Jeah? No.

I've been reading about Ryan Lochte and his Olympic teammates and their account of supposedly being robbed at a gas station in Rio. Now that the robbery story seems to be unraveling, I find it interesting that Lochte got the hell out of town earlier this week while his teammates are being detained in Brazil. Did Lochte just ditch them or did he tell them to get out of town when he did and they didn't heed his warning? Like a lot of people, I was prepared to believe Lochte's account of being robbed. I just figured it was a shakedown, but now that new details (and videos) have emerged, I'm ready to reconsider my initial opinion of events. There still may have been some shaking down that occurred, but things didn't seem to happen the way Lochte et al said they did. Don't these folks watch Locked Up Abroad? Don't they know the ramifications of getting into trouble in a foreign country? While I highly doubt any of these guys will end up in a Midnight Express situation in a foreign jail, I do think someone's going to have to pay somehow for this debacle whether financially or in some other way. It'll be interesting to see how things turn out. Reading about Lochte in the news reminds me of a m/m book I read recently about a swimmer (who resembled Lochte) who got involved with one of his former swimming teammates. It was hard for me to read the book and NOT think of Lochte. Clearly, the author has or had some kind of thing for the guy.

In other news, I read that NPR is going to suspend comments on its stories starting next week. I say good for them. Far too often, the comments sections of various media outlets just descend into total chaos often with the same people arguing with each other online. Very little actual constructive or helpful comments are posted and the vitriol of many people commenting makes others hesitant to respond to a story because they fear being accosted themselves. My feeling is that if you want to comment about a story you've read, do it on your own social media platform (your blog, Twitter, etc.).