With the big game on tap today in South Bend—which is hereby dubbed “Catholics v. Sponsored by Should-be Convicts”—it’s an especially good time to talk about how extremely shameful and dystopian it is that The Ohio State University continues to plaster the name of Jeffrey Epstein’s sponsor and confidante Les Wexner all over its campus and the City of Columbus, including on its hospitals and its football complex.
Whatever else can be inferred, argued, or established about Wexner’s involvement in Epstein’s child-sex- trafficking and sexual-blackmail operations, it’s indisputable that Epstein was for a long period of time Wexner’s closest advisor, and that Wexner was effectively Epstein’s sponsor, having paid (or given) him hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of their relationship and providing him the material support for everything he did. Wexner purchased Epstein’s vast New Albany mansion (which was next door to Wexner’s) and his $70-million Manhattan townhouse where many of Epstein’s victims are alleged to have been abused. Epstein also used his relationship with Wexner to lure his victims in with promises of lucrative modeling jobs and other positions within Wexner’s empire. And according to Whitney Webb’s excellent “One Nation Under Blackmail”—which is probably the best source on the relationship between Wexner and Epstein—“Epstein’s entry into Wexner’s world would dramatically alter [Wexner’s] behavior as well as his public profile. For instance, Wexner began dying his hair, hiring a live-in personal trainer, and began dressing differently soon after Epstein came into his life, adopting a new style of clothing that Wexner’s coleagues reportedly began to call ‘chairman’s casual.’”
Webb’s book also notes that Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell “trawled high-end art galleries and auction houses for pretty ‘gallerinas’ to meet Jeffrey Epstein,” and quotes a former friend of Maxwell’s as saying, “The art world is full of pretty young girls and many of them are young and broke.” “It is worth explicitly noting,” Webb adds,” that Maxwell engaged in these activities on Epstein’s behalf while Wexner, Epstein’s principal benefactor, was on the Soetheby’s board [and was also a part-owner of Sotheby’s] and while his close friend, Alfred Taubman, controlled the auction house.”
Even a whitewashed 2021 Vanity Fair profile acknowledged that “Epstein used the money and legitimacy his work for Wexner and others afforded him to bring about unspeakable human suffering.”
Anyone with even surface-level understanding about even just the aspects of Wexner’s relationship with Epstein that are beyond debate should be revolted by the fact that this man’s name is honored on any public building anywhere on earth, let alone plastered on half the public buildings in Ohio’s state capital. Anyone with even a remotely realistic view of the world we live in would have to call this an especially grotesque and telling example of the contradictions that will manifest in a supposedly “free country” that’s authorized increasingly out-of-control elements of its government to lie to, spy on, keep secrets from, conduct psychological warfare on, and even sexually blackmail its own citizens (and presidents!) for seventy-five years and counting. Even if we can’t undo all that in a snap of a finger, you’d think we could at least maintain a modicum of decorum by removing the name of Jeffrey Epstein’s most prominent benefactor from our public buildings.
Finally, if you remain unconvinced by the above, it should also be pointed out (as much as a lot of you really aren’t going to want to hear this) that things have really taken a dive for Ohio State’s football program since news of the Epstein scandal broke in 2019. A 1-3 record in the college football playoff, zero national championships, and worst of all a 1-2 record against Michigan.
Job # 110582
FB Akron game, Les Wexner dotting the I in Script Ohio
SEP 3, 2011
The Ohio State University
Photo by Dave Alkire for OSU Photo Services
Last year, the Haslams gave Deshaun Watson an unprecedented guaranteed contract worth $230 million and the NFL retaliated against them mercilessly for it.
Additionally, there was the heavily astroturfed character assassination campaign against Watson and the franchise that persists today. Despite how thin and apparently retaliatory the accusations against the quarterback are, and that Watson was never charged let alone found guilty of even a single misdemeanor in connection with them, many in the press (see, for example, these self-described “irreverent liberals” at the Defector website) have conclusively pronounced him as “a serial sexual predator” anyway. LeBron’s mentions turn into a sewer of fake accounts every time he tweets a word of support for Deshaun. And even a critical mass of more mainstream NFL voices—this absurd interview that Jason LaCanfora gave to 92.3’s Baskin & Phelps is representative—seem to want to pretend that Watson’s career is over as a result of the suspension. As if a 27-year-old world-class athlete in peak physical condition who’s taken tens of thousands of snaps of football at the highest levels and made three Pro Bowls in his first four seasons in the NFL is somehow going to forget how to play the game. That Mike Vick was able to come back at a Pro Bowl level at age 29 after serving three years in a federal prison for actual crimes, that he actually did commit, then it seems especially safe to assume that Deshaun will be able to shake off the rust as well.
Also admirable, the way the organization has loaded up its roster for this first full season with its new $230 million quarterback. There are nine established Pro Bowlers on this team, including six on the offense which boasts one of the top lines in the league and indisputably the top running back (who has as admirable a family history as any American). The offensive starters who aren’t Pro Bowlers are young first and second-round picks like David Njoku (expected to have a Pro Bowl season himself), Elijah Moore, and Jedrick Wills, and established starters in Ethan Pocic and Donovan Peoples-Jones. And apart from the three Pro Bowlers on the defense, including newly added Za’darius Smith to bookend the league’s top pass-rusher Myles Garrett, the Browns have added at least four other new starters, including Dalvin Tomlinson and Shelby Harris along a dramatically improved defensive line, who are expected to make major contributions in new coordinator Jim Schwartz’s scheme. This is more talent than the post-1999 Browns have ever had on both sides of the ball, and arguably more than even in the Kosar-led “glory days” in the late 1980s. Additionally, the organization heads into this season with as much stability at the head-coaching position since the Kosar/Schottenheimer era.
Which is why it’s somewhat striking to see that most sportsbooks have set the over/under on wins for this season as 9.5. Sure, the AFC North is tough but what’s tougher is to see a nine-win season for this roster as anything other than a disaster. So does this betting market reflect the understandable perception that disastrous seasons are what’s to be expected from the Cleveland Browns until proven otherwise, or is there something more sinister at play here regarding the NFL’s increasingly egregious tendency to engineer sponsor-preferred outcomes?
This is why we watch the games, folks. Especially this year, where it’s Super Bowl or bust for the Browns, and Cleveland against the world in a sense that’s as real and righteous as it gets in today’s NFL. Anyway, best wishes for a safe and happy football season to all.
Thus, with the new NFL season upon us today, I’m issuing this public service announcement in hopes of encouraging more mindful and responsible exercise of this new “power” that’s been conferred on us by our lawmakers, and also in furtherance of the sound and ancient principle that future suffering that can be avoided should be avoided.
First, please note that “legal” is in quotes here mainly as a reminder that what’s lawful on one hand, and what’s safe, right, or good on the other hand, have as little relationship as ever in this nation where not only has all manner of corruption and greed been made “legal,” but where our so-called civilization increasingly prioritizes over anything else the ability for people to be as greedy and corrupt as they want to be no matter what harm they cause to others. Land of the free! Anyway, the point is that no one should assume that those responsible for the sudden widespread legalization and normalization of sports betting have your best interests at heart, and there is in fact plenty of reason to assume the opposite: That they want you to keep you as tied to your screens and as comfortable in your pod as they can make you, and all the better if you’re immiserated and perpetually indebted to them.
Which goes to the importance of The Number One Rule of Sports Betting, which is really the only rule you need to remember about sports betting if you can understand it: This is simply that there are no shortcuts in life, including and especially sports betting, no matter how much you know or think you know about sports. Remember when LeBron said, after he lost to the Mavericks in the NBA Finals in the season after he first left the Cavs, that “all the people who were rooting on [him] to fail [would still] have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today”? Well, that was true then, it’s true now, and it’s especially true when applied to sports betting. In other words, just like rooting against LeBron was never going to be your shortcut to health, wealth, happiness, peace, or respect, neither will sports betting.
If it’s hard for you to accept this idea at first pass, I would urge you to give some thought to two principles that are more or less fundamental to most major religions and codes of ethics and which most people understand and accept to some degree. Those are, as the Hindus call them, karma and dharma.
Most people understand karma as the idea that what goes around comes around, and that a person ends up getting what they deserve in the end one way or another. While this principle might be especially questionable here on Planet Earth in 2023, it also helps explain why some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world are also, at bottom, some of the most miserable. Additionally, many have noted the connection between the notion of a universal law of karma and Newton’s third law of physics, which holds that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The basic idea here is that if you’ve got bad karma coming to you, you’re not going to escape it by betting on sports no matter how much money you might win on your bets. I must submit that anyone who accepts the most basic notions of karma would be an idiot to argue with this.
Relatedly, dharma is a Sanskrit term that translates to “duty,” and refers to the idea that every person is born with certain duties to fulfill to the universe (or the universe’s “creator”), and that fulfilling those duties as they unfold in one’s life is the only means a person has to any lasting happiness, peace, or glory. Importantly, one need not adhere to any particular religion or believe in any particular god or set of gods to derive substantial value from this principle. Rather, all you really need to accept to appreciate the concept of dharma is that you don’t know everything, including exactly why you or anyone was born, or exactly what will happen after you die. From there, it should be a short step to being able to muster at least some measure of respect and gratitude for whatever it is that gave you your life (call it God, a set of gods, a random accident, “the unknown,” or whatever you want). And with that measure of respect and gratitude should come a corresponding obligation to do right by that force (even if you must insist it’s a random accident), or, to put it another way, at least some obligation not to waste your life completely. If you’re a person who denies any such obligation entirely, this post is not for you! The rest should be able to easily accept that whatever duties arise from having been born (in other words, your dharma) can not be escaped by betting on sports, again, no matter how much money you might win at it. To believe otherwise would just be nihilism.
With that all having been made clear, please let me also clarify that this is NOT to suggest that sports betting isn’t fun, or that there aren’t good and natural reasons that people are attracted to it. Of course, if your ancestors didn’t have the drive to take risks you never would have been born. Plus, of course, sports are fun. Being right about sports, also fun, and something that people to this day spend hours waiting on hold to try and do on the radio without getting paid a dime for it. So the chance to get paid to be right about sports at the push of a button? It’s not too hard to understand why sports betting is now estimated to be an 80 billion dollar business. Whatever anyone thinks about it, I don’t suppose it’s necessary to deny that betting on sports, in moderation, can be a fine and rewarding hobby, especially when done in community and fellowship with friends and loved ones, and especially when one bets on the Cleveland Browns to win the Super Bowl. Just please don’t be an idiot and get carried away with it. Thanks and a most blessed American football season to all!
Recent events compel me to again write in defense of Deshaun Watson and to call for a lot more critical thinking about the recent blast of obviously coordinated propaganda from corporate media on this—including last weekend’s HBO “Real Sports” feature, Tuesday’s New York Times report on details from the discovery process in the civil cases recently released by the parties’ attorneys, and yesterday’s announcement by the accusers’ attorney Tony Buzbee, which was uniformly printed by national outlets including ESPN and USA Today without any critical analysis, that he would be adding the Houston Texans organization as a defendant in many of his clients’ two dozen sex-abuse lawsuits against Watson.
It’s disappointing (if unsurprising) to see so many folks taken in by the outrage machine on this because it doesn’t take much deeper of a look to reasonably see this as nothing more than an attorney, Buzbee, increasingly desperate to save his collapsing smear campaign after two grand juries declined to indict Watson based on his clients’ accusations. These accusations are similarly unlikely to hold up in civil court, so Buzbee’s only move is to keep trying to smear Watson in the court of public opinion.
First, it should be noted that the current cycle of corporate press on this, like all previous coverage, completely fails to account for the incentives the Texans owners (and the NFL owner/oligarch class more broadly) have to smear Watson. I went into some detail on that a few months ago here, but to briefly refresh your memory:
Right before the accusations from Buzbee’s clients began to surface in February of 2021, Watson and the Texans organization were embroiled in another massive headline-dominating controversy. This was over Watson—who was universally beloved by fans in Houston and league-wide after four years as the Texans QB, had just signed a hugely lucrative contract, and had star power that was unprecedented in league history for a young black quarterback—very publicly trying to force his way out of town due to highly controversial actions by the Texans owners that were creating the reasonable perception that they were racist. At this time, Watson was exercising his dissenting voice so effectively that the Washington Post ran a piece on the “resulting discord” within the Texans organization titled, “Deshaun Watson is taking a stand against disingenuous NFL owners.” This report credited Watson for having sparked “a player awakening that owners should acknowledge and respect rather than trivialize the men who enliven the sport.” It also described the Texans organization as “dysfunctional,” “particularly unstable,” and characteristic of “the NFL’s preset dehumanization.” Watson, in contrast, is described in this report as “thinking deeply about systemic inequality” and “want[ing] to be as far away from the Texans as he can get.” This was an unprecedented PR nightmare and disaster for the Texans owners, and to some extent NFL owners as a class, that happened to conveniently evaporate as the sex-abuse accusations started being lobbed by Buzbee, whose Houston mansion is next door to that of the Texans’ owners.
Which is to say that there’s plenty of reason to see this story as being much bigger than just one star player on one football team, and more about the ruling class’s ability to snuff out any dissenting voice that’s strong enough to threaten the balance of power between owners and laborers, which is exactly what Watson had done with his dissenting voice in Houston. This certainly is plenty to explain corporate media’s complicity in a witch-hunt here, completely apart from the clicks this sensational and lurid story drives.
And after two grand juries declined to indict Watson, this of course compounded the disaster for Buzbee and the beneficiaries of this witch-hunt. Hence, the current press blitz to try and kill Watson with another thousand desperate cuts in the court of public opinion. So now take a closer look at what these reports actually say because the narrative they are pushing doesn’t stand to the slightest of scrutiny:
First, even with the allegations of the new 24th accuser and additional anonymous sources quoted in these reports, the fact remains that only two or three of these accusers are even alleging any actual physical contact at all. And even these don’t include any allegations of rape or violence. Even if one were to believe all of the allegations against Watson, the most you have is that he was a sex addict or sex pest who was aggressive about trying to pay “masseuses” for sex.
Which goes to the especially remarkable fact, completely ignored in the corporate press, that the most that any of these two dozen accusers would be able to recover in a civil jury trial, even if a jury entirely believed them, would be somewhere in the four to five-figure range, and likely low five figures at that. So now ask yourself why Tony Buzbee, a lawyer who has won as many gigantic 8 and 9-figure verdicts as almost anyone in the U.S., would be chasing two dozen he-said/she-said sex abuse cases with no allegations of physical violence, realistically worth 4 to 5 figures each at best. The idea that he’s doing this for altruistic reasons is extremely suspect.
Also, of course, the phenomenon of wealthy people, including (perhaps especially) pro athletes, paying for sex – including paying “masseuses” for sex, “happy endings,” etc. — is commonplace, and is almost never prosecuted. Indeed it wasn’t long ago that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft actually was prosecuted for solicitation in a human trafficking sting and not only suffered zero material consequences from it, but also was subject to only a tiny fraction of the public opprobrium Watson is receiving here. Funny how that works (again, of course). The term “lynching” is by no means unfair here, with so many so quick to want to hang a young black star NFL quarterback for being, again, at worst, an aggressive john or sex pest.
Finally, it’s revealing to scrutinize Buzbee’s announcement yesterday that he’s adding the Texans organization as a defendant in many of the sex-abuse cases, based on claims that they enabled Watson’s abuse. This, again, has predictably fooled laypersons reading uncritical reports in the corporate press, but any capable and honest civil lawyer can easily recognize and explain what a ruse this appears to be. So here I go:
Leaving aside how [sarcasm font] terrified the Texans organization must be by two dozen he-said/she-said sex abuse lawsuits, with no allegations of physical violence, and realistic exposure in the 4 to 5 figure range at best; the more important point is that adding the Texans as a defendant can’t reasonably be expected to increase the amounts recoverable by the plaintiffs no matter how a trial were to go for them. This is because, due to the nature of the allegations, there’s no way the plaintiffs could prove the Texans caused them any damage on top of whatever damage they could prove that Watson caused them. And if Watson isn’t found to have caused damage to the plaintiffs, the Texans couldn’t be found liable for assisting him in causing any such damage. So at most the liability would be “joint and several,” meaning that the total amount recoverable is the same, but that Plaintiffs can collect that amount (and only that amount) from either defendant in whatever proportion.
In cases unlike this one, it can be useful for a plaintiff to add a secondarily liable defendant to a suit, as the Texans would be here (assuming these claims were to have any merit), because in many cases the primarily responsible defendant doesn’t have any money to collect. Here that’s obviously not the case. Watson is unquestionably collectible if the Plaintiffs were to get a judgment.
There’s also the fact that adding an institutional defendant to a case like this, particularly one with the means of an NFL franchise and its owners, substantially increases the Plaintiffs’ legal expenses. To do this with no reasonably conceivable gain in expected recovery of course only strengthens the inference that Buzbee has ulterior motives.
All of which goes to show that Buzbee is only adding the Texans as a defendant out of desperation to sentence Watson to death by a thousand cuts in the corporate-dominated court of public opinion; in other words, the only means he has left available to him in the only “court” he could conceivably get a meaningful “win” in.
Not to mention that Buzbee also benefits from deflecting from the inference that he’s running a smear campaign on behalf of the Texans’ owners (his neighbors). Which again simply doesn’t work due to the fact that the Texans’ lack any real exposure in these suits, further revealing this to be an all-too-convenient and transparent cover.
In summary: That there would be diverse reactions to and opinions on this story is of course understandable, only natural, and indeed essential to healthy civic discourse. But all such opinions should account for the incentives—whether acted upon or not—that the ownership class, including the oligarchs who own NFL franchises and the mega-oligarchs who own corporate press, has to smear dissenting voices that operate as powerfully as Watson’s was in the winter of 2021 before these allegations began to surface. These incentives include using the power they have to manipulate narratives to weaponize false accusations of misconduct, including, especially, “he said/she said” allegations of sexual misconduct, which are even easier to weaponize in situations where extremely wealthy and famous celebrities are engaged in the habit of paying for sex. That the corporate-media coverage of this story has been entirely silent on these incentives and the obviously relevant and critical questions raised by the undisputable facts set forth in this post is both predictable and telling of the fact that oligarch-owned media can only reasonably be relied on to produce anti-journalism.
Which is also to say please, don’t “believe women,” and don’t “believe men.” Believe evidence, believe in due process, use your common sense in considering all sides of a dispute no matter the gender of the parties involved, and remember that it’s a good thing that people in the U.S. are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Women lie. Men lie. All kinds of people lie. Especially when they’re paid (or are led to believe they’ll be paid) enough money to lie. Especially when they need money. And even more so when they’re (wittingly or not) under the influence of an oligarch running a smear campaign against a worker who threatens his power. And no matter what your opinions are about an unmarried man paying consenting women for sex, that wouldn’t justify a tiny fraction of what Watson has suffered here. This is, ahem, a “free country.”
Regarding the Browns having signed the superstar quarterback who has been sued by 22 women—but cleared by a grand jury—for alleged sexual assault:
First, this is absolutely not to excuse any grown adult for allowing their sense of well-being to rise or fall with the fortunes of the Cleveland Browns.
Second, of course, countless crimes go unpunished in this nation every day, for many bad and inexcusable reasons, especially when they’re committed by wealthy and powerful people. So yes, it is to some extent unsatisfactory to simply say “innocent until proven guilty” with respect to Deshaun Watson, as true and important as that principle is.
But what is even more remarkable about these accusations is their timing, as they came in the wake of a flood of press coverage over Watson wanting to force his way out of Houston—based at least in part on the increasingly prevalent perception that the Texans owners are racists—despite having several years left on what was at the time one of the most lucrative deals ever given to a quarterback.
The “resulting discord” that this GM search caused within the Texans organization led to a piece in the Washington Post titled, “Deshaun Watson is taking a stand against disingenuous NFL owners,” touting the QB as having sparked “a player awakening that owners should acknowledge and respect rather than trivialize the men who enliven the sport.” In this piece, the Texans organization is described as “dysfunctional,” “particularly unstable,” and characteristic of “the NFL’s preset dehumanization.” Watson, on the other hand, is described as “thinking deeply about systemic inequality” and “want[ing] to be as far away from the Texans as he can get.”
It’s bad enough for the NFL plantation owners when star college QBs like John Elway or Eli Manning refuse to sign with teams that draft them. So imagine how the McNairs must have felt about a young black superstar quarterback, who was already beloved in Houston after having played there for several years, leveraging his star power to force his way out of town after having just signed a pricey contract extension — and how much worse that Watson was doing this based on accusations that the Texans owners are racists whom he could no longer stand playing for.
This was a colossal business and public relations crisis for the McNairs that conveniently happened to evaporate as the sensational accusations against Watson surfaced. Then all of a sudden everyone was supposed to believe that this young man who had always displayed high character and leadership in rising to stardom as an NFL quarterback and who is surely one of the last men on earth who’d need to pay for sex or otherwise force his way into it was some kind of sex-crazed brute who’d assaulted dozens of women. Nevermind also that the sex-crazed black brute is a well-worn racist trope.
I can’t say that Watson is innocent, and it’s doubtful that solid proof will ever come out affirming one way or the other; and this being the Browns I of course I can’t say I expect his tenure in Cleveland to end in anything but a heretofore unfathomable conflagration of disappointment and despair. But the folks who are saying that they’re not going to root for the team anymore or who otherwise want to denounce the organization for having signed a quarterback who has been sued by 22 women—but cleared by a grand jury—for alleged sexual assault, should at least consider the extremely suspect timing and circumstances behind these accusations. Every decent person should be able to agree that allegations of criminal conduct should be assessed and adjudicated deliberately, based on facts and reasonable inferences, not politics, and certainly not based on retaliatory and racially tinged witch-hunts.
The Cleveland Browns are back, with expectations as weighty as they’ve been since the franchise’s zombie “return” to the NFL in 1999 after Art Modell’s historic heist. Prominent talking heads have taken to calling them “America’s Team” over the last couple of seasons, which included the franchise’s first playoff win in a quarter century of unfathomable incompetence.
And why not? Mustn’t even the most propagandized fan base on the the most propagandized nation on earth be thrown a bone every few decades or so? It has surely become far too embarrassing and indeed threatening to the interests of the NFL ownership class to allow the Cleveland Browns to remain such a breathtaking spectacle—described by experts and increasingly recognized by the masses as “the most advanced challenge to professional sports and indeed capitalism on earth.”
Which of course is not to mention the masters of propaganda that comprise the NFL’s advertising base—which prominently includes big auto, big alcohol, and of course the military-industrial complex itself.
These are folks who, after all, know where their bread is buttered, and this is a sport where a game-altering penalty could be called on most any play. So however comforting it is for a certain favored demographic to believe, for example, that Tom Brady is the greatest athlete on earth, well, Brady can’t win all of them and Baker Mayfield (in contrast with certain other types) ought to fit the bill just fine.
Folks, especially in Northeast Ohio, should rethink the somewhat understandable impulse to cheerlead for a gigantic corporation like The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company just because Donald Trump made a mean tweet about it. In the wake of the tidal wave of outrage expressed over The Bad Orange Man’s call for a boycott of Goodyear […]
On May 5, 1862, Mexican general Ignacio Zaragoza led his undermanned troops to victory in the First Battle of Puebla over an invading French army that hadn’t been defeated in nearly 50 years. Four days after the battle, President Benito Juárez declared that its anniversary would be a national holiday known as “Battle of Puebla […]
It makes sense that it was a legendary muckraking journalist, Upton Sinclair, who coined the truism about how hard it is “to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” And it’s not so surprising after Advance Media’s brutal round of union-busting layoffs at the Plain Dealer last […]
Ten years ago there were 300 journalists working in the Plain Dealer newsroom. Now, after 22 more of them lost their jobs last Friday in yet another round of layoffs by the paper’s corporate owner Advance Media, there are only 14 left. According to a statement issued by the PD News Guild, the nation’s first […]
Cleveland Frowns is published by Peter Pattakos, a an attorney in Northeast Ohio who founded this site in 2008 out of concern over the otherworldly failures of Cleveland’s professional sports franchises.
