Aww, poor wittle babyfaced wapist

After the ridiculously inadequate sentencing of convicted rapist Brock Turner, and the arguments from his father and friends that the poor wittle babyfaced wapist certainly shouldn’t have his life and his appetite for his dad’s steak ruined just because of that “20 minutes of action” when he raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster in front of witnesses, can we dispense of this pernicious nonsense of loudly regretting a convicted criminal’s dashed athletic career as if it were some kind of national fucking tragedy that the world is deprived of an above-average swimmer?

This happens so often when a college athlete commits a crime. When former football prodigy Daniel Holtzclaw was convicted of raping a bunch of women, there was this notorious article (the website deleted the article and fired some people responsible) that ladled all this pathos on the fact that the guy’s sports promise was dashed, with nobody bothering to interview the women he raped, who probably faced some dashed promises of their own due to what this man did to them. The Washington Post (which you think would know better) had a headline last week that labeled Turner as an “All-American-swimmer” and listed his swimming achievements. Because that’s what’s relevant when a man rapes an unconscious woman.

This is the fault of incompetent editors who let this clichéd tripe through and also the fault of bored, hacky writers who buy into the faux poetry of the athlete who (cue violins) will never play again. O, pity the poor felon who will never do another backstroke!

It’s not like this guy got struck down by a disease that we can build a weepy TV movie around; that would be something deserving of sympathy. Turner, however, is not. His career is harmed because of something he chose to do: Rape an unconscious woman. Grade D reporters vomit out clichés like “But his extraordinary yet brief swim career is now tarnished, like a rusting trophy” but it’s this guy’s own goddamn fault and you can’t sugarcoat the ugliness of what he did with some Vogon-level poetry. 

Sorry, who is this guy again? A college swimmer? It’s not as if compounding this rape is the fact that we will be deprived of Turner’s future cure for cancer; at most the world will be deprived of some swimming records. And while it’s a monumental tragedy that the Olympic team may lose out on his skills, Team USA will just have to go out and recruit some swimmers who are not convicted rapists. Sad day.

The woman he raped deserves all the sympathy here and if someone wants to write an article about someone with actual problems after “20 minutes of action,” write one about her. “Why? Why him?” asks Turner’s mother. The answer is not that rape chose Turner, it’s that Turner chose rape. If this guy didn’t want to have to register as a sex offender and lose his swimming career, he shouldn’t have made the choice to rape an unconscious woman.