Rex Ryan Story the Tipping Point for Reporting on Personal Lives of Public Figures?

New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan finds himself in a situation, involving his wife and foot fetish videos, that has exposed him to media-driven ridicule and taunts.

I say that perhaps this story should mark the point where the media draw the line, or at least realize it should have. And maybe, just maybe, it represents a tipping point of sorts.

Monday night, several foot fetish videos allegedly featuring Ryan's wife Michelle surfaced on an online sports gossip website. In two of the videos, someone who sounds like Rex Ryan is heard remarking on how beautiful the woman's bare feet are. He asks to touch and smell them; he muses that other men must find them attractive.

The next morning, media outlets ranging from the New York Daily News to sportstalk WFAN in New York howled. Terms such as "footgate" were thrown around.

But where, exactly, is the scandal? There is no nudity in any of the videos. There is no violence. There isn't even a curse word.

Ryan is a man with an outsize physical appearance; an outsize personality; and, many have assumed, an outsize ego. He is a man of wealth and power, and yet, after 23 years of marriage, the Ryans seemingly still enjoy each other enough to play sexy games together. Watching the videos, it would appear that this is a couple very much in love, and lust, still, with one another.

Ryan held two otherwise routine press conferences Wednesday. In both cases, Ryan was asked several questions about the videos. He refused to comment on the specifics, saying it was a personal matter.

The only time Ryan gave a specific answer to any of the questions was when a reporter asked him to describe his wife. Ryan said, "My wife's beautiful, [we've] been married for 23 years, and . . . she's awesome."

Again, is the Ryans' personal conduct bizarre? Probably to many people, it is. But after peeling back all of the shock value, and after getting over the easy water cooler talk fodder it provides, what do we really have? A couple allegedly intimate enough with one another to push the types of boundaries within their relationship that many probably only wish they could. And yet Rex, who did nothing actually wrong, has himself and his family opened now to ongoing ridicule and exposure because he and his wife seem to enjoy a sexual practice that most do not understand.

When considering the personal lives of public figures it seems almost cliché at this point to qualify the story by saying it happens within the context of the age of Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and instant messaging; it is, particularly in the Rex Ryan case, necessary. You have to wonder how this story would have been handled 30 or 40 years ago, when only primary reporters might have had access to this type of "evidence" relating to a head coach's personal life.

Now, on some level, the Ryans have really themselves to blame, if, as it appears, they put the video out on Youtube to begin with. While their names were not on the original videos, their judgment was at best awful given their fame and notoriety. As the head coach of the New York Jets, if Rex Ryan knew these videos were out there, he showed terrible judgment.

But this story is a story because it became a story, if that makes any sense. It is a story only because it embarrasses the Ryans, even though they have done nothing that is truly newsworthy.

Source:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/his_crime_he_in_love_with_his_wife_AQ1iFruNLOnYEtMqkf98wL