USC’s Boobgate… the scandal that wasn’t
May 10, 2006 at 7:45 am in Education
If you’re thinking I wanted to update you on the USC Boobgate “scandal” just so I could post this censored picture, you would only be half right.
It turns out that a USC student’s blog, “The Cardinal Martini”, is the source that led the news media to find out about a USC Professor had posted topless photos of herself on the internet. In addition, the blog itself is dedicated to having the professor in question, Dr. Diana York Blaine, fired for supposedly claiming that all male USC students are rapists and openly discriminating against male students in her classes.
However, in yesterday’s comments The Cardinal Martini defended himself and his fellow conservative Trojans from tipping off the media to the photos:
Just for the record we, the “conservative USC students”, didn’t contact the media. An intern or somebody at NBC4 stumbled onto the photos on our blog. I know this because I asked Cary Berglund how he came to learn about the photos.
There are two issues of interest here. The first is of the media trying to create a controversy instead of reporting on one. Secondly, there’s The Cardinal Martini’s charges against Dr. Blaine.
To tackle the issue of a scandal, one only needs to recognize that there was no public discourse about Dr. Blaine’s topless shots ahead of NBC 4′s coverage of the story. In fact, when the station contacted USC Adminstration about the photos not only were they not aware of them, they indicated that as long as they were on Blaine’s personal website, they weren’t concerned. Even with NBC 4′s efforts there appears to be no public outcry over the photos… except of course from the guys at The Cardinal Martini. Which makes me wonder – did Cary Berglund at NBC 4 have an agenda when pursuing this story, or were they just hoping to make news instead of reporting it?
As for “CardMart’s” repeated and insistent claim that Dr. Blaine has said that all male USC students are rapists, there is no such direct quote. The line CardMart insists means the same thing comes from an op-ed piece in the Daily Trojan where she said:
So if a few bad eggs don’t respect women’s right to decide if to have sex with them, why should I hold the whole football team accountable? Because I do. Because I hold every single male on this campus responsible. Because every single male on this campus has the responsibility for stopping rape. Every fraternity brother, every science major, every professor, every one of them.
Between this and the nudie shots are a half dozen other reasons why the Cardinal Martini believes Dr. Blaine is unsuitable to remain a USC Professor, and you can read a summary here. The evidence for the other charges is equally compelling. I’ll reserve my opinion on the validity of their claims til later, if only because it might give me an excuse to post even more topless photos on this site.
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