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.
For those who aren’t in the know—which is far too many people given the way corporate media has whitewashed and buried the Epstein scandal—Wexner is a mega billionaire who founded “L Brands” (The Limited, Abercrombie & Fitch, Victoria’s Secret) and is (or was) deeply connected to the highest and most clandestine levels of the U.S. and Israeli governments. In the mid-1980s Wexner was introduced to Epstein—whose connections to U.S. and Israeli intelligence operations are also well-established—and by the mid-90s had basically handed Epstein control of his entire fortune and business empire.
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.
There probably aren’t many ways to bring worse energy to a football program than by taking boatloads of money from one of history’s most prominent sponsors of child-sex trafficking and plastering his name all over your facilities. And if there were a sports curse that people (even Ohio State fans) should want to believe in, The Curse of Les Wexner would be at the top of the list. Not that the Catholic church doesn’t have its own problems, but at least those have been substantially reckoned with.
I personally will be shocked if Touchdown Jesus allows the Buckeyes to win today but this, folks, is why they play the games.
