Graham James coaches the Canadian Hypocrites – who win the Immoral Cup

Let me see if I get this.  Graham James was a junior hockey coach, trainer, etc., who worked for years in the Canadian hockey system.  He had remarkable success, and was hailed by members of the hockey establishment repeatedly.  He was one of their guys. 

His wins led to honours and accolades.

But it turns out that, like innumerable adults, he was *also* absorbed with engaging in sexual relationships with the teens he worked with.  You always wonder, with these guys (for it is almost always guys), how they do it.   Well, he was successful, so people liked him.  It’s not like he was a banker losing millions and getting millions as a consequence, for example.  Russell Williams flew Peter McKay around half the world wearing panties of women he’d murdered, but he just kept on getting kicked higher and higher and higher.  Ask ‘em today, not one Tory would not kick Russell Williams, pervert and murderer, higher and higher and higher.

So Sheldon Kennedy came out, and James was arrested and charged and tried and sentenced and jailed and then paroled.  Was he paroled too early?  I don’t know.  I’m not the parole board.  He did the crime, he did the time.

Then intrepid CBC reporter Bob McKeown (who also brought us the incredible investigative Fifth Estate report—“oh gee, American guns are showing up in Canada—oh gee, oh gee”) found Graham James under the cover of a. . .baseball hat (no budgets blown on that one) doing his laundry in Mexico.  Caught, in the act. 

So James gets tried again, after multi-millionaire Theoren Fleury removes the coke spoon from his nose long enough, for the same crime.  I thought there was something like double indemnity for crime.  I mean, say I rip off a 7-11 with a knife tomorrow, and I get 6 months for it, and then I finish my law degree 6 years later, and somebody sees me walking down the street and says, “yeah, I remember you, you said you’d wash my windows for $50—I gave you $60 and you ran away”—does that mean I go to jail again?

What was Graham James doing in Mexico?  Well, who knows.  The media sure isn’t interested in telling us.  Apparently he was working with computers or something.  It is doubtful that he was coaching hockey.  Maybe he was diddling soccer kids.  Who knows?  It’s unlikely he could apply for a job and do anything useful in Canada.

Theoren Fleury didn’t come out when Kennedy did because Fleury still had massive amounts of cash to make—which he made—while being in the NHL.  So he waited, until he was really, really rich, and his hockey career was over, so he could write a book about how, gee, he was hurt, too, and now he wanted to see some millions flow from the book.  If you check into Fleury’s life, you might think Graham James was not the only thing that could have led to him being traumatized by his millions. Holocaust survivors should be so lucky.  Anyone who has been abused should be so lucky.  To pick up millions while not saying a crime was done, so that later millions could be made for saying a crime was done.  There’s Theoren setting a great example—“never say a crime was done if you can make millions before you say it.”  What a role model.

Greg Gilhooley is now being pitched as the intellectual post-abusee.  He went along with James for some time, reached sexual maturity at a time older than a whole hell of a lot of people, went to Princeton, had a successful law career, house and family in the most desirable of neighborhoods, and now, he’s, “gee, it’s tough,”  Tough being a millionaire, sure it is.

It is impossible not to get the feeling that it would be an excellent recuperative if any of these people—Kennedy, Fleury, Gilhooley—all massive millionaires—could take a minute to meet a holocaust survivor or two, those that still exist, and learn something about the complete liquidation of entire families and physical, emotional, sexual, and mortal abuse they couldn’t even begin to imagine.  More than that—they could learn about how it wasn’t just a question of figuring out how to deal with millions, but, rather, surviving and then struggling to find a place and find a community and find a way to do something useful and thrive within it.  Sheldon Kennedy set up a ranch so kids could ride on horseback.  Theoren Fleury wrote a book.  Greg Gilhoolhey went to the _Globe and Mail_.  None tried to do anything that would make tangible change.  Not one sat on a committee, joined a community organization, decided to enter politics—not one.  Plenty of charity golf tournaments, though.  Golf always helps.

You simply can’t expect anyone to act in any way but their own self-interests when it comes to cases such as this, and this is sad.  Take Elliotte Friedman, whose life and wife and kids depend upon his never saying anything critical about hockey:  he noted that, well, if he’d been one of those affected, he’d have been disappointed that James didn’t get more time.  At once covering and spreading his ample hind, Friedman took a time-out on morality so he, like Theoren, could get rich.

Most people in the sports media simply won’t touch this issue, like the aforesaid Friedman (Duhatschek, anyone?—they simply have so much to lose, and nothing to gain).  You won’t find it on HNIC.  Don Cherry won’t talk about it—even Bruce the plagiarizer Dowbiggin won’t speak of it.  Gerbil-mouthed Bob McCown thinks a hockey puck is something he cooked on the bbq. Mealy-mouthed Stephen Brunt can be expected to say nothing, of course.  All of these “men” have a lot of money to make by saying nothing, nothing at all.  Lots of money by saying nothing at all.  They contribute to the problem by refusing to speak so that they can keep their cash.

Pretty well anyone who has lived on earth for a few decades has some experience of, say, cancer.  And pretty well anyone who has lived on earth has some experience of difficult sexual experiences.  Some people have their entire families killed and mutilated and still find a way to fight and struggle their way to having productive families and lives of their own that don’t include millions like the plaintiffs against Graham James.  How do they do it?  Where is the media uproar about them? 

Everyone is falling all over themselves to say that “Graham James is not rehabilitated,” but there is no way to say that this is anything but bitterness.  They all insist that he is not, and that his sentence is a joke.  In other words, rehabilitation is impossible, so lock him up and throw away and the key and gas him while you’re doing it.  I’m right in there with that, but is there not something uncomfortable with people who say, “hey, I’m recovering from abuse, and I’m trying to get better,” also saying “hey, an abuser cannot be rehabilitated, so kill him?”  I mean, what’s the point?  If Theoren Fleury or people making huge money out of Graham James now, like Glori Meldrum, could see James killed off, would they be happy?  Would they keep making money off James?  They need to keep James alive to keep themselves out there and raking in millions.  There’s a lot of money to be made off the perpetual incrimination of Graham James, and people like Glori Meldrum know it; they’d go broke otherwise.  How come Theoren Fleury can make millions over millions by saying “I’m not a crack addict now”, but he can say, to add to his millions, “Graham James is not rehabilitated.”  How come Theoren Fleury, who was undeniably helped to make millions by James, can admit to his own faults and say he’s conquered them, but say someone else never can?   How does this, morally, work?  Say I say I’ve got a problem, but I’ve overcome it, but I look at another person, and I say “no, she hasn’t overcome it.”  How does that work?

It is impossible that one could ever “stop” people like Graham James—priests, scout leaders, etc.  No amount of background checks or whatever will ever stop that.  What we need to stop is our adulation of success at any cost, of wins, of the richest, most faithful, most successful, and so on, as being our moral guides.  We could look, instead, to those who just offered a helping hand, did a good service, took an interest, tried to help, noticed a problem and tried to fix it.  But we can’t do that.  Like our NHL stars, we’re fixated on the star system.  We don’t believe, like Glori Meldrum, that people can get better.  We don’t accept that; we all want to be stars, like Glori Meldrum.  Like Theoren Fleury, after making countless millions, coming out to say “oh, yeah, by the way, I was abused and it hurt me.”  Tough, tough.

We love the abusers, we hail them and love them.  Those who can take over a company, lose millions or billions and get millions in return for losing millions—we hail them.  We love them, lionize them—Glori Meldrum goes to them and says: “help us” and those massive losers throw her a bone and she goes to her website and she says “oh, those people who destroyed so many others, we love them, because they destroyed so many.”

We see someone who makes millions to destroy shareholder wealth—careers, lives, families—as a hero.  Glori does—she takes their cash, eagerly, setting up the cycle of abuse she says (before she gets really rich herself) she’d like to stop.  To see her stunningly sick, slick attempt to profit by the pain of others, go here: http://glorimeldrum.com/  Here you can learn about how she can talk to you, how you can feed money to her, how you can book her, etc.  The sheer disgustingness of how she is profiting off of abuse is amazing.

It’s impossible to stop people like Graham James.  We have to stop the culture that promotes Graham James.  Glori and her acolytes don’t ever want to see Graham James stopped—that way, she’d never get paid, and her profit from abuse would stop.  She needs the money from the abusers to keep her going, keep her rich, keep her in Jaguars.

What we need to do is start aligning our views of morality not with money and success, but, rather, with what kind of social and communal good our morals create.  Again, someone like Glori Meldrum could never imagine such a thing, because she is driven above all by a money motive—whatever gives her money, is good.  And most of us are like that—whatever, and whoever, has money, is good.  And as long as we base our views on money, or wins or success, then we’ll get more abuse.

It’s hard to imagine what would stop another Graham James, but the saddest comment of all is that the *last* person in the world who could ever contribute to stopping another Graham James is Glori Meldrum, the person most fixated on cash and its motive.

Her biggest contributors now—the most successful, the most hailed—like Graham James, are probably the greatest abusers, and she loves it, because she’s getting rich.

The culture of abuse is the one we adore.  We’ve got to stop adoring the abusers, and start teaching ourselves to admire the people who just do good, without, like Glori and Graham and their corporate supporters and friends who shower them with awards, making money from the misery of others.

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