this has been an emotional rollercoaster. sleeping on it gave me a lot of perspective. the lack of reliable information out there is the primary cause for the intense reactions (overreactions if teo is in fact a victim). we're dealing with a sliding scale with too many factors for the average, casual reader/follower of sports to grasp.
it starts with each party involved: unknown number of participants in perpetuating the hoax, teo, teo's parents, ND, the media, and now another player who appears to have been a previous target. each of those parties gives rise numerous questions. most of those involve the extent to which we should judge each party. the hoax participants are clearly to blame, but how much blame should be placed on the others?
the participants in the hoax are easy to blame, so that's already been glossed over. next is teo. how much did he truly know and when did he know it. what did he embellish or lie about? what was the motive behind embellishing and lying? tack on the parents here by asking, what did he tell his parents? were they lying or lied to by manti?
what responsibility should ND and the media take for running with this story? who should be fact checking? how much research is appropriate? how are they handling the fallout?
the player claiming to have met her in interviews yesterday adds a whole new wrinkle. this will be part of the puzzle being pieced together. it's hard to wrap one's mind around all of that and begin assigning blame and guilt because we have so little hard information to go off of. instead the entire country is making up their own narrative by filling in the gaping holes in the story so far. i anxiously await a resolution to this whole thing. once the people behind lennay start to speak, we'll know so much more about the situation. there could be even more culpable parties than we could have imagined. there's information about this hoax lasting years and fooling more people than just teo. the connection of the main perpetrator to a rival school and current players posting on his twitter page. how deep does it go?! patience is now my best friend.
