Peephole Stalker to Plead Guilty in Erin Andrews Case

Here's Deadspin's headline, "Michael David Barrett Will Be Doing His Peeping In Federal Prison."

It's interesting that Deadspin would only devote two sentences to the story. Readers may recall that, way back in July, it was Deadspin that first sent the Andrews peephole story into orbit. All kinds of recriminations followed. Sports columnist Jason Whitlock once ripped into the webzine, suggesting that:

Deadspin has been the world-wide leader in sexually objectifying Erin Andrews (ESPN actually trails Deadspin in this category) and in invading the privacy of athletes and members of the sports media, so it is not all that surprising that its editor, AJ Daulerio, would throw the match on gasoline poured by a peephole pervert. Daulerio has since apologized, sort of. Daulerio's original enabler and co-conspirator, Will Leitch, the former editor of Deadspin, offered his apology on Tuesday.

The Daulerio "apology" is here: "Sometimes This World Is A Horrible Place To Live." He writes:

If this story becomes covered in the mainstream media — chances are it will, that press release went out everywhere; even the French are intrigued— there's inevitably going to be some backlash against the sports blogosphere. Unfortunately, we'll get hit pretty hard if some blog-centric finger-pointing ensues as to why this happened. Considering the enormous amount of coverage we've devoted to Erin Andrews throughout, oh, the site's existence, we're obviously an easy target if that type of Princess Diana-paparazzi discussion takes place.

To be fair, both during my time as editor and Emeritus' time, most of our coverage has been tongue-in-cheek — covering the coverage of America's Sideline Princess. Some people get that, others don't, and see any and all coverage of Erin Andrews as exploitative and voyeuristic in its own way. But it's important for people to know that I don't think anybody who's been part of the Erin Andrews pageview gravy train thinks what's happened is funny or is elated that this will be good for business. Will this change things? It has to. If covering Erin Andrews made this site — and plenty of other sites — look like pandering fools, any cheesecake coverage from here on out creates an additional, unnecessary layer of sleaze.

Regardless, this is a different, legitimate news story now — this isn't her getting whacked in the chin with a baseball, or her wearing a revealing dress to the ESPYs, or college kids posing for photos with her or her eating a sandwich. This is real and disorienting and just frighteningly sad. I apologize for posting the site's address in the initial story — I was unaware that, even though the videos were taken down, people could get access to them.

Will Leitch's apology was more to the point, and truly remorseful, "Erin Andrews and Guilt, Imagined and Otherwise":

I have never met Erin Andrews. If I ran into her on the street today ... I'm not sure I could look her in the eye. I'm not sure anybody could.

This kind of extremely guttural angst lasted for more than a week. I had my share, of course, because I linked to the peephole viddy (initially). It was a mistake, and amid a raging backlash, I took it down. (I have a Google link to my Erin Andrews reporting). But within days the major media were posting snippets of the videos during mainstream news reports. CBS took down its video, but during the broadcast, while court TV analyst Lisa Bloom decried the sexism (similtaneously arguing the perp wouldn't be caught, due to the impossibility of the technology), video clips splashed Andrews' flesh across big screens nationwide. Bill O'Reilly ran raw images as well (always the best comeback to folks who attack "conservatives" for jerking the story for traffic.)

Anyway, it's been a while. And now with another huge scandal rocking the sports world in the Tiger Woods story, it'd be silly to say that we won't have another "innocence lost" angle as we did in the Andrews case. (See, "Sleaze has been the undisputed champion of the sports world for 2009.")

See also, "Man pleads guilty to stalking ESPN's Erin Andrews."