{"id":182787,"date":"2015-06-06T19:33:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-07T00:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/06\/06\/your-not-so-liberal-media\/"},"modified":"2015-06-06T19:33:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-07T00:33:00","slug":"your-not-so-liberal-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/06\/06\/your-not-so-liberal-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Not so Liberal Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

It turns out that the revelations about Denny Hastert raping a child has been told to many media sources for years, but they chose to ignore credible reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

As an enthusiastic young teacher and wrestling coach at the high school here, former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert reliably had one student at his side, former classmates say. Stephen Reinboldt, a smart, slender, likable student who rose to become class president, was the wrestling team\u2019s equipment manager. For four years, he arrived at practice early and stayed late, traveled with Mr. Hastert to overnight tournaments, even when only one wrestler was competing, and went for long rides in the coach\u2019s sports car, sometimes driving it.<\/span>

<\/span>On Friday, Mr. Reinboldt\u2019s younger sister, Jolene Burdge, said her brother, who died in 1995, was also sexually abused by Mr. Hastert, but hid the fact for years because he thought no one would believe him.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>In the interview on ABC, Ms. Burdge called Mr. Hastert, who taught and coached at Yorkville high school from 1966 until 1981, a father figure to her brother. She said she learned of the years of abuse when her brother revealed to her that he was gay eight years after he left high school.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cI asked him, \u2018When was your first same-sex experience?\u2019 \u201d she said. \u201cHe looked at me and said, \u2018It was with Dennis Hastert.\u2019 I was stunned.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>She continued, \u201cAnd he just turned around and kind of looked at me and said, \u2018Who is ever going to believe me?\u2019 \u201d<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>She also said she confronted Mr. Hastert when he unexpectedly came to her brother\u2019s funeral, telling him, \u201cI want you to know that your secret didn\u2019t die here with my brother.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>Ms. Burdge said she tried for years to get news organizations, including ABC News, and advocacy groups to pursue the story. She began in 2006 after it was revealed that Mr. Hastert had covered up claims that Representative Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, had sent sexually explicit emails to congressional pages.<\/span><\/b><\/span>

<\/span>She said she had given up on exposing Mr. Hastert. Then, two weeks ago, just before Mr. Hastert was indicted, she was contacted by the F.B.I.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>In interviews, former students say Mr. Hastert was popular, partly because his classes often consisted of little more than watching movies, and because his teams kept winning. He also seemed to have a new Porsche almost every year, each a different color, and would let certain boys drive it \u2014 not just around the parking lot, but on long rides.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cSome guys got to drive the Porsche and some didn\u2019t,\u201d said Jeff Nix, who was a student at the time. \u201cWe always wondered what you had to do to get to drive the Porche. Steve got to drive the Porsche.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(emphasis mine<\/i>)<\/p>\n

There appears to have been noothing even remotely close to what could be called journalistic due diligence in response to Ms. Burges reports.<\/p>\n

It appears that her brother was right about being ignored.<\/p>\n

But until Hastert had his, “They got Al Capone on tax evasion,” moment, no one wanted to hear this.<\/p>\n

H\/t Atrios<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It turns out that the revelations about Denny Hastert raping a child has been told to many media sources for years, but they chose to ignore credible reports: As an enthusiastic young teacher and wrestling coach at the high school here, former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert reliably had one student at his side, former …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1052,974,978,1075],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crimes","category-hack-journalism","category-politics","category-sex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182787"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}