Seven-Time Ohio Columnist Of The Year Wonders If Maybe Students Didn't Enjoy Being Sexed By Their Teacher

Paul Daugherty, in addition to having a regular gig on SI.com, has been a sports columnist at the Cincinnati Enquirer for a long, long time. So long that they've given him a daily "write about whatever shit you want to" column, which appears to run with minimal editing.

From today's steaming pile of random boldface:

A QUESTION I SHOULDNT POSE, BUT WILL, ANYWAY. The female Mason PE teacher in court for allegedly having sexual relations with male students: How many of those guys do you figure, um, ah, well, enjoyed any experience they might have had with the woman?

Is this heresy?

Is it?

Possibly. Unless you've been a 17- or 18-year-old high school boy.

That's not to excuse her for anything she might have done. She is an adult. Such occurrences are against the law. If she's guilty, she deserves what she gets.

But, come on.

Books have been written about this. Movies have won awards. Songs. If you are or have ever been a heterosexual high school male, there is a decent chance you've given such an encounter a stray thought, once or twice, maybe-possibly, in your entire human existence. Isnt that right, Benjamin Braddock?

Respond.

Daugherty's referring to this, an Ohio gym teacher on trial for sleeping with five of her students, plying some of them with alcohol. It's not particularly objectionable that the apparently undersexed Daugherty obsesses over whether the teenagers took physical pleasure in the act. It's not even the fact that these teacher-student relationship stories are more about abuse of power and trust than whether someone is old enough to consent. It's that Paul Daugherty, writing a column nominally about sports, decided to wonder aloud about a woman facing 16 counts of sexual battery and decided to do it in that hacky one-sentence-per-paragraph style. Unforgivable.

The Morning Line, 10/24 [Enquirer]