Ken Starr sat down with Joe Schad for a televised interview on Outside the Lines not long after Schad broke the news that Starr would be resigning as chancellor of Baylor University, as the school continues to fire its way out of its current sexual violence scandal. Starr will remain as a professor at Baylor Law school, however, and he has made it perfectly clear that he had no idea any of this was going on under his watch. We know that because he repeatedly said so during his interview with Schad.The interview is almost entirely worthless. In addition to denying any knowledge of the various coverups and in some cases attempts to actively discourage victims from reporting sexual assaults, Starr refused to comment on the Board of Regents decision to fire coach Art Briles, because he was not consulted by the board. Later, when asked directly by Schad "to what extent has sexual violence been an issue at Baylor?" Starr replied, again qualifying his knowledge, that sexual violence "really hasn't been a problem, to my knowledge, until August of 2015."Ken Starr is a prosecutor—before this shitshow he was most famous for being the Independent Counsel that investigated President Bill Clinton—so he's very careful with his words, which is why almost all of his statements are preceded by some form of "as far as I know." He takes great pains to distance himself, and perhaps the school at large, from this scandal. He also appears to be another sacrificial lamb thrown to the press by a university that doesn't know what to do anymore. Starr is a willing martyr, and appears to be trying to give Baylor some cover.Perhaps the most shamelessly self-serving and tone-deaf moment for Starr comes in a segment that began with Schad asking about Pepper Hamilton's finding that the school engaged in victim-blaming. Starr said, "That may have been." Take a look at what he said moments later:"Every episode, of which I'm aware, happened off campus. Right? Not on campus, but we accept responsibility for that… I don't believe that there is any, this is my belief, that there is any episode on campus. And this is part of training. we need to train our young people: be careful… So it's not happening on campus, to the best of my knowledge, they're off campus parties. Those are the venues where these bad things have happened."Hey look at that, he just victim-blamed.The whole point of this clearly orchestrated sideshow, though, was for Baylor to show they were cleaning house. Why they felt the need to put Ken Starr on TV to repeatedly deny he had any knowledge of the things that ultimately got him fired is a mystery. Maybe Starr wanted to make sure the public knew this wasn't his fault and he's just doing the right thing (finally), but it is simply flabbergasting how institutions and people in positions of power remain incapable of just saying, "Sorry, we really messed up here and we are really going to try to fix it and move on from it."No one needs to see Ken Starr's smarmy face smile and talk about what terrific people the football players who raped and assaulted fellow students are, and no one needs to see Ken Starr talking about what a great guy the coach who got fired for overseeing the whole mess was. Adults and working professionals like to talk about the need for young people to take accountability for their actions. Here's another example of Baylor University failing its student body.[ESPN]
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