Confronting the Corporate Sponsors of USA Swimming

Lining Up the Next Week at Concussion Inc.
April 17, 2012
‘Olympic Gold Medalist Denounced USA Swimming Child Sex Abuse – But Now Serves on its Board of Directors’ … today at Beyond Chron
April 18, 2012

Yesterday a public relations specialist for a USA Swimming sponsor dropped your humble blogger faster than any girl I’ve ever known. The sponsor, CeraVe, makes cleansers and moisturizers, so perhaps the explanation is that I’m not clean and moist enough.

One Michelle Olson-Rogers, beauty PR account director for the Lane Communications Group – @PRGalMichelle on Twitter – followed and unfollowed me in the space of a couple of hours. This shattered the world’s record previously held by Eileen (@EWKLG) Wargo, the dark lady of Jerry McDevitt’s K&L Gates law firm in Pittsburgh, outside counsel for World Wrestling Entertainment.

What happened was that I had contacted all ten listed sponsors on the USA Swimming website and asked for comment on my new ebook PENN STATE IN THE POOL: The Cover-Up of the USA Swimming Youth Coach Sex Abuse Scandal. This was done on the theory that corporate responsibility might involve a bit more than paying carbon offsets for the environment.

Alas, Ms. Olson-Rogers, representing probably the smallest fry of the whole group, has been the only one to respond at all, after a fashion. The other listed sponsors of USA Swimming – a $20 million annual operation whose executive director, Chuck Wielgus, draws a salary of more than $750,000 while denying, evading, and dissembling about the widespread problem of coach-teenage girl rape – are:

AT&T

BMW

ConocoPhillips

Marriott

Mutual of Omaha

Myrtha Pools

OMEGA

Speedo

VISA

 

Tomorrow: My column for Beyond Chron on the mystery of the multiple Olympic gold medalist who advocated against child sex abuse at USA Swimming – then fell silent.

 

Irv Muchnick

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Concussion Inc. - Author Irvin Muchnick