Ken Starr recently resigned as chancellor of Baylor University in the wake of the sexual assault scandal at the school and said he did so "as a matter of conscience" and so that he could talk freely about the issue. Then he sat for an interview with talked at Joe Schad for Outside the Lines and said a whole lot gibberish about how, as far as he knew, sexual assault wasn't even a problem at Baylor. Somehow, in a follow up interview, Starr managed to say even less, and had an assist bungling it from a crisis management expert.Julie Hays of KWTX sat down with the former president and chancellor at his home on the Baylor campus for a wide-ranging interview, but things abruptly ended when Hays asked Starr about an email sent to several high-ranking officials at Baylor—including Starr, the Title IX office, and former coach Art Briles—under the subject line "I was raped at Baylor." The victim appeared on OTL as "Sarah" during the Schad segment with Starr. Hays and KWTX interviewed Starr shortly thereafter. He began giving his now familiarly-qualified answer saying "I honestly may I have, I'm not denying that I saw it." Just like everything Starr has said since his resignation, it's technically honest and also completely worthless.But then Merrie Spaeth—a crisis management specialist who worked for the Reagan White House and also helped coach Starr when he was testifying to impeach Bill Clinton—interrupted the interview because she didn't like his answer. She asked the crew not to use that portion of the interview and when they declined she took Starr out of the room. When he returned, he then gave two different answers to the same question, for a total of three answers to one very straightforward question: did you see this email from a rape victim sent less than a year ago?Take Two would almost be hilarious if these people weren't so sniveling and self-interested: "All I'm gonna say is I honestly have no recollection of that." He then gives a flash of a smile that may have been a facial tic, looks at Spaeth and says "is that OK?"Then he takes a third pass at the answer and gives a longer answer, devoid of anything but words. "I honestly have no recollection of seeing such an email and i believe that I would remember seeing such an email. The president of the university gets lots of emails. I don't even see a lot of the emails that come into the office of the president. I have no recollection of it. None!" This one is particularly great because he even touches on how preposterous it is to say "I don't remember" seeing an email with the subject line "I was raped at [the school I am currently president of]."When these things happen and crisis managers get on board, it's always the same dance. "We want to be transparent" or "we failed, but we are doing the right thing now" and so on. None of it has any real meaning, it's just a thing that sounds nice to say and hopefully people accept it and everyone moves on. The point is to give the public what it wants, without doing any more damage to yourself, so you wind up getting nothing. They are crisis managers after all, not fixers, and you don't need to hire someone and strategize how to tell the truth. Baylor and Ken Starr are under heavy scrutiny for their failure on multiple fronts to deal with a serious problem on campus and rather than actually demonstrate that they understand the gravity of those errors, everyone associated with the school seems to be in damage control mode for themselves.h/t Deadspin
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