As an on-again off-again reader of the OC Register, Whicker has never been great.  He’ll have an occasional solid column, but usually they’re full of dumb puns.

This, however, is ridiculous.  The Register’s struggling pretty badly already and I can’t imagine this tripe is helping.

If I can make an appropriate tragedy-related analogy: It’s like if someone started taking dumps all over the deck of the Titanic as it sank.

This pantload is even worse when you consider that she was apparently an active part of her kidnapper’s print company and computer literacy was a part of that.  So none of the stuff he talks about is news to her.

So Mr. Author, it’s OK to trivialize an 18 year abduction by showing her all the groovy changes in sport? yeah, that makes some sense.

I hear it’s nice and cool in Hell these days.

Hey, September 11th is only two days away.  I wonder what clever tie-in Mark Whicker will come up with then.

Dear Mark Whicker:

Thanks for those wise words today.  Guess I’m off the hook.

Yours,
C. Manson

my letter to the editor:

Dear Mr. Brusic,

    Have you read Mark Whicker’s column which uses Jaycee Dugard’s 18 years of rape, torture and abuse to chronicle athletic events?

If you have not, might I suggest that you do so immediately. Mr. Whicker’s bizarre ramblings are without question the most vile and offensive that I have had the misfortune to read in any mainstream publication. Why you have seen fit to employ a despicable person like Mr. Whicker completely escapes me. There are many, many unemployed sports writers who are excellent writers and journalists, who would never stoop so low as to smear filth over an unfortunate female who was imprisoned in squalor at age 11 and raped by her kidnapper and his wife for 18 years. I sincerely hope that you don’t think it is either clever or appropriate for any journalist to describe the child’s imprisonment and torture by listing the sporting events she missed while being raped and tortured.

I am only sorry that Will Leitch did not have a copy of this execrable example of “journalism” to wave in the face of Buzz Bissinger when he was decrying the lack of “professionalism” of Those Dreadful Bloggers. He could have pointed to this article as an example of the unprofessionalism of supposedly “professional” journalists, an example which far, FAR outweighs anything obnoxious ever printed by Deadspin or any other blog.

You can’t and won’t stave off the decline and fall of print papers by allowing the Mr. Whickers of the journalism community to publish, well, I would say “dreck” but that column is an insult to perfectly good dreck.

Yours sincerely,

Lisa Gray

Craig, my only issue with your take is including the word “Maybe” in the title.  This was truly revolting, and I appreciate your bringing it to our collective attention so that some good may actually come of it.  Wow

Here’s what happened next.  From MW:

Trivializing?

MW
—-
Me:

Your wall of self-denial is impenetrable.  I give up.

Honestly, I figured this fight just wasn’t worth it.  For those who’ve looked, he’s been lambasted in the comments section there, too.

Greg - I completely agree with you. Whicker’s reaction to what you said just shows how completely wrong he is. He both refuses to acknowledge the way he completely inappropriately trivialized a tragedy, and then accuses you of doing the same thing when you in no way did so. So, he recognized it in others when it’s not there, and can’t see it himself. Wow indeed. -Alex

I couldn’t find the comments for this column.  My guess is that they’ve been removed because they were so appropriately voicing their displeasure for this horrid column.