The Ken Starr (yes, that Ken Starr) image rehabilitation tour has begun, with Starr joining the calls for transparency from Baylor’s Board of Regents. He’s urging the regents to release the full Pepper Hamilton report into how Baylor created a culture so blind that administrators believed rape “doesn’t happen here” and so toxic that women who reported they were assaulted were put through hell. Starr’s even gone so far as to say he resigned as chancellor so he could speak more freely about what happened at the university…despite all of this, Starr remains full of shit[.]
Anyone who’s hung around my dark, dank, cobwebby corner of Da Interwebz knows there are few things I enjoy more than watching self-righteous, uber-Christian hypocrites getting their karma check cashed. As much as I enjoy that, I also recognize that wallowing excessively in Schadenfreude can be bad form and should generally be avoided whenever possible. In the case of Ken Starr (yes, the one who almost destroyed Monica Lewinsky in a bid to topple a President he despised), I’m willing to forego that consideration for some full-on, balls-to-the-wall, USDA Grade A Schadenfreude. Starr is one of those self-righteous, “holier than thou” members of the American Taliban who fall into my personal “I wouldn’t piss on them if there were en fuego” category. This is especially true now that it’s beginning to emerge that he’s trying to lie his way out of his (evidently not insignificant) role in Baylor University’s sexual assault scandal.
The full story of how Baylor- a socially conservative private university affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention- came to be a morass of gross sexual misconduct by athletes will no doubt be told later by someone willing to dive into the distressing details. For now, it’s clear that the school’s athletic department was unwilling to reign in some of the very athletes responsible for victories on the football field.
The NCAA calls it “lack of institutional control.” A better and more accurate description would be “the inmates were running the asylum.” Ken Starr evidently knew of the problems, turned a blind eye, and is now furiously attempting to spin his irresponsibility and dereliction of duty as stemming from a crushing workload.
If that’s not the very definition of pathetic, dishonest, and self-serving, I don’t know what would be.
Reporters have previously been letting Starr stick to his talking points, regardless of the fact that many of them don’t match the facts. But during her sit-down interview with Starr, Julie Hays at KWTX confronted him about an email previously used in reporting by ESPN’s Outside the Lines. The email is from a woman who said she was raped by former Baylor football player Tevin Elliott, who was sentenced to up to 20 years in prison for a separate sexual assault. The subject line is “I Was Raped at Baylor,” and the list of people it was sent to includes Starr.
I get it; being a college president can be a difficult and daunting undertaking. That said, Starr’s claim that he can’t recall an email with the subject line, “I Was Raped At Baylor,” strains credibility almost to the breaking point. That Starr chose to make this claim (and offer three distinctly different answers when pressed) during a television interview is astonishing.
[L]ongtime GOP fixer Merrie Spaeth (who previously coached Starr before his testimony in support of impeaching Bill Clinton) starts taking action off-camera. In the package, Hays says that’s when Spaeth told her news director that they couldn’t use that part of the interview. The news director refuses, so Spaeth interrupts, saying she needs to talk to Starr. This comes at about 1:34 in the video, and I suggest watching it to see just how adamant Spaeth is about halting the interview.
Spaeth and Starr walk away, then return with Spaeth telling the reporter to ask Starr the question again. Hays does. This time Starr gives answer No. 2.
Shortly thereafter, Starr proffers answer #3, with both #2 and #3 being riffs on “I have no recollection. I’m sorry, but an email with “I Was Raped At Baylor” is not the sort of thing one assumes would be shredded by a spam filter. Nor could Starr blame such an “oversight,” if indeed that’s what it was, on an underling. The email was addressed to him, and while I’ll grant him the point that he gets a lot of emails, “I Was Raped At Baylor” seems like something he’d wanted to know about and follow up on.
Once upon a time, Kenneth Starr was determined to bring down then-President Bill Clinton, a man Starr deemed unworthy and morally unfit to sit behind the big desk in the Oval Office. He spent millions of tax dollars in an ultimately fruitless crusade (the only way his pursuit can accurately be described) that succeeded only in making everyone involved look bad. Starr determined it to be appropriate to shamelessly exploit and use, almost to the point of destroying, a young White House intern who’d had a consensual sexual relationship with a married man…who also happened to be President. In the end, it was about a crusading, moralizing, socially conservative lawyer with a blank check, no restraints or sense of fairness, and a virtually endless supply of political capital who became obsessed with the President’s sex life.
It appears karma is working its magic upon Starr…and some, myself included, are going to be guilty of enjoying more than our fair share of Schadenfreude…and I’m OK with that.
