Posted on 08/25/2016 6:59:09 AM PDT by Kaslin
Man, that Ryan Lochte, what a jerk! Am I right? Of course I’m right. It’s backed up by journalism. There isn’t a news outlet on the planet that hasn’t carried a story about how Lochte and three other swimmers no one bothers to name got hammered at the Rio Olympics, trashed a bathroom at a gas station, and traumatized innocent security guards, women, children, and plant life alike.
But what if it didn’t happen that way? What if, with the exception of a few minor details flubbed in a drunken haze, Lochte and his fellow mermen told the truth?
That might seem far-fetched. After all, media luminaries such as Matt Lauer and Al Roker slammed Lochte as a liar. Lochte himself admitted to lying. It’s true; we saw it in the media. Or did we?
The story begins after the swimmers were done with their events. Friends hit the town, as anyone would, and had a few (maybe a few too many) adult beverages. If you think you wouldn’t seek to blow off some steam and have a little fun after going through what it takes to become an Olympic champion, you’re lying to yourself.
None of this was illegal; none of it was wrong.
As anyone who’s had a few drinks can imagine, on the way back to their rooms, the swimmers had to pee. This is where the media narrative goes off the rails.
You know the story – they kicked in a door, trashed the bathroom, smashed the mirror and knocked the soap dispenser off the wall. Total jackasses. Right? Right?
That’s the story the Rio police chief spun, and after a day of running with the “we were robbed” narrative, the media immediately flipped and took his word as if he’d just returned form Mt. Sinai.
Lochte immediately became the villain, the traumatizer of innocent Brazilians, the drunk jerk. He lost his sponsor and became the butt of jokes.
But what if he was telling the truth? What if the police lied?
Although 99 percent of the media did what the media always does – get a narrative and run with it – one team did actual journalism. What it discovered not only exposed how the US swimmers were telling the truth, but also how lazy and horrible the American media has become.
USA Today’s sports editor, David Meeks, and reporter Taylor Barnes actually went to the gas station, looked for damage, talked to witnesses and reviewed surveillance videos. What they discovered by simply asking questions, something journalists used to do, was what Lochte and the others told officials actually happened.
They found no damage to the bathroom – the mirror and soap dispensers were still intact or had been replaced not by new equipment but filthy, old equipment complete with crusty old soap. The door was old and undamaged, not kicked in.
Through actual journalism, the USA Today team saw all the surveillance videos, and even though the bathroom door was in frame, there is no footage of the swimmers entering, exiting or kicking it. Unable to gain entry to the bathroom, they’d relieved themselves behind the building, then went back to their cab. That’s when it gets interesting.
A security guard, who the paper discovered was either a prison guard or off-duty cop moonlighting (no one will say which), stopped the car by flashing his badge. He did pull his gun and point it at the swimmers. This is the only place Lochte’s story deviates from what the actual evidence says.
Lochte reported the gun was put to his forehead. It wasn’t. It was pointed at him, according to the USA Today, at a distance of about 5 feet. That’s it.
So there’s zero evidence these men, who were drunk, did any damage except allegedly to a poster on the side of the building. For that alleged “crime,” which no one witnessed, they were “charged” a wad of cash by the guard while held at gunpoint. If that isn’t a robbery, what is?
If this isn’t a smear campaign by a lazy media more interested in a scandal than the truth, what is?
Lochte did not come across as someone you’d want to date your sister or be on your team in a trivial contest. But that doesn’t make him a monster. The media took that vibe he gives off, one they helped foster, and used it against him.
Nearly everyone with a media credential from a major news outlet in the United States was in Rio. So you spend the month before the Olympics telling us how corrupt this police force is, but only one media outlet bothers to check a story spoon-fed them by the chief of that force? Now we know the swimmers were never, not once, questioned about the alleged vandalism. Weird, right?
But the narrative already had been chosen by the media – Lochte is an arrogant jerk, party boy – so why bother seeing if he was telling the truth before ruining his life? And ruin his life they did.
Lochte lost all his sponsors, all his income, because the media found a story that was too good to check.
Rather than do journalism, or even report the truth after having gotten the facts wrong, the media simply spins on.
On Tuesday, long after the initial USA Today piece exposed the truth, ABC Radio News was sticking with its “Lochte trashed the place” story. No other outlet bothered to retract or even re-examine its “reporting.” The story is set. Lochte is screwed. The world has rolled on.
Time posts Stephen Colbert mocking him. Left-wing blogs moronically claim Lochte is the beneficiary of “white privilege,” Democratic Party stenographers at the Huffington Post asked the all-important question: Is Lochte a Trump supporter?
These people are idiots. More importantly, they are evil.
They don’t know the truth; they haven’t bothered to seek it out. They know the narrative, and the narrative is enough. Americans suck, and Ryan Lochte is an American who is a wealthy white guy, so screw him. Truth be damned.
Ryan Lochte may well be a jerk, but the evidence shows he’s not lying here. The so-called journalists smearing him are.
They’ve ruined him. They have their pelt. They can pin it to the wall next to other people they’ve decided need to be destroyed simply because they felt like it.
Remember Justine Sacco? You shouldn’t, but you’ve probably heard of her. She was a PR professional who’d tweeted a stupid joke about AIDS before hopping on a plane to South Africa. By the time she landed, joyless progressive journalists had turned her into history’s greatest monster. She not only was the target of intense hatred over that joke, she lost her job. All because this person no one had ever heard of did something that upset progressive sensibilities.
How about Lindsey Stone? She posted a picture of herself flipping the bird and fake-yelling at a “Silence and Respect” sign at Arlington Cemetery. She was just an anonymous person going about her business, making a joke countless thousands of people have in locations around the world, and her life was turned upside-down by the media because of it. She lost her job too, thanks to “outrage” drummed up by journalists manufacturing a story out of boredom.
Journalists don’t do journalism anymore. They recite press releases. They used to dig for stories. Now they have “scoops” handed to them because they can be trusted to spout the narrative. Journalists used to demand answers for the American people. Now they can’t even be bothered to file Freedom of Information Act requests to demand accountability from left-wing politicians.
How many scandals involving the Obama administration or Hilary Clinton’s time as secretary of state came about through dogged investigative journalism compared to information discovered by Citizens United or Judicial Watch? What’s the ratio there, 100 to1? Higher?
Even when journalists are there on the scene, like they were in Rio, the idea of venturing beyond the safe space of the narrative is a bridge too far. Smear first, retract (maybe) later. Why check the biggest story of the day when the narrative is so juicy? If the media can do it to an Olympic swimmer, or people know one has ever heard of, they can (and try) do it to politicians. What’s to stop them from doing it to you if you find yourself on the wrong side of their narrative? The answer is simple: nothing is stopping them.
Ryan Lochte’s former sponsors should retract their dismissals of him. He did no more than anyone would have after four years’ work culminated in a gold metal. Speedo, Ralph Lauren, and the others have a chance to tell the pimps of narrative to go to hell, to show the world truth matters and lazy journalism won’t be allowed to ruin another person.
That might be too much to ask from corporations terrified of a progressive mob that would throw its own mothers under a bus for political advantage. But if they won’t stand up for the truth, why should anyone buy their products?
(Seriously, read this USA Today story and see if any of the verified story jibes with what you’ve heard from the mainstream media. They destroyed a man simply because they were lazy, simply because they could. Disgusting.)
Okay. I understand you thinking he is blameless in this and just an innocent American abroad. I’ve been all over this world in ‘hostile’ places and I know common sense is your best defense. If he didn’t, shame on him. It’s probably because he’s been treated as some kind of special elite - I don’t know. But I’m gonna go to sleep tonight and I won’t be thinking about him and his plight one bit.
He lied when he walked back the story. What he originally said turned out to be true.
That he lied to help get his teammates out of the Hostage crises they found themselves in, I don't blame him.
A lot of people would be willing to walk back what they originally said if it gets their friends out of the clutches of a corrupt police department in a South American third world sewer.
It’s not just him. It’s also the three others with him, who will always be tarred with the same story, even if they only sat in the car.
Media radioactivity affects everyone nearby, also.
In other words, you do not want to respond to the valid points I raised which call into question your bias and rush to judgement.
I understand. Were I in your shoes, I too would prefer to let the matter drop.
I understand. But it isn’t like they didn’t know what kind of person he is. There is more to all this we are likely never to know.
Regardless, Rio was over and done Sunday and the next spectacle is four years from now.
Ryan Lochte is GUILTY! He should never get another endorsement in his life. Although he didn’t beat up his girlfriend, or thug around, he is guilty of the worst offense imaginable! He is White!
No, there is no judgment to make here. It is done damage and all. I’m not one to belabor the senseless torture of useless facts and/or here say trivia promulgated by the ‘media.’
I'd say the point is that the media ran with a supposedly false narrative initially because it was sexy, then they got an even sexier narrative with a real villain so they ran with that. In neither case did they do basic fact checking. Facts could only hurt the salaciousness of the story.
In other words, the big network news operations and the major newspapers are no better than Perez Hilton, TMZ, or a supermarket tabloid now.
With his friends and teammates being held for Ransom by the Corrupt Brazilian police Department/Government.
I would have told them "I was the second gunman on the grassy knoll" if that's what it took to get them to release their hostages.
In the USA, we do not accept coerced confessions or testimony. We do not accept it because people will lie to make the pain or threat go away.
I have come to believe that many black people, and especially in Media industries, *HATE* white people and will occasionally burst out with evidence of their long simmering resentment.
They *WANT* to believe that they are being oppressed, and they want to celebrate when they perceive some whitey getting his "deserved" comeuppance.
It will take longer than that, but you've got the direction she would "lead" us absolutely right.
‘elite idolizers’
We used to call people who worked hard and rose to the top of their field “exceptional,”—in this case, an ‘exceptional American.’
Leftists have taken over now, though, and personal accomplishment is frowned upon. What about all those participants who didn’t win a gold medal? How do you think they feel?
Better to give everyone who makes it to the Olympics a ‘participation trophy,’ and do away with medals altogether. That would certainly solve your ‘elitist,’ problem, wouldn’t it?
With rare exceptions they are all there for that one big thing. One might even compare it to ghetto basketball participants who are striving for the same kind of thing.
I’m old, for sure and I remember what Olympics were and what they are now. Having been through the Olympics in 1996 in Atlanta (I even worked in the Olympic Village zone - I still have the badge somewhere), I’ve seen the spectacle first hand. Hardly Americans of my younger days for sure.
Did Lochte really say he made it up? I thought he said he should have been more candid.
Compare and contrast with the coverage of Usain Bolt, who literally has been in non-stop party mode since he won his final Medal.
Lochte wasn’t given the option of being born and raised in bygone days. Unless he was homeschooled by Christian parents, he almost certainly attended a liberal dominated achool, watched liberal dominated media, and likely had liberal peers.
Yet somehow he managed to excell, and become one of the best swimmers in the world. That is a testimony to his hard work and drive—things conservatives used to admire, or at least respect.
You keep creating your fantasy version of this icon of amateurism and sport. I won’t stop you. Just don’t ask me to swallow all the horsesh!t.
I read the autobiography of an Olympic class show jumper. The drinking he and his mates did after every major show was mind boggling. Needless to say, it wasn’t what I was expecting, when I ordered the book all the way from England.
So Lochte wasn’t raised in a liberal dominated culture? He didn’t work hard?
Link, please,that he was homeschooled by conservatives. And how about a link revealing that he wins by magic, as opposed to by hard work and skill.
Why do you bother? Who cares? We see what he is and how he reacted. You have some prior beef with me that is causing you to take a contrarian position is my only guess because I remember you. That’s okay, but you offer no example either.
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