Charles Robinson Of Yahoo Sports De-Cleats Jason Whitlock Over Nevin Shapiro Scandal

Jason Whitlock, who left the Kansas City Star fairly recently to work for Fox Sports, had this bombshell attack on Charles Robinson of Yahoo! fame who wrote the now famous exposé on the Miami Hurricanes.  The interesting thing about this article was not just that Whitlock pointed out the same thing I noted when the story first broke -- that Shapiro is a felon who cannot be taken at his word.  If that was where it ended, I wouldn't be writing this. (Hat Tip:  Gregg Doyel via Twitter)

Unfortunately, that's not the case.  Whitlock turned the piece into a poisonous, racially-charged attack on Robinson, an astonishing tour-de-force in unethical writing.  There is so much wrong with what Whitlock wrote that pointing it all out would take 5,000 words.  Fortunately, that won't be necessary, as Robinson has taken to the airwaves to defend himself in this interview with Nick Wright of 610 Sports in Kansas City.

Follow me past the jump for more.

A couple of particularly loathsome excerpts from Whitlock's opinion piece that Robinson takes to task:

You can’t tell this story accurately, honestly or credibly without addressing the drug issue. Drugs would raise legitimate questions about the nature of Shapiro’s relationships with the handful of anonymous sources backing (and/or refuting) Shapiro’s claims. Drugs would tell us a lot about Nevin Shapiro.

Just suppose, and I'm just spitballing here, that a fan booster of a program like Shapiro didn't do drugs, and wouldn't allow drugs around any of his parties or events.  Is that really a stretch, Jason?  If you want a team to be successful, it just follows logically that the first thing you should do is feed them, or allow them to be fed, cocaine.  That makes sense to everybody, right?

 "(Shapiro) is a convicted felon and a proven liar. Using a guy like that as your key witness, the standard, the bar, has to be set so high that anything less than documented solid proof has to be set aside," Anderson said. "If I put in a complaint to a government agency that I’m relying on a convicted liar and the people corroborating his story are mostly anonymous, they would laugh in our face. If I was to take this to The New York Times or even the New York Post, they would laugh me out of the room. What he put in that story wouldn’t fly. No way. Not ever."

Really?  Even with reams of documents, canceled checks, bank statements and other documentary evidence provided to Robinson not by Shapiro, but by the federal government?  Seriously, I do understand skepticism.  I do.  I even encouraged it and continue to encourage it.  But this is paragraph is nonsense.

Finally, the coup-de-grace:

 Abortion! Prostitutes! Out-of-control Mandingo athletes! The death penalty!

This ought to be a firing offense.  This is not just a accusation of racism, this is raciallism of the most sickening and shocking sort.  That the Fox editors allowed this to pass is unconscionable, intolerable, and lowers my opinion not just of Whitlock (which honestly couldn't be much lower), but of his editorial staff as well.

I think I've said enough about this.  Robinson is right.  Whitlock makes some good points, but destroys his own credibility with bizarre, racially-charged unreason and personal attacks.

Robinson's interview, if it had been a football play, would look very much like this with Whitlock playing the role of Craig Steltz: