THE PLAYGROUND BULLIES WHO NOW DOMINATE SPORTS MEDIA
posted 7/24/2018
by Kristine Erickson
On July 23, 2018, I emailed the open letter from Luke Heimlich’s parents to some columnists and sports bloggers who had recently published articles that condemned Luke. Some of those articles had virtually threatened any Major League Baseball general manager who might consider signing him. The following article by Whitney McIntosh, an SBNation blogger, is a typical example: Dayton Moore’s comments about Luke Heimlich are irresponsible and infuriating.
I had emailed Whitney once before, on July 10, to send her a link to justiceforluke.com after I launched the website. Apparently my second email was too much for a junior high playground bully to tolerate. She responded by sending me a link to the following tweet, which had been broadcast to the world by Marc Normandin, SBNation MLB Editor, on May 16.
When I opened Whitney’s F-bomb email in the middle of my work day at a construction office on the Seattle waterfront, I nearly dropped the phone. I thought, obviously Whitney either didn’t read anything on my website or she thinks it’s a fake that was created for PR purposes. So I sent the following message to her from my personal Twitter account. After the mortar shell she had just lobbed into my inbox, I admit I wasn’t very nice about it.
Clearly I overestimated Whitney’s humanity. A short while later, I discovered she was ridiculing me in a side conversation with Liz Roscher, a Yahoo Sports blogger. So I jumped into their conversation with the following message. (The tag line on Whitney’s Twitter account says her grandma once called her a sweetheart. Hence my comment.)
When I returned a bit later to capture a screenshot of the conversation, I discovered the added comments. One of Whitney’s fanboys applauds her, and she takes a bow. In the world of junior high playground bullies, she’s queen for a day. She executed the most effective assault on a lesser mortal. She won the internet today.
That evening I scrolled back through Whitney’s side conversations to find the same time frame, and I found the following lovely message to her from Liz Roscher.
While I was scrolling to find those comments, I stumbled across the following interchange, which shows how useless it is to attempt to have an adult conversation with these people.
As I was writing this page, I went online to find Marc Normandin’s May 16 tweet, and I discovered I’m now blocked from even viewing his account. What perfect proof that these playground bullies can dish it out but can’t take it. A couple of tweets from a 65-year-old woman and he retreated to his stronghold and pulled up the drawbridge. Fortunately I already had the screenshot I had embedded in my tweet.
These are some of the people who have spent a year carpet bombing the Heimlich family. They certainly care nothing about the ‘molested child’ they pretend to be defending. They don’t care that the media exposure caused my friends’ granddaughter to become the main topic of conversation in her grade school. They don’t care that they have all invaded her privacy for life. They don’t care that she will be suffering collateral damage from the horrendous exposure for years to come. My dear friends, their son, and their granddaughter are nothing but a clickbait gold mine for these bullies.
Well, I have built a little platform in the middle of their junior high playground, and I’m taking on all comers. I may not succeed in getting the world to see the real human being who is Luke Heimlich, but perhaps I can at least get good people to see the inhuman beings who now dominate our Great American Pastime.