Ugh. I get the whole innocent until proven guilty bit (and, to be fair, Shawn Oakman was found not guilty) but Ken Starr raising money for a Baylor athlete’s defense fund after presiding over the school’s lack of support for sexual assault and Title IX-related accusations (which, to be fair again, cost Starr his presidency there) isn’t a good look. At all.
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Get The Picture · Bloviation for the Dawgnation
Get The Picture 
People do bad things.
Those bad things end up in print.
Said bad actors whine about being targeted by a media conspiracy.
Rinse and repeat.
The goal is to exhaust revulsion? Idk
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Bluto. The kid was found not guilty.
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Something which I noted in my post.
If you think Ken Starr is a noble crusader for justice, more power to you, brother.
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Do you think he would have been found not guilty without Starr’s money?
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How would I know and why should I care?
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I think Ken Starr is a douchebag for all sorts of reasons. But the kid was found not guilty. That means he’s NOT GUILTY. You can’t have it both ways.
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What am I trying to have both ways?
Starr suppressed investigations about sexual assault and helped rig the process at Baylor, but now we’re supposed to think he’s a great guy for having a fund raiser to burnish his personal image? Fuck that noise.
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You mean it is hypocrisy to raise money for a cause that in the end is justifiable because you have a personal agenda, too? I get that. Ken Starr is not a great guy. I don’t like Starr. Met him in the 80s. He’s a jerk. I’m not defending him. But you’re acting like Starr raised money to defend a guilty man when the man was found not guilty.
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No, I’m not.
I’m saying Starr looks bad caring about a football player’s fate while completely ignoring — indeed, contributing to the problem through deliberately bad management — festering sexual assault problems infesting the school he ran. I’m not sure why you’re having so much trouble understanding the difference.
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I would think Starr raising money to obtain legal council for a falsely accused black man that couldn’t afford to mount a vigorous defense is a pretty good look.
All the “rich, white guy” stuff and the “poor, exploited black atheletes that can’t afford a pizza” stuff I see around here, and then you bash a rich white guy helping out a poor black kid?
That young man could be sitting behind bars right now, falsely accused by some drunk sorority girl. He already had his professional playing career taken from him.
I guess I need to go re-read To Kill A Mockingbird from the perspective of the #metoo movement.
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“Not guilty” doesn’t mean innocent of wrong doing. This wasn’t a shakedown. A DA saw enough to go to trial. Two other Baylor football players were found guilty. The shit that happened at Baylor was bad enough that Baylor, a private school, would not let Pepper Hamilton submit its final report in writing. Oral presentations only.
Starr can raise money to defend a football player but can’t get off his ass as university president to deal with a massive sexual assault issue on campus: bad look.
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Mike Nifong saw enough to take the Duke lacrosse team to trial.
The fact that two other players were found guilty is not a reflection on whether or not this young man was guilty, unless you abide by “they are all that way” thinking. Every situation is it’s own.
If anything, the article points out that Starr was motivated to help this kid by the belief that the last young man was wrongfully convicted because he couldn’t mount a vigorous defense and didn’t want to see it happen again.
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Show me a shred of evidence that this DA, answerable to voters in McClennan, TX, bears any similarity to Nifong. You can’t. Nifong was out in front of cameras rendering his verdict well prior to the investigation even being completed. He manipulated evidence. And then he got disbarred and went to jail.
The two prior guilties have no effect on my opinion on Oakman. Starr Absolutely.
Getting guilty verdicts in these cases is really hard. The fact that two women did get guilty verdicts without an ounce of effort on Baylor’s part when those events were brought to Baylor admins is pretty damning.
The idea that all these players (and hence Starr and Briles and Ian) are innocent, victims of some invisible conspiracy of Baylor co-eds, McClennan County prosecutors, and media people to take down Baylor football is just laughable nonsense.
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There are a shitload of impoverished criminal defendants that he could have provided his support to. The only one he chose to help was accused of the very crime to which in turned a blind eye while university president. THAT is why it was a bad look for him; it can be interpreted as his attempt to prove campus rape did not occur on his watch.
A better look for him, if he wants to get into the civil liberties field, would be a fundraiser for someone accused of marijuana laws violations.
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Exactly.
Those of you defending Starr’s nobility in this comment thread are wildly missing the point.
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Thats not entirely correct.
Starr ordered an internal investigation into how the school and athletic department was handling sexual assault claims in August of 2015.
Upon receiving that report, Starr recommended the Board of Regents obtain an outside, independent investigation by Pepper Hamilton in September of 2015.
Oakman was not arrested for the sexual assault/rape charge until April of 2016.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion that Starr is a bad fellow. Perhaps he is, I don’t really know the fellow, maybe you guys play bridge with him, I don’t know.
But I disagree with your premise that he should have stood by and watched a falsely accused student go to prison for years on a rape charge.
That’s my opinion. We can agree to disagree, surely.
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If you honestly believe Starr was motivated by anything other than a personal agenda, then you haven’t followed his career closely enough.
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I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand—and I know this is going to shock some of you—I’m no fan of Ken Starr’s, and I agree with your assessment that this is more about rehabbing his public image than anything else.
On the other hand, it’s refreshing to see that Ken Starr’s obsession with presenting a pious public image is finally benefiting someone other than Ken Starr. And compared to the malfeasance and hypocrisy he’s exhibited throughout his career, this barely raises a blip on my radar.
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I’m not contending there is a conspiracy, I’m countering the argument that because a DA decided to go to trial, that there had to be substantial evidence.
You point out the the DA answers to voters. If you are the DA running for office, in the midst of this sh*t-storm do you think you are:
A) Inclined to take anything to trial to cover your own ass
Or
B) Inclined to forego trials because you think they lack evidence
Obviously, with a high profile defendant and the charged environment, the DA is going to take ANYTHING to trial that a grand jury will return an indictment on. It’s CYA, let the jury decide then nobody can say the DA didn’t take it seriously.
As for the rest, it’s Starr’s contention he was not made aware of the allegations until 2015, at which time he ordered an internal investigation, which upon reviewing he recommended to the Board of Regents that they seek an independent, external investigation resulting in the hiring of Pepper Hamilton.
Briles seemed to confirm Starr’s position that allegations were not being reported to Starr. Briles, himself said that he “delegated down, and I know I shouldn’t have. And I had a system where I was the last to know, and I should have been the first to know,” indicating they even he wasn’t handling the allegations.
I have no doubt sh*t wasn’t handled properly at Baylor. But to lambast Starr for helping raise money for a young man, who was wrongly accused as ruled by a jury that heard the very facts of the case, after he had been fired and no longer had any vested interest in the University as a “personal agenda” and “not a good look”, is incorrect in my opinion.
Any time a wrongly accused individual is vindicated, it’s a good thing. If justice was facilitated by Starr helping the young man afford competent representation, then that’s a good thing too.
The streets are lined with minorities that never got a fair shake in court that believe our country is corrupt and our justice system is prejudiced. If this instance help rectify that, it’s a good look indeed.
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