When winning trumps helping

Stefanik endorses sleazy operator

It seems odd that when Elise Stefanik stood up in the House of Representatives to nominate Jim Jordan for speaker, she referred to Jordan’s shameful past as an Ohio State wrestling coach who failed to protect his athletes from the sexual predations of the team doctor.

But it fits, because in the world of politics that Stefanik has embraced with the zeal of a convert, success is not about your morals or your record of doing the right thing. It’s about survival or, as she and Donald Trump say — winning.

In their world, if you were able to dodge and fudge and lie your way out of a scandal, as Jordan has (so far), then you’re a winner.

Here is what our congresswoman said:

“Jim is the voice of the American people who have felt voiceless for far too long. Whether as judiciary chair, conservative leader or representative for his constituents in west-central Ohio, whether on the wrestling mat or in the committee room, Jim Jordan is strategic, scrappy, tough and principled. He’s a mentor, a worker and, above all, he’s a fighter. And the American people know, we know that Jim Jordan is a winner on behalf of the American people.”

Notice there is no mention of anything in particular Jordan has fought for. What legislation has he championed? What has he done to improve the country?

None and nothing are the answers. Jordan has devoted his 17 years in Congress to obstructing the efforts of other members of Congress. He has made himself prominent by shouting no. If only he had done that at Ohio State.

“I considered Jim Jordan a friend. But at the end of the day, he is absolutely lying if he says he doesn’t know what was going on,” said Mike DiSabato, a former wrestler at Ohio State.

“I remember I had a thumb injury and went into Strauss’ office and he started pulling down my wrestling shorts,” said another former Ohio State wrestler, Dunyasha Yetts. “I’m like, what the fuck are you doing? And I went out and told [former head coach] Russ [Hellickson] and Jim what happened. I was not having it. They went in and talked to Strauss.”

Wrestler Shawn Dailey said that he and other wrestlers spoke with Jordan about Strauss groping them.

Strauss ended up killing himself in 2005, but lawsuits from athletes have forced a partial reckoning. Ohio State has paid more than $60 million to men abused by Strauss, and its former president, Michael Drake, has expressed “profound regret and sincere apologies” to Strauss’ victims.

Richard Strauss sexually abused hundreds of students at Ohio State University during the 20 years he worked there as a doctor and athletic team trainer.

In 2019, an independent report found that Strauss had sexually abused “at least 177 male student-patients he was charged with treating” over the 20 years he worked at the university. The report found that Ohio State coaches and administrators had known for almost the entire time that Strauss was molesting male students but failed to do anything to stop him. 

Of the 177 victims, 48 were on the wrestling team, according to the report. Jordan was a team coach during Strauss’ tenure, from 1986 to 1994. 

If, as Elise Stefanik says, Jim Jordan is “a mentor,” what are the lessons he taught?

I recommend taking a look at the 96-page independent report to get a feeling for the scope of Strauss’ abuse. He served as a doctor for other teams at the university and saw students who weren’t athletes. He conducted medical research on students in which he required them to undress and allow him to exam their genitals. He did body fat testing of high school students, requiring them to take off all their clothes.

In one instance, Strauss told a college student he had a sexually transmitted disease. This is what followed:

“(Strauss) told the student that the disease could only be treated by using tweezers to remove ‘nodes’ on the student’s penis. During the ‘treatment,’ Strauss grabbed the shaft of the student’s penis and dug the tweezers into the penis tip, causing the student to bleed. Strauss dabbed the bloody sites with a swab and continued to tweeze the student’s penis. When the student backed away from the excruciating pain caused by Strauss’ tweezing, Strauss held the shaft of the student’s penis and instructed him to ‘hold still.’”

Investigators reported that men contacted years later were still troubled by the abuse and reluctant to talk about it.

Some of this physical and emotional agony could have been prevented by Jim Jordan, if he had simply done his job.

Perhaps Elise Stefanik can tell us how it was “strategic” for Jordan to keep silent about the abuse and then to lie about it. Perhaps she can explain how it was “tough and principled.” Then she can reveal how, above all, Jordan was a winner on behalf of the students he was supposed to be protecting.

Readings

I read “The Right Madness” by James Crumley, published in 2005, and have to admit I was entertained. But it was the sort of entertainment you get from riding on “the Zipper” at a carnival set up in a parking lot — after getting thrown around for five minutes and crushed against the inside of the metal cage, expecting a fatal malfunction at any moment, you stumble out pale and shaking, running a hand over your face and mumbling, “I’m too old for this.” Crumley’s hero, C. W. Sughrue, is a Vietnam veteran who is much too old for the violent and perverse and substance-abusing antics to which he gets up. One of the pleasures of private eye novels is the way the hero outwits the bad guys. Violence may be necessary at times, but the primary weapon wielded by Sam Spade and Lew Archer and Easy Rawlins is intelligence. Sughrue, however, is not smart. He’s just there, clueless but along for the ride.

Rainbow

Covid took a toll on me a couple of weeks ago. It had an emotional effect, bringing me down, making me testy and negative, seeing the world in a dim light. But my natural optimism is returning, and having kids home over the weekend helped. I went out for Chinese takeout Saturday evening, and on my way home, spotted this rainbow at the end of Elm Street.

A rainbow was glowing from the direction of the Hudson River Saturday evening in downtown Glens Falls.