ESPN Scribe to Haiti: Drop Dead

Photo by Flickr user <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/dantaylor/3395261666/" target="_blank">Dan Taylor</a> under Creative Commons

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Until this week, Paul Shirley had built a nice career for himself as the globetrotting basketball player with a gift for writing. He’d published a well received first book about his benchwarming endeavors and parlayed his candid, down-to-earth style into a semiregular column at ESPN.com. That all changed on Tuesday, when Shirley, writing on his group blog, published a—let’s just say contrarian—take on the situation in Haiti. “I do not know if what I’m about to write makes me a monster,” he began. And then he very deliberately eliminated whatever doubts we might have had. Here’s a taste:

Dear Haitians –
First of all, kudos on developing the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Your commitment to human rights, infrastructure, and birth control should be applauded.

As we prepare to assist you in this difficult time, a polite request: If it’s possible, could you not re-build your island home in the image of its predecessor? Could you not resort to the creation of flimsy shanty- and shack-towns? And could some of you maybe use a condom once in a while? 

The response was swift: Sports Illustrated‘s Seth Davis called Shirley a “dumbass,” which is a little uncouth but we can’t really argue with it. And yesterday, ESPN released a statement announcing it had severed its ties with Shirley.
 

I won’t get into refuting Shirley’s logic because I really don’t think MoJo readers need to be convinced (read this or this for a quick take on why Haiti really is our problem). But his argument, coming as it did from a guy not usually seen as a bomb-thrower, is worth combatting for a larger reason: It’s simply a more immediately jarring version of the argument made by CNBC’s Rick Santelli and, most recently, South Carolina’s Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer. Specifically, that people (“stray animals,” in Bauer parlance) who have hit a rough patch, or were simply born into a tough situation, should be shunned by their neighbors lest we encourage them to continue being poor. It’s a worldview ripped straight out of the pages of Ayn Randof whom Shirley has written glowingly in the past.

Pat Robertson has gotten an avalanche of criticism for his comments on Haiti. But realistically, we’ve come to expect such buffoonery from Robertson. In 2010, comments like Shirley’s (or Santelli’s, or Bauer’s) are far more toxic to the public debate.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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