whoop.

They ran it when it became too titillating to pass up.

"For us, this had become a story about a writer falling into, for lack of a better phrase, a reporting abyss."

 

[pollardsvision]

If you can't agree to Vanderbilt's conditions, then you shouldn't write the story.

Letting a subject control the scope of the story? Sounds great. Cause really, who wants to read anything more in depth than People magazine?

If you want to argue that it's perfectly OK to expose the private personal secrets of business people, that's fine. I wouldn't consider that to be responsible journalism, but I understand that it's an ethical grey area.However, it's absolutely unethical to agree to a person's conditions when you have no intention of honoring them. If Hannan wasn't willing to agree to Vanderbilt's request to "focus on the science and not the scientist", then he should have said so to Vanderbilt and then written the story without an interview.

The problem here is that the science and the scientist are very much commingled when you've got someone who has lied about their background as part of their qualifications and therefore sales pitch for this high tech putter.

Her gender orientation was not a lie. It was not deception. It was simply who she was. Hannan failed to grasp that. To him, Vanderbilt's gender orientation was on the same level as Vanderbilt's phony doctorate.I agree that the science and the scientist had become co-mingled, but there were more responsible methods for Hannan to investigate the story.

The change in identity (due to gender) was part of the deception - "Dr V" had incorporated that into her story.

You can quibble all you want but that part is indisputable.

Here's what Dr. V could have done - she could have gotten an agreement to disclosed the gender change off the record, and then told the story, and even told the story complete with the lies. In this day and age, however, it's completely naive to think that you're going to get famous and rub elbows with people who tout your strange story in order to make you some money, and yet be able to conceal selective parts of your history, especially when that history is a fraud which will only make people curious.

Yeah, it doesn't sound like Dr. V made any earnest attempts to work with Hassan to have the lies come out in a reasonable way.

Hassan/Grantland should've had more input from the trans community here, but the trans-person at the heart of this story wasn't helping matters at all.

She was telling some grand lies that nobody would've ever believed would hold up as long as they did, and that was clearly about to crumble. The responsible thing to do would've been to get out in front and work with Hassan here.

Particularly, if it would've been possible to report the important part of the truth while avoiding the gender change.

Hassan could've handled this better, but we've got a story about a clearly unhealthy and unstable person in a lot of pain telling some grand lies in the public eye. This is a sad story that was almost certain to end in tragedy at some point.

 

[njherdfan]

If you can't agree to Vanderbilt's conditions, then you shouldn't write the story.

Letting a subject control the scope of the story? Sounds great. Cause really, who wants to read anything more in depth than People magazine?

If you want to argue that it's perfectly OK to expose the private personal secrets of business people, that's fine. I wouldn't consider that to be responsible journalism, but I understand that it's an ethical grey area.However, it's absolutely unethical to agree to a person's conditions when you have no intention of honoring them. If Hannan wasn't willing to agree to Vanderbilt's request to "focus on the science and not the scientist", then he should have said so to Vanderbilt and then written the story without an interview.

The problem here is that the science and the scientist are very much commingled when you've got someone who has lied about their background as part of their qualifications and therefore sales pitch for this high tech putter.

Her gender orientation was not a lie. It was not deception. It was simply who she was. Hannan failed to grasp that. To him, Vanderbilt's gender orientation was on the same level as Vanderbilt's phony doctorate.I agree that the science and the scientist had become co-mingled, but there were more responsible methods for Hannan to investigate the story.

The change in identity (due to gender) was part of the deception - "Dr V" had incorporated that into her story.

You can quibble all you want but that part is indisputable.

Here's what Dr. V could have done - she could have gotten an agreement to disclosed the gender change off the record, and then told the story, and even told the story complete with the lies. In this day and age, however, it's completely naive to think that you're going to get famous and rub elbows with people who tout your strange story in order to make you some money, and yet be able to conceal selective parts of your history, especially when that history is a fraud which will only make people curious.

Yeah, it doesn't sound like Dr. V made any earnest attempts to work with Hassan to have the lies come out in a reasonable way.

Hassan/Grantland should've had more input from the trans community here, but the trans-person at the heart of this story wasn't helping matters at all.

She was telling some grand lies that nobody would've ever believed would hold up as long as they did, and that was clearly about to crumble. The responsible thing to do would've been to get out in front and work with Hassan here.

Particularly, if it would've been possible to report the important part of the truth while avoiding the gender change.

Hassan could've handled this better, but we've got a story about a clearly unhealthy and unstable person in a lot of pain telling some grand lies in the public eye. This is a sad story that was almost certain to end in tragedy at some point.

But the "lie" that's at issue here (and I think calling being transgender a lie is incorrect, but that's a separate issue) has nothing to do with the story. If the same set of facts was involved but the inventor was a man married to a woman and the reporter discovered that the inventor was actually a gay man, do you think there would have been any grounds for disclosing that?

 

[Uwe Blab]

If you can't agree to Vanderbilt's conditions, then you shouldn't write the story.

Letting a subject control the scope of the story? Sounds great. Cause really, who wants to read anything more in depth than People magazine?

If you want to argue that it's perfectly OK to expose the private personal secrets of business people, that's fine. I wouldn't consider that to be responsible journalism, but I understand that it's an ethical grey area.However, it's absolutely unethical to agree to a person's conditions when you have no intention of honoring them. If Hannan wasn't willing to agree to Vanderbilt's request to "focus on the science and not the scientist", then he should have said so to Vanderbilt and then written the story without an interview.

The problem here is that the science and the scientist are very much commingled when you've got someone who has lied about their background as part of their qualifications and therefore sales pitch for this high tech putter.

Her gender orientation was not a lie. It was not deception. It was simply who she was. Hannan failed to grasp that. To him, Vanderbilt's gender orientation was on the same level as Vanderbilt's phony doctorate.I agree that the science and the scientist had become co-mingled, but there were more responsible methods for Hannan to investigate the story.

The change in identity (due to gender) was part of the deception - "Dr V" had incorporated that into her story.

You can quibble all you want but that part is indisputable.

Here's what Dr. V could have done - she could have gotten an agreement to disclosed the gender change off the record, and then told the story, and even told the story complete with the lies. In this day and age, however, it's completely naive to think that you're going to get famous and rub elbows with people who tout your strange story in order to make you some money, and yet be able to conceal selective parts of your history, especially when that history is a fraud which will only make people curious.

Yeah, it doesn't sound like Dr. V made any earnest attempts to work with Hassan to have the lies come out in a reasonable way.

Hassan/Grantland should've had more input from the trans community here, but the trans-person at the heart of this story wasn't helping matters at all.

She was telling some grand lies that nobody would've ever believed would hold up as long as they did, and that was clearly about to crumble. The responsible thing to do would've been to get out in front and work with Hassan here.

Particularly, if it would've been possible to report the important part of the truth while avoiding the gender change.

Hassan could've handled this better, but we've got a story about a clearly unhealthy and unstable person in a lot of pain telling some grand lies in the public eye. This is a sad story that was almost certain to end in tragedy at some point.

But the "lie" that's at issue here (and I think calling being transgender a lie is incorrect, but that's a separate issue) has nothing to do with the story. If the same set of facts was involved but the inventor was a man married to a woman and the reporter discovered that the inventor was actually a gay man, do you think there would have been any grounds for disclosing that?

But being gay would not have caused a complete change in identity. A big part of the unraveling was that there was no record of this person before 2001.

 

[pollardsvision]

If you can't agree to Vanderbilt's conditions, then you shouldn't write the story.

Letting a subject control the scope of the story? Sounds great. Cause really, who wants to read anything more in depth than People magazine?

If you want to argue that it's perfectly OK to expose the private personal secrets of business people, that's fine. I wouldn't consider that to be responsible journalism, but I understand that it's an ethical grey area.However, it's absolutely unethical to agree to a person's conditions when you have no intention of honoring them. If Hannan wasn't willing to agree to Vanderbilt's request to "focus on the science and not the scientist", then he should have said so to Vanderbilt and then written the story without an interview.

The problem here is that the science and the scientist are very much commingled when you've got someone who has lied about their background as part of their qualifications and therefore sales pitch for this high tech putter.

Her gender orientation was not a lie. It was not deception. It was simply who she was. Hannan failed to grasp that. To him, Vanderbilt's gender orientation was on the same level as Vanderbilt's phony doctorate.I agree that the science and the scientist had become co-mingled, but there were more responsible methods for Hannan to investigate the story.

The change in identity (due to gender) was part of the deception - "Dr V" had incorporated that into her story.

You can quibble all you want but that part is indisputable.

Here's what Dr. V could have done - she could have gotten an agreement to disclosed the gender change off the record, and then told the story, and even told the story complete with the lies. In this day and age, however, it's completely naive to think that you're going to get famous and rub elbows with people who tout your strange story in order to make you some money, and yet be able to conceal selective parts of your history, especially when that history is a fraud which will only make people curious.

Yeah, it doesn't sound like Dr. V made any earnest attempts to work with Hassan to have the lies come out in a reasonable way.

Hassan/Grantland should've had more input from the trans community here, but the trans-person at the heart of this story wasn't helping matters at all.

She was telling some grand lies that nobody would've ever believed would hold up as long as they did, and that was clearly about to crumble. The responsible thing to do would've been to get out in front and work with Hassan here.

Particularly, if it would've been possible to report the important part of the truth while avoiding the gender change.

Hassan could've handled this better, but we've got a story about a clearly unhealthy and unstable person in a lot of pain telling some grand lies in the public eye. This is a sad story that was almost certain to end in tragedy at some point.

But the "lie" that's at issue here (and I think calling being transgender a lie is incorrect, but that's a separate issue) has nothing to do with the story. If the same set of facts was involved but the inventor was a man married to a woman and the reporter discovered that the inventor was actually a gay man, do you think there would have been any grounds for disclosing that?

I agree that being transgender is not a "lie".

What I'm saying is that, if it were possible to report this story correctly without disclosing that Dr. V was born with a man's body, it doesn't sound like Dr. V did anything to help make that happen.

It sounds like she took an adversarial approach almost immediately. Her fears of losing her business and likely that partial truth wasn't possible were certainly reasonable fears. No doubt those fears led to the adversarial approach.

This is different than if he'd found out the inventor was gay.

Hassan had no interest in Dr. V's sex life. He was just trying to figure out who the hell she was. You can report on someone's identity without revealing their sexual orientation.

It's very difficult to report the identity of a con-woman without, you know, mentioning a name (when it's been changed in part to help tell the wild lies).

 

[belljr]

maybe i am jut a simple minded neanderthal... but i am having trouble having any sympathy towards "Dr. V"

 

[dparker713]

If you can't agree to Vanderbilt's conditions, then you shouldn't write the story.

Letting a subject control the scope of the story? Sounds great. Cause really, who wants to read anything more in depth than People magazine?

If you want to argue that it's perfectly OK to expose the private personal secrets of business people, that's fine. I wouldn't consider that to be responsible journalism, but I understand that it's an ethical grey area.However, it's absolutely unethical to agree to a person's conditions when you have no intention of honoring them. If Hannan wasn't willing to agree to Vanderbilt's request to "focus on the science and not the scientist", then he should have said so to Vanderbilt and then written the story without an interview.

The problem here is that the science and the scientist are very much commingled when you've got someone who has lied about their background as part of their qualifications and therefore sales pitch for this high tech putter.

Her gender orientation was not a lie. It was not deception. It was simply who she was. Hannan failed to grasp that. To him, Vanderbilt's gender orientation was on the same level as Vanderbilt's phony doctorate.I agree that the science and the scientist had become co-mingled, but there were more responsible methods for Hannan to investigate the story.

The change in identity (due to gender) was part of the deception - "Dr V" had incorporated that into her story.

You can quibble all you want but that part is indisputable.

Here's what Dr. V could have done - she could have gotten an agreement to disclosed the gender change off the record, and then told the story, and even told the story complete with the lies. In this day and age, however, it's completely naive to think that you're going to get famous and rub elbows with people who tout your strange story in order to make you some money, and yet be able to conceal selective parts of your history, especially when that history is a fraud which will only make people curious.

Yeah, it doesn't sound like Dr. V made any earnest attempts to work with Hassan to have the lies come out in a reasonable way.

Hassan/Grantland should've had more input from the trans community here, but the trans-person at the heart of this story wasn't helping matters at all.

She was telling some grand lies that nobody would've ever believed would hold up as long as they did, and that was clearly about to crumble. The responsible thing to do would've been to get out in front and work with Hassan here.

Particularly, if it would've been possible to report the important part of the truth while avoiding the gender change.

Hassan could've handled this better, but we've got a story about a clearly unhealthy and unstable person in a lot of pain telling some grand lies in the public eye. This is a sad story that was almost certain to end in tragedy at some point.

But the "lie" that's at issue here (and I think calling being transgender a lie is incorrect, but that's a separate issue) has nothing to do with the story. If the same set of facts was involved but the inventor was a man married to a woman and the reporter discovered that the inventor was actually a gay man, do you think there would have been any grounds for disclosing that?

The entire identity was a lie. The last name. The family linage. The educational background. The work experience. And everything was done in an attempt to defraud. So given similar facts, yes there would be grounds for disclosing whatever was necessary to elucidate the truth.

 

[Sarnoff]

Yeah, the issue is that it's treated as a lie. Another deception. '"A chill ran down my spine" that the lies continued to even her gender!' is an offensive attitude to some. The author acted as if this was just one more thing he was being lied to about.

Being trans is not lying. Being trans is not deceiving anyone. Being trans is not perpetrating a fraud on anyone or scheming a con against anyone. You can say Dr. V lied about her employment history. Lied about her education, lied about her background, lied about a lot of things. But Dr. V wasn't lying about being a woman, she just identified her gender as a woman 'trapped in a man's body', and that's not a deceit. It's who she was.

 

[T Bell]

Yeah, the issue is that it's treated as a lie. Another deception. '"A chill ran down my spine" that the lies continued to even her gender!' is an offensive attitude to some. The author acted as if this was just one more thing he was being lied to about.

Being trans is not lying. Being trans is not deceiving anyone. Being trans is not perpetrating a fraud on anyone or scheming a con against anyone. You can say Dr. V lied about her employment history. Lied about her education, lied about her background, lied about a lot of things. But Dr. V wasn't lying about being a woman, she just identified her gender as a woman 'trapped in a man's body', and that's not a deceit. It's who she was.

You are in such a hurry to defend transgendered people that you're completely ignoring how flawed of a "hero" Dr. V was for this purpose. Dr. V was a mess, not because she was transgendered but because she was obviously unstable and had manufactured a professional history that was completely false and yet a colorful part of the backstory for her product, and somehow thought she could dictate how much a diligent reporter was going to delve there.

You're fighting the right fight but in the wrong case for the wrong person.

 

[Joe Summer]

Her gender orientation was not a lie. It was not deception. It was simply who she was. Hannan failed to grasp that. To him, Vanderbilt's gender orientation was on the same level as Vanderbilt's phony doctorate.

I agree that the science and the scientist had become co-mingled, but there were more responsible methods for Hannan to investigate the story.

The change in identity (due to gender) was part of the deception - "Dr V" had incorporated that into her story.

The name was a lie, but her gender was not. There was nothing wrong with Hannan exposing the name as a lie. But he crossed an ethical line when he exposed her gender situation.

I agree that the two things are co-mingled to the point where it might not have been possible for Hannan to separate them. But if that was the case, then he shouldn't have agreed to do the story.

 

[Sarnoff]

Yeah, the issue is that it's treated as a lie. Another deception. '"A chill ran down my spine" that the lies continued to even her gender!' is an offensive attitude to some. The author acted as if this was just one more thing he was being lied to about.

Being trans is not lying. Being trans is not deceiving anyone. Being trans is not perpetrating a fraud on anyone or scheming a con against anyone. You can say Dr. V lied about her employment history. Lied about her education, lied about her background, lied about a lot of things. But Dr. V wasn't lying about being a woman, she just identified her gender as a woman 'trapped in a man's body', and that's not a deceit. It's who she was.

You are in such a hurry to defend transgendered people that you're completely ignoring how flawed of a "hero" Dr. V was for this purpose. Dr. V was a mess, not because she was transgendered but because she was obviously unstable and had manufactured a professional history that was completely false and yet a colorful part of the backstory for her product, and somehow thought she could dictate how much a diligent reporter was going to delve there.

You're fighting the right fight but in the wrong case for the wrong person.

I'm not disagreeing with that at all. I think it would still make a really interesting story if handled differently.

I've been reading a lot about 'story structure' lately, how even real life stories are forced into the narrative arc we're so used to when presented back to us, with the "inciting incident", the "call to action", the "apparent defeat", etc. Like, if you're making a movie about Nelson Mandela, if you don't have the big defining moment in his life come in the 15-20 minute mark, audiences are going to call it "slow". Stuff like that... the 'Hollywood' structure that we've been programmed to follow (even though it goes back to stories that existed before the written word).

Anyway, I do think some of the problem with this story is the structure, it's treated as the 'big reveal' that she is trans. It defines the whole third act, and everything the author does becomes, almost, a fight to prove whether or not it's true and make her confess to it.

Restructured completely, the story still makes sense and is still interesting. But framing it as a detective story makes it all about her gender identity. It could have just been framed as "Best putter ever turns out to have been invented by a lesbian auto mechanic", which is still interesting. But the whole story of the putter gets lost in the last act. The author goes on and on about how good it is, how many pros use it, how it works for him, yet, then he finds out her "secret" and the putter gets lost. It's only ever mentioned once after that... the author says it's collecting dust in his garage because now the magic has worn off for him. The story becomes about something completely different at the end, and how it's treated is that it's further evidence of her lying, which it really isn't. It's evidence she may be unstable, yes, but how he treated her after that is not at all sensitive to her potential instability.

 

[T Bell]

Her gender orientation was not a lie. It was not deception. It was simply who she was. Hannan failed to grasp that. To him, Vanderbilt's gender orientation was on the same level as Vanderbilt's phony doctorate.

I agree that the science and the scientist had become co-mingled, but there were more responsible methods for Hannan to investigate the story.

The change in identity (due to gender) was part of the deception - "Dr V" had incorporated that into her story.

The name was a lie, but her gender was not. There was nothing wrong with Hannan exposing the name as a lie. But he crossed an ethical line when he exposed her gender situation.

I agree that the two things are co-mingled to the point where it might not have been possible for Hannan to separate them. But if that was the case, then he shouldn't have agreed to do the story.

Who shouldn't have agreed?

If you mean Dr. V (who of course knew the entire story from the get go), then you and I are in agreement. The writer had no idea when he "agreed to do the story" about any of this.

 

[Tom Servo]

Yeah, there's really no defending the outing to the investor.

If the investor put his money in based on who he thought he was dealing with - a woman with a scientific credentials - I would definitely want to know if that person is a male garage mechanic. It comes down to trust, which in this case would be shaken because she/he LIED about who they were.

So, I'm not seeing the problem.

 

[pollardsvision]

Yeah, the issue is that it's treated as a lie. Another deception. '"A chill ran down my spine" that the lies continued to even her gender!' is an offensive attitude to some. The author acted as if this was just one more thing he was being lied to about.

Being trans is not lying. Being trans is not deceiving anyone. Being trans is not perpetrating a fraud on anyone or scheming a con against anyone. You can say Dr. V lied about her employment history. Lied about her education, lied about her background, lied about a lot of things. But Dr. V wasn't lying about being a woman, she just identified her gender as a woman 'trapped in a man's body', and that's not a deceit. It's who she was.

You are in such a hurry to defend transgendered people that you're completely ignoring how flawed of a "hero" Dr. V was for this purpose. Dr. V was a mess, not because she was transgendered but because she was obviously unstable and had manufactured a professional history that was completely false and yet a colorful part of the backstory for her product, and somehow thought she could dictate how much a diligent reporter was going to delve there.

You're fighting the right fight but in the wrong case for the wrong person.

I'm not disagreeing with that at all. I think it would still make a really interesting story if handled differently.

I've been reading a lot about 'story structure' lately, how even real life stories are forced into the narrative arc we're so used to when presented back to us, with the "inciting incident", the "call to action", the "apparent defeat", etc. Like, if you're making a movie about Nelson Mandela, if you don't have the big defining moment in his life come in the 15-20 minute mark, audiences are going to call it "slow". Stuff like that... the 'Hollywood' structure that we've been programmed to follow (even though it goes back to stories that existed before the written word).

Anyway, I do think some of the problem with this story is the structure, it's treated as the 'big reveal' that she is trans. It defines the whole third act, and everything the author does becomes, almost, a fight to prove whether or not it's true and make her confess to it.

Restructured completely, the story still makes sense and is still interesting. But framing it as a detective story makes it all about her gender identity. It could have just been framed as "Best putter ever turns out to have been invented by a lesbian auto mechanic", which is still interesting. But the whole story of the putter gets lost in the last act. The author goes on and on about how good it is, how many pros use it, how it works for him, yet, then he finds out her "secret" and the putter gets lost. It's only ever mentioned once after that... the author says it's collecting dust in his garage because now the magic has worn off for him. The story becomes about something completely different at the end, and how it's treated is that it's further evidence of her lying, which it really isn't. It's evidence she may be unstable, yes, but how he treated her after that is not at all sensitive to her potential instability.

Yeah, I think that's the problem.

I've come around a bit. I think he was put in a tough spot, and I'm not sure the story could've been told without eventually outing her, but certainly it's poorly written and probably irresponsible.

Hassan and Dr. V both handled this poorly, for mostly defensible reasons, with tragic results for both.

 

[T Bell]

Yeah, there's really no defending the outing to the investor.

If the investor put his money in based on who he thought he was dealing with - a woman with a scientific credentials - I would definitely want to know if that person is a male garage mechanic. It comes down to trust, which in this case would be shaken because she/he LIED about who they were.

So, I'm not seeing the problem.

I actually agree that he didn't need to disclose anything to the investor. He should have been in fact-finding mode and not informed the investor of anything more than needed to gather facts, not only because it wasn't necessary, but also because it would interfere with that investor's financial relationship with Dr. V and by doing so would actually make the writer part of the story.

 

[Tom Servo]

Yeah, there's really no defending the outing to the investor.

If the investor put his money in based on who he thought he was dealing with - a woman with a scientific credentials - I would definitely want to know if that person is a male garage mechanic. It comes down to trust, which in this case would be shaken because she/he LIED about who they were.

So, I'm not seeing the problem.

I actually agree that he didn't need to disclose anything to the investor. He should have been in fact-finding mode and not informed the investor of anything more than needed to gather facts, not only because it wasn't necessary, but also because it would interfere with that investor's financial relationship with Dr. V and by doing so would actually make the writer part of the story.

Where I'm coming from is that if I'm investing my money, and the person who wants me to invest is not who they say they are, then I would feel lied to and cheated. To have that information disclosed to me - sexual politics aside* - would be helpful to me in order for me to get my money back if I so desired.

Now, I once lost $5,000 in an investment opportunity many years ago (and got about 90% back almost 20 years later), so I will admit to seeing this more from the investor's perspective.

* - The means of deception is not the point, the fact of the deception is.

 

[T Bell]

Yeah, there's really no defending the outing to the investor.

If the investor put his money in based on who he thought he was dealing with - a woman with a scientific credentials - I would definitely want to know if that person is a male garage mechanic. It comes down to trust, which in this case would be shaken because she/he LIED about who they were.

So, I'm not seeing the problem.

I actually agree that he didn't need to disclose anything to the investor. He should have been in fact-finding mode and not informed the investor of anything more than needed to gather facts, not only because it wasn't necessary, but also because it would interfere with that investor's financial relationship with Dr. V and by doing so would actually make the writer part of the story.

Where I'm coming from is that if I'm investing my money, and the person who wants me to invest is not who they say they are, then I would feel lied to and cheated. To have that information disclosed to me - sexual politics aside* - would be helpful to me in order for me to get my money back if I so desired.

Now, I once lost $5,000 in an investment opportunity many years ago (and got about 90% back almost 20 years later), so I will admit to seeing this more from the investor's perspective.

* - The means of deception is not the point, the fact of the deception is.

That's the key. Yes, the investor would want to know. We're talking about journalistic ethics here, which is a whole different facet of this with some different rules that apply.

 

[Tom Servo]

Yeah, there's really no defending the outing to the investor.

If the investor put his money in based on who he thought he was dealing with - a woman with a scientific credentials - I would definitely want to know if that person is a male garage mechanic. It comes down to trust, which in this case would be shaken because she/he LIED about who they were.

So, I'm not seeing the problem.

I actually agree that he didn't need to disclose anything to the investor. He should have been in fact-finding mode and not informed the investor of anything more than needed to gather facts, not only because it wasn't necessary, but also because it would interfere with that investor's financial relationship with Dr. V and by doing so would actually make the writer part of the story.

Where I'm coming from is that if I'm investing my money, and the person who wants me to invest is not who they say they are, then I would feel lied to and cheated. To have that information disclosed to me - sexual politics aside* - would be helpful to me in order for me to get my money back if I so desired.

Now, I once lost $5,000 in an investment opportunity many years ago (and got about 90% back almost 20 years later), so I will admit to seeing this more from the investor's perspective.

* - The means of deception is not the point, the fact of the deception is.

That's the key. Yes, the investor would want to know. We're talking about journalistic ethics here, which is a whole different facet of this with some different rules that apply.

Yeah, that's a sticky wicket there. I don't know the context of the reveal; it could've been gossipy, "Did you know..." to "Uh, oops, transvestite?" accidental disclosure. The former I would think would be journalistically unethical; the latter less so.

 

[T Bell]

Yeah, there's really no defending the outing to the investor.

If the investor put his money in based on who he thought he was dealing with - a woman with a scientific credentials - I would definitely want to know if that person is a male garage mechanic. It comes down to trust, which in this case would be shaken because she/he LIED about who they were.

So, I'm not seeing the problem.

I actually agree that he didn't need to disclose anything to the investor. He should have been in fact-finding mode and not informed the investor of anything more than needed to gather facts, not only because it wasn't necessary, but also because it would interfere with that investor's financial relationship with Dr. V and by doing so would actually make the writer part of the story.

Where I'm coming from is that if I'm investing my money, and the person who wants me to invest is not who they say they are, then I would feel lied to and cheated. To have that information disclosed to me - sexual politics aside* - would be helpful to me in order for me to get my money back if I so desired.

Now, I once lost $5,000 in an investment opportunity many years ago (and got about 90% back almost 20 years later), so I will admit to seeing this more from the investor's perspective.

* - The means of deception is not the point, the fact of the deception is.

That's the key. Yes, the investor would want to know. We're talking about journalistic ethics here, which is a whole different facet of this with some different rules that apply.

Yeah, that's a sticky wicket there. I don't know the context of the reveal; it could've been gossipy, "Did you know..." to "Uh, oops, transvestite?" accidental disclosure. The former I would think would be journalistically unethical; the latter less so.

Did you read the article? It was no slip of the tongue. It was basically, "Guess what I learned about Dr. V!"

 

[OC Zed]

Her gender orientation was not a lie. It was not deception. It was simply who she was. Hannan failed to grasp that. To him, Vanderbilt's gender orientation was on the same level as Vanderbilt's phony doctorate.

I agree that the science and the scientist had become co-mingled, but there were more responsible methods for Hannan to investigate the story.

The change in identity (due to gender) was part of the deception - "Dr V" had incorporated that into her story.

The name was a lie, but her gender was not. There was nothing wrong with Hannan exposing the name as a lie. But he crossed an ethical line when he exposed her gender situation.

I agree that the two things are co-mingled to the point where it might not have been possible for Hannan to separate them. But if that was the case, then he shouldn't have agreed to do the story.

Who shouldn't have agreed?

If you mean Dr. V (who of course knew the entire story from the get go), then you and I are in agreement. The writer had no idea when he "agreed to do the story" about any of this.

That and the fact that the story was published and "outed" Dr. V months after her death.

 

[Tick]

Yeah, the issue is that it's treated as a lie. Another deception. '"A chill ran down my spine" that the lies continued to even her gender!' is an offensive attitude to some. The author acted as if this was just one more thing he was being lied to about.

Being trans is not lying. Being trans is not deceiving anyone. Being trans is not perpetrating a fraud on anyone or scheming a con against anyone. You can say Dr. V lied about her employment history. Lied about her education, lied about her background, lied about a lot of things. But Dr. V wasn't lying about being a woman, she just identified her gender as a woman 'trapped in a man's body', and that's not a deceit. It's who she was.

This one's tricky to me... perhaps I'm just behind the times and will look back at myself in horror in a few years.

My current take on this is that I agree transgender isn't lying or deceiving, but burying something in your past is deceptive. The fact that she identified herself as a woman isn't the issue... it's that she was hiding the fact that she used to be a man. Given her pattern of lying and deceiving at every turn, it fits right in with everything else.

Sarnoff, what's your take on this? Is burying the fact that she used to be a man being deceptive? Or does the fact that she is a woman now mean she's justified in pretending she always was? I've never thought about any of this before...

 

[mr roboto]

Tick, I'm glad you raised that point because I too wonder about that distinction and I too have never given it a thought. I'm interested to understand this better.

 

[PatsWillWin]

I don't think the writer should've told the investor that Dr. V. was a tranny. Other than that, I don't see a lot to get outraged about. I can see how the "chill" comment could be taken poorly, but there's nothing else IMO that requires this huge apology from Simmons or ESPN, etc.

 

[PatsWillWin]

Strictly speaking, hiding the fact that you used to be a man is a "deception" I guess. But it shouldn't be lumped in with her lies about her education, experience, etc. Those things are relevant to the fraud she was committing, I don't really see how her gender is (other than being part of the reason that her past was difficult to dig up due to the name change, etc.).

 

[Sarnoff]

Yeah, the issue is that it's treated as a lie. Another deception. '"A chill ran down my spine" that the lies continued to even her gender!' is an offensive attitude to some. The author acted as if this was just one more thing he was being lied to about.

Being trans is not lying. Being trans is not deceiving anyone. Being trans is not perpetrating a fraud on anyone or scheming a con against anyone. You can say Dr. V lied about her employment history. Lied about her education, lied about her background, lied about a lot of things. But Dr. V wasn't lying about being a woman, she just identified her gender as a woman 'trapped in a man's body', and that's not a deceit. It's who she was.

This one's tricky to me... perhaps I'm just behind the times and will look back at myself in horror in a few years.

My current take on this is that I agree transgender isn't lying or deceiving, but burying something in your past is deceptive. The fact that she identified herself as a woman isn't the issue... it's that she was hiding the fact that she used to be a man. Given her pattern of lying and deceiving at every turn, it fits right in with everything else.

Sarnoff, what's your take on this? Is burying the fact that she used to be a man being deceptive? Or does the fact that she is a woman now mean she's justified in pretending she always was? I've never thought about any of this before...

My take is gender identity and sexual orientation is personal and private. Say Dr. V wasn't trans, but the inventor of the magic putter was a gay man in the closet. The author never would have called up an investor to say "Guess what, the inventor is a !"

If anything, Dr V identifying as a woman who's attracted to women, and living openly in that framework for a decade, was the one honest thing about her.

[slight tangent]

Earlier I had mentioned that I'd been going over "story structure" a lot lately, looking at the 3-act structure and how factual narratives are shoe-horned to fit within the construct. Unrelatedly, this issue came up in a podcast in the same area that was recorded months ago but I only listened to this morning... talking about things in movies and TV that only exist in movies and TV, but to the point that we've just become accustomed to thinking that they must be true in real life because we see it so often. Like, if you're arrested, you get one and only one phone call. That's not true, some writer somewhere was writing a script and needed that to be the case for a plot point. But it's not real, you have the right to an attorney and if his phone is busy you don't rot in a cell forever. Similarly, if someone goes missing, don't wait 24 hours to call the police to file a missing person's report. Call them right away. Some screenwriter put that in a movie once because they needed an excuse for the main character to be the cause of the action, not just turn the story over to the cops and have him sitting around while they did all the work. But nowadays, parents whose kids are abducted sometimes wait the 24 hours figuring that's the rule... and when they call the cops the next day, the cops say "Why didn't you call us sooner? We could have put out an Amber Alert, now the trail is cold."

A similar thing exists relating to the trans world. For the last 50 years, the portrayal of trans life has always been framed in the context of a straight man going to a bar, hitting on a woman, taking her home and finding out she's a he. And his friends mock him for it. We've seen it over and over and over again in the media. But it's not true. Trans people don't get dressed up and go to a straight bar and hope to prank guys with their penises. We've been conditioned to beware this scenario so many times it's like the quicksand trope. But if a trans person did that, it'd be incredibly dangerous. They risk assault and worse if they did such a thing. But up until "Orange is the New Black", almost every trans character in the mainstream media was used for just this purpose.

The media has, for decades, framed the trans lifestyle itself as a matter of intentional deception, a scheme to fool the unwitting straight man. I wonder how much that kind of pre-conditioning affects our judgement in stories like this.

[/tangent]

Anyway, like I said, restructuring the story (before her suicide) should have been done here. Leave gender identity out of it entirely. Don't make it a detective story structure with the big, Perry Mason moment at the start of the third act being the outing of Dr. V. Instead, reassure her that it's not going to be printed, it's not relevant, and frame it a different way. "Dr. V invents a magical putter. People go crazy for it. Start winning with it. I use it, my game gets better. Part of the draw is her story, but I found out it wasn't all true. She didn't go to MIT. She didn't have top-secret government status. She wasn't a super-intelligent engineer that built the Stealth Bomber. Instead, she's a lesbian auto mechanic that somehow, without any qualifications, designed a great putter. Did she somehow stumble into a design that's better than anything Ping or Nike or Taylor Made or Calloway came up with? Did she accidentally figure out that the basis for golf club design has been wrong for half a century? Or were all the improvements due to mental effects, believing this putter was magic made it so, like Dumbo's feather?"

That's an interesting story. After her suicide, of course, you have to frame it another way, and be up front with it from the beginning. Tell the tragic tale.

The piece as presented, though, is really cold and doesn't treat anyone well. It's so inhuman and so tone-deaf to the bigger issues.

 

[Tick]

Instead, she's a lesbian auto mechanic that somehow, without any qualifications, designed a great putter.

Surprised you included that bit.

 

[Baloney Sandwich]

So the trans con artist is the victim here? Grantland should have stood behind their story and my guess is they would have if not for ESPN being so worried about being PC.

 

[Mr. Retukes]

What if the writer had discovered that Dr. V was born "Stephanie Krol"? Would it have been OK to reveal that?

 

[Daywalker]

Great BS Report with William Goldman.

Goldman is 82 years old. One of the coolest guys I've ever listened too. Can't believe I didn't know more about him before listening to this. 82 and as sharp as anyone, moreso.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman talk. A lot on Hollywood. Goldman did screenplay for Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, All the President's Men and novels for Marathon Man and Princess Bride. What a treat. A must for a movie buff.

http://espn.go.com/e...yer?id=10403954

 

[RUSF18]

Great BS Report with William Goldman.

Goldman is 82 years old. One of the coolest guys I've ever listened too. Can't believe I didn't know more about him before listening to this. 82 and as sharp as anyone, moreso.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman talk. A lot on Hollywood. Goldman did screenplay for Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, All the President's Men and novels for Marathon Man and Princess Bride. What a treat. A must for a movie buff.

http://espn.go.com/e...yer?id=10403954

Haven't gotten through it all yet but I thought it was going to get dicey for a second when he said that the "12 Years a Slave" kid will likely win the Oscar because "his color is black".

I did like how they didn't bleep any of his curses.

 

[Leroy Hoard]

Instead, she's a lesbian auto mechanic that somehow, without any qualifications, designed a great putter.

Surprised you included that bit.

If a woman is going to work on my car I'd rather she be a lesbian.

 

[Joe Summer]

Great BS Report with William Goldman.



Goldman is 82 years old. One of the coolest guys I've ever listened too. Can't believe I didn't know more about him before listening to this. 82 and as sharp as anyone, moreso.



Phillip Seymour Hoffman talk. A lot on Hollywood. Goldman did screenplay for Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, All the President's Men and novels for Marathon Man and Princess Bride. What a treat. A must for a movie buff.



http://espn.go.com/e...yer?id=10403954

That was a swell interview.

 

[Daywalker]

Great BS Report with William Goldman.

Goldman is 82 years old. One of the coolest guys I've ever listened too. Can't believe I didn't know more about him before listening to this. 82 and as sharp as anyone, moreso.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman talk. A lot on Hollywood. Goldman did screenplay for Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, All the President's Men and novels for Marathon Man and Princess Bride. What a treat. A must for a movie buff.

http://espn.go.com/e...yer?id=10403954

Haven't gotten through it all yet but I thought it was going to get dicey for a second when he said that the "12 Years a Slave" kid will likely win the Oscar because "his color is black".

I think what he was getting at was that he wasn't too high on the movie and thought Ejiofor could get the win because Hollywood likes to pat themselves on the back. He was also basically calling anyone under 50 a kid too.

 

[biggamer3]

Love hearing 80 year olds who are still with it, they dish it like it is without caring about being PC. Had no idea who Goldman was but found the interview interesting and informative about the film industry.

 

[Good Posting Judge]

Grantland is putting out a compendium of articles relating to advanced stats entitled "Talk Nerdy to Me." Apparently a hand-out for Sloan, but I giggled when I saw that Simmons was a contributor.

 

[Abraham]

There is a feature today trying to paint the worst country singer alive as "cool." Awful.

 

[pollardsvision]

There is a feature today trying to paint the worst country singer alive as "cool." Awful.

Don't know anything about the singer, but it's written by the former avclub.com reviewer that just trashed the first 7 episodes of "Chuck", then just stopped reviewing for the season. I won't forgive him for that.

 

[RUSF18]

Great BS Report with William Goldman.



Goldman is 82 years old. One of the coolest guys I've ever listened too. Can't believe I didn't know more about him before listening to this. 82 and as sharp as anyone, moreso.



Phillip Seymour Hoffman talk. A lot on Hollywood. Goldman did screenplay for Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, All the President's Men and novels for Marathon Man and Princess Bride. What a treat. A must for a movie buff.



http://espn.go.com/e...yer?id=10403954

Haven't gotten through it all yet but I thought it was going to get dicey for a second when he said that the "12 Years a Slave" kid will likely win the Oscar because "his color is black".

I think what he was getting at was that he wasn't too high on the movie and thought Ejiofor could get the win because Hollywood likes to pat themselves on the back. He was also basically calling anyone under 50 a kid too.

Yeah I followed. Just commenting on how people at that age can very easily say things that could sound bad from a PC standpoint due to word choice and phrasing.

My wife's grandfather turned 94 today and is the sweetest man ever, but pretty much every time I see him something comes out of his mouth that you know was pretty normal to say even 20 years ago but not so much now.

 

[roadkill1292]

Charles Pierce with an uncharacteristically light and short piece on speedskating and John Lopez's review of last night's Walking Dead episode are both pretty fun reads today.

 

[facook]

Klosterman is insufferable (at least audibly).

 

[Daywalker]

Klosterman is insufferable (at least audibly).

Seems like he always goes off-topic to debate something less interesting.

 

[facook]

Klosterman is insufferable (at least audibly).

Seems like he always goes off-topic to debate something less interesting.

Thinks he's WAY more clever than he actually is. He's the Timsconch of grantland. I love 90% of Simmons' podcasts, not sure why I even download the Klosterman ones.

 

[bosoxs45]

How does Bruce Lee not make BS' Action Hero Championship column?

 

[Tick]

How does Bruce Lee not make BS' Action Hero Championship column?

I don't know a single person who ever saw a Bruce Lee movie in the theater.

 

[mr. furley]

How does Bruce Lee not make BS' Action Hero Championship column?

I don't know a single person who ever saw a Bruce Lee movie in the theater.

well, they stopped making em in '73

 

[pollardsvision]

The podcast on was pretty good too.

Particularly discussing on why the Action Hero has pretty much disappeared over the last decade or so.

I do agree with some of the emailers. There was no need for a movie action hero from about 2001-05 or 06. We had Jack ####### Bauer (and Vic Mackey).