Author Of Victim-Blaming Column Apologizes, Declines To Apologize Sufficiently

On April 12th, we were all treated to an 800-word  victim-blaming turdfest that surely ranks as one of the worst professionally-written pieces of sportswriting in the history of the medium. A week later, the author, John Steigerwald, takes a wistful look back.

Nowhere in my column did I suggest that Bryan Stow deserved the beating.

Nor did I "blame" him for the beating.

No dude, the thing is -- and this was the part we all thought was really wild -- you did!

Maybe someone can ask Stow, if he ever comes out of his coma, why he thought it was a good idea to wear Giants' gear to a Dodgers' home opener when there was a history of out-of-control drunkenness and arrests at that event going back several years.

That, from Steigerwald's first article, is victim-blaming; of that there can be no doubt. Sometimes, people who write on a daily basis write things they later come to regret. Even if we don't all understand how this happens, we may as well collectively acknowledge that it happens, and a writer ought to be able to own up to his mistake and unconditionally apologize for it.

Maybe, if I had done a better job of writing, my words would not have been so easily misconstrued - preconceived notions or not.

"Someone mis-labeled the keys on my typewriter" is the closest I can come to a plausible explanation. This wasn't an error of word selection or syntax, it was an error in moral judgment. Steigerwald argues that national readers who weren't familiar with his writing were reading the piece out of context; whether or not he realizes it, the point he is arguing here is not a terribly flattering one.

It isn't worth dwelling on any of this for too long, but we've encountered a piece of writing so offensive that a conditional apology won't suffice.

I never dreamed anybody who knew Brian Stow would read those words, and they wouldn't have if it hadn't gone viral.

Dear John Steigerwald: Internet. Signed, Internet.

(Link via Jimmy Traina)