WHOM DID IT HURT?
So for every Friday for weeks now, I've been able--just for a day--to devote my blog to some sports stuff--specifically, predicting football games.  I did that because--well, I just enjoy it, and I know many people with Moebius Syndrome or connected to it enjoy sports and follow football (just like other people--and that's something good to remember:  in so many ways, persons with Moebius are just like anybody else), and sometimes it's fun just to do something or talk about something that's not always so serious once in a while.

But this week, no football (though don't worry--I'll do the Super Bowl next week); but still, what I want to do from now on is still, on Fridays, use this blog space to talk about something to do with sports, and maybe it will be serious, or maybe it won't; maybe it will have a Moebius tie-in, or maybe not.  But that's what I want to do.

But this week the topic is a slightly serious one.  I wanted to throw something out there--echo something someone else has said, really--about this Manti Teo story.  Most of you have probably heard something about it.  And really, what does strike me about it is just this:  why all the anger?  Who exactly did this guy HURT???  Why all the condemnation being sent his way?  I do think there's an analogy to Moebius here.  Because you know, sometimes, ordinary folks sometimes seem irritated with persons who have Moebius Syndrome, too.  I've seen it.  You maybe have, too.  Some people don't like being around us.  They seem a bit tense or nervous when we're around.  I've always thought that this has something to do with the fact that some people have a hard time being around someone with a physical difference.  It bothers them.  They're not used to it.  They'd rather believe that everyone looks "normal."  They can only handle "normal."  They only want to see "normal."  So they don't like being around us, perhaps  (fortunately a lot of people are NOT like this).  But the question could be asked:  how am I hurting you?  Who do we hurt by looking different, being different?  Nobody.  Same with Manti Teo.  Here--here is the column I read that struck this note for me; it's written by an excellent columnist named Mitch Albom:

"It is a love triangle for the 21st Century: a real man, a fake woman and a bunch of Internet impostors. Still, I do not understand the anger directed at Notre Dame senior linebacker Manti Te'o. Whom did he hurt?

Yes, it is a bizarre story. As a freshman, Te'o says, he establishes a Facebook relationship with someone he believes is an attractive young woman named Lennay Kekua. He says he falls in love. He never actually sees Lennay, although he speaks to someone he believes to be her on the phone, comforts her when he believes she is ill and mourns her loss when he believes she is dead.
OK. As I said, bizarre. But not entirely without precedent. Centuries ago, people who never met courted through letters. Friends have been made through pen pals. Jailhouse romances blossom through correspondence.
Such things rarely get attention. And neither would Manti Te'o -- had we in the news media not insisted on turning him into a folk hero.
After all, there is no obligation for a Notre Dame football player to have his private life become a national conversation. Yet news that Te'o lost his girlfriend on the same day his grandmother died (the grandmother part is true) was too good to resist.
So Te'o was immediately asked about his heartbreak. He expressed grief over national television. People were moved. And the hero-making machinery was revved to full throttle.

The angst of being a 21-year-old

It is that machinery that is most angry. Sports Illustrated's Stewart Mandel wrote this Saturday:
"If Te'o truly wants to clear the air, he needs to sit down in front of a camera. He needs to show emotion, and he needs to show remorse. ... Many of his fans and followers still feel betrayed. He needs to apologize for his part in embellishing and perpetuating the myth of Kekua."
Really? Why? What does it matter? Did he take money from those fans? What did "the myth of Kekua" do except momentarily interest people? And we in the news media perpetuated it as much as he did.
Yes, it's strange that reporters might now require proof of existence for a dead loved one. But if you want to bang your fist, shouldn't it hit the table of the people who invented this fake woman, kept this hoax going, made up phony relatives and even phony details about a funeral? What kind of sick minds consider that fun?
Te'o, by nearly all accounts, apparently was duped for at least most of this affair. The fact that he may have learned about the deception days or weeks before publicly admitting it -- or that he lied to his father about once meeting the woman -- is regrettable, but not a crime. I imagine he was embarrassed. Ashamed. He had become almost legendary in a single season. Asking a 21-year-old to immediately and voluntarily undo that is unrealistic, even if it would have been more ethical.
But whom did he hurt? What did he take? Why should any of us be that involved in the love life of a 21-year-old stranger in the first place?
"I wasn't faking it," ESPN quoted Te'o as saying during a long, off-camera interview Friday. "I wasn't part of this."
Why do we all need to be?

A different world of romance

There is actually a much bigger issue here. In a computer world, people can portray themselves not as who they are, but who they want to be, and fall in love with others doing the same. It's as if our shadows are real and our real selves only a dark reflection.
Te'o is not the only victim of such ruses, which carry the nickname "catfishing." MTV already has a reality show about it. A "reality" show about being fake. If that's not an irony for our time, I don't know what is.
I feel sorry for Te'o -- not over this news media hailstorm (which will be over soon) but because he referred to his relationship with Lennay in a released statement as "what I thought to be an authentic relationship."
It's not authentic when you don't even meet. Nobody kept Te'o from visiting Lennay over the years, or insisting on seeing her -- long before he became a household name. Yet young people today live in such a virtual world, some actually consider romance a body-less enterprise.
Te'o said he would sleep with his phone next to him, his "girlfriend" on the line, which is sad, but still better than a college star who sleeps with lots of real women, then leaves them. Anyhow, it doesn't warrant such righteous anger. We are way too infatuated with other people's stories. Is it any wonder people keep embellishing them?"

"If you don't stick to your values when they are being tested, they're not values; they're hobbies."--Jon Stewart.