The PR folks at UVA Athletics decided to highlight the fundamentalist ministry group that new basketball staffer Michael Crowder worked with for eight years in the press release announcing his hire.
If they didn’t want us to write about how Young Life bars LGBTQ+ people from volunteering, how the organization has faced multiple investigations and lawsuits alleging blatant racial discrimination and coverups of sexual harassment, maybe don’t make Young Life a central point of the guy’s background in the press release announcing the hire.
Or, another idea here – maybe we don’t hire a guy whose resume is apparently built on the foundation of his experience as a leader in an organization that discriminates against people of color and the LGBTQ+ community, and turns a blind eye to sexual harassment.
ICYMI
“Omg, this organization follows biblical values that have proven themselves to have a great impact on all cultures over many generations? We are all doomed!” a reader with the handle Joe Smith wrote to me by email.
Yep, I’m the bad guy here.
For pointing out that the “biblical values” people like “Joe Smith” are hypocrites who apparently haven’t read the books written more than 2,000 years ago.
The narrow interpretation of those ancient texts by succeeding generations who used passages from those books to justify slavery, misogynistic gender roles and the damnation of people with non-binary gender and sexual orientation has had an unquestionably horrible impact on people on the margins of all cultures over many generations.
Fixed that for you, “Joe Smith.”
Not that “Joe Smith” or the Young Life folks have any idea what I’m even saying there, or could be coaxed to read their ancient texts again, particularly the ones that cite the historical Jesus, and his approach to the people on the margins, which was – shocker! – all-inclusive.
“I’d encourage you to reflect on the Young Life article about the new culture guy as an article that really didn’t need to be written,” reader Adam Wood wrote, bringing up an important point here.
Not that the article “didn’t need to be written.”
No, that Ryan Odom hired Michael Crowder to be his “director of culture.”
Conceding here that I don’t know Michael Crowder personally, what UVA Athletics tells us is most important about him, relevant to why he was hired for the job of “director of culture,” he started working in 2016 for this Young Life outfit.
We don’t know Michael Crowder, but what UVA Athletics wants us to know about him is, his qualification to be the “director of culture” for the UVA Basketball program is his time with Young Life.
It’s not our job as journalists to simply regurgitate information that we’re fed by PR people, and it’s not like I’m patting myself on the back here for doing any extraordinary heavy lifting to learn more about what Michael Crowder being a Young Life alum means to the story of him being named “director of culture” for UVA Basketball.
I spent literally two minutes on Google, and there it was, smacking me right in the face.
Those who didn’t do that tiny bit of due diligence in reporting on the Michael Crowder story are guilty of journalistic malpractice.
“What’s the point in reporting on Odom and the evangelical thing? I don’t see how it affects the product on the court,” reader Bryan Hagen wrote.
Do you see now what I’m up against here?
The product on the effing court.
Seriously.
There was that one, and another from reader Ron Kaminski, who hit me with a one-liner: “You just had to get into politics. Stick to basketball.”
I wrote back to Ron Kaminski: “Given the state of the world right now, if I’m sticking to anything, it would be politics, not fun and games.”
To Bryan Hagen: “Is my only focus as a news reporter supposed to be on ‘the product on the court’? Don’t confuse me with being a PR person for UVA Athletics.”
Too many people with media credentials think they’re unpaid PR people for whatever sports team, political party or White House they root for.
I’m a UVA alum (Class of 1994), and on the inside, I bleed orange and blue – I’m still not over the 2016 Elite Eight loss, the 2018 UMBC game, the 1990 Georgia Tech football game, the 1998 Georgia Tech football game.
I’m also, and this is no secret, a lifelong liberal Democrat – I don’t see how I couldn’t be, having grown up in poverty, seeing firsthand how the system is tilted to favor the advantaged, and wanting, from an early age, to work toward building a world where everybody has true equal opportunity to succeed in life.
Being a lifelong liberal Democrat isn’t reason for me to not be critical of Democrats like, for example, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, two men that I’ve known on a personal level since before they were first elected to public office, and who, right now, are not living up to their responsibilities.
Being a ‘Hoo-for-life doesn’t blind me to what’s right and wrong with UVA Athletics.
The geniuses running the athletics department are actively trying to run a generation of fans off with their new “this is not a reseating” plan to limit access to football and men’s basketball to the 1 percent.
ICYMI
Somebody needs to point that out, and it looks like I’m the only guy in the media willing to do so.
So be it.
This new “director of culture” thing is another instance of, somebody needs to be willing to raise issue here.
Even if it loses me friends.
“You tend to be hard on people with Christian values and morals. And we aren’t all red and anti-LGBTQ+. You write like we are and get defensive when you are challenged. Sh*t gets old,” was the reply from Bryan Hagen.
I agree, this sh*t – being expected to pretend that Young Life isn’t an extremist organization, that hiring a guy to be the “director of culture” for the basketball program with his main qualification being that he worked for eight years with those folks might be, I dunno, questionable, that, bahgawd, you’re being anti-Christian for pointing any of this out – it has gotten old.
Share
Chris Graham
