Last month, the New York Times ran a profile on Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, and it’s a load of absolute bullshit. The article portrays Jordan as a fighter, saying, “he has made a name for himself with bare-knuckled partisan tactics and a penchant for picking fights with his adversaries.” The story does not detail exactly how “partisan” these “tactics'' are, but that is just one problem with it.
There are five former wrestlers from Ohio State University, (where Jordan was once an assistant coach) who once said he was aware that a team doctor abused 177 athletes over two decades. Did the Times connect “bare-knuckled” partisan hack Jordan with the full breadth of the accusations against him? Hardly.
The "paper of record" makes sure to just barely scrape the surface of the accusations against “Gym” Jordan, even while giving the impression that those allegations have been somewhat settled.
"When a sexual abuse scandal at Ohio State University threatened to derail his political career, Mr. Jordan punched back in characteristic fashion, details of which have not been previously reported, calling a wrestler’s aging parents and asking them to persuade their son to back off the charge that Mr. Jordan knew about the abuse and did nothing, according to interviews conducted for this article."
The profile then moves on to detail Jordan’s rise to power within the Freedom Caucus, his early allegiance to Donald Trump, and his current position as the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. After a brief bit of lip service to how utterly ineffective Jordan has been for over a decade in both the Ohio Statehouse and the House of Representatives, the Times quickly finds out how Jordan feels about himself. Stop the presses! Jordan thinks he’s doing a great job.
After talking about all of the fundraising money and his very symbiotic relationship with Trump for a few more paragraphs, the article finally gets to these pesky wrestlers and their 2018 accusations that Jordan knew Dr. Richard Strauss, the former Ohio State University medical doctor who treated athletes while Jordan was an assistant coach, was molesting and being sexually inappropriate with athletes.What is truly vacuous about this reporting and what makes the entire piece such a puff pastry is that the Times seems to have an “exclusive” interview that tells us nothing new. The writer creates an illusion that the Ohio State wrestling scandal is basically settled, because there is no deeper dive into the implications revealed by this exclusive interview.
In 2018, after Jordan denied any knowledge of wrongdoing in the wrestling program, The Wall Street Journal quoted former Ohio State wrestler Michael Coleman as saying, “There’s no way unless he’s got dementia or something that he’s got no recollection of what was going on at Ohio State. I have nothing but respect for this man, I love this man, but he knew as far as I’m concerned.” About one month later Coleman clarified his statement to news outlets, saying that he didn’t have personal knowledge of Jordan ignoring the wrestlers’ pleas.
In the interview, Coleman said Dr. Strauss routinely took 45-minute showers to ogle the athletes, including Mr. Jordan. “Jim got stared at; I got stared at. Unless he has Alzheimer’s, Jim Jordan knew,” Coleman said. “But I have no knowledge of anyone being abused reporting it to Jim Jordan.”
And that is that. Nothing about the other wrestlers, who spoke pretty openly about Jordan’s work behind the scenes to get them to change their stories and make statements that contradicted the accusations. It doesn’t cover the 2020 CNN story quoting six former wrestlers who said Jordan lied when he said he was ignorant of Dr. Strauss’ actions. Nobody in the media should be letting this creep off the hook with puff pieces like this.
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