‘Fake Friends’ is one of my favorite short songs
put out by this long time rock n roller.
It came to my mind when I heard about the Manti Te’o story last
Wednesday and I’ve been humming many of her tunes for the past week.
In case you
are not aware of the Manti Te’o saga, it is a strange and lengthy story that was
brought to light most notably on Deadspin.com here. The ordeal begs many questions and offers few
answers about the Notre Dame star linebacker’s fabricated sweetheart, Lennay
Kekua, who was thought to have been in an automobile accident, slipped into a
coma, then recovered to be diagnosed with leukemia and died the day after Te’o’s
grandmother also died.
Problems
arose when she turned up alive.
Evidently due to the contagiously high desire to attend the ball games played
at South Bend, Indiana, and on the road, Te’o and seemingly no one else ever really
visited her in the hospital or had ever really gone to her funeral
services. Whereas, I suppose, if they
had made some trips they would have found out that she wasn’t in the hospital
and she didn’t die. It was a glitch that
they figured out during an investigation a few months later, around the time
the season was winding down.
It’s pretty
wild stuff…right?
It got me to
think that many of you who read my posts have never met me and may wonder if I
am real. After all some of you live in
other states or other countries, so it’s plausible that ‘Christopher’ could be
non-existent as well.
But of
course that is not the case, for I am Christopher, real and a realist. All along I thought that fabricating
someone’s existence and their death while deluding a large group of people was
reserved nearly exclusively for sitcoms like Seinfeld. Yet truth trumps fiction once again and we
learn that such a grand hoax can be developed using electronic messages, a few
pictures, the media and either an extremely clever or extremely inept target.
Few in the
media seem to know what questions to ask because the events are so bizarre it’s
difficult to relate to or approach with sincerity. I’ve only seen snippets from Katie Couric’s
interview with Manti and from what I’ve seen Katie hasn’t uncovered much. Making the headlines is that she asked him if
he is gay.
Forget about
being gay or not I want to know how all the other people in his life were
fooled down the line as well. In my
world, no matter who dies if I tell my mother she calls me back in two hours
asking where she can send flowers and a donation. Besides crying on Katie Couric’s set, what
did Te’o’s parents do in the aftermath of Te’o’s and their loss? There is more missing here than being
presented.
And the
voice mails that have been released are ludicrous. I genuinely hate to try to get inside the
head of a person thinking irrationally.
But why, when Te’o himself is at least the one person who knows he never
met Lennay, does he not run for the hills after Lennay leaves a crying message
wrought with anxiety over another girl possibly being with him? They had never met, she’s crying and jealous
and he’s not scared? And he’s willing to
go back for more? I vote guilty by
reasons of insanity or guilty by come on already.
If I were
sitting across an armchair from Manti Te’o I would want to know why he
waited until after the Crimson verse
Clover BCS Title Game was played on Jan 7th to address any of
this to the public when it had actually been known back in December, as reported
here and he now admits.
Does he hate himself for loving her?
Will he need to keep ever more focused on
football and not give a damn about his
reputation?
Maybe he even needs a break from love, for love is pain.
Would he
have liked it if someone in the studio offered to provide him with a tour and
remind him that love is all round, no
need to fake it?
I really did
hope that writing would provide me the distraction needed to clear my head of
the tunes, but still I feel the beat. At least I can look forward to a fresh round
of melodies between my ears as I set off to get some sleep.
Can you hear
it too?
…I kiss and you kiss…and la de da de da de
da…I’m in love but it’s only make believe to you…oh yeah…..
© 2013
Christopher’s Views
