Nurse the Hate: The So Totally Awesome Manti Te'o Story Continues!

Well it certainly is good news that the “real” girlfriend of Manti Te’o has finally surfaced.  I had begun to think something was amiss here!  Today’s narrative in this totally awesome story is that Manti Te’o dated the girl pictured above who looks strangely like a hot Rachel Ray.  Isn’t she nice and well scrubbed?  Apparently they started dating sometime after November after the “death” of his fake girlfriend.  This is from a People Magazine article recap…

"Lennay was often brought up in conversation," Del Pilar, a junior at Notre Dame sister school St. Mary's College in South Bend, Ind., who met Te'o in November and dated him until earlier this month, tells PEOPLE. "I wanted to know about her, and how they did the long distance. He definitely [loved her]."

Del Pilar says Te'o, 22, proved equally devoted to her, regularly checking in before and after games when he was on the road – and he introduced her to his family.  "At the last home game they had a luau and he invited me to that," she says. "They did the [traditional Maori] Haka dance and his sisters performed the Hula and he made me try all the Hawaiian food. For me, family comes first, so when he did that, that really showed me his character. That's what drew us together."

 Sadly the two have broken up after Manti had to move to Florida to train for the draft, but they remain “very close and the best of friends”. 

Oh, well that explains that!  Who would think it was odd that a guy that had a long distance relationship with “the love of his life” that he had never actually bothered to meet wouldn’t take a girl he dated for a couple weeks to a family luau?  Of course.  There’s nothing weird about that.  Just a couple nice college kids having some family fun.  Plenty of widely accepted safe values all around.  Nothing to see here.  Move along. 

As soon as I saw this totally bullshit placed news item I thought, “Is she an actress, model or public relations ringer?”.  I find it odd that some random college girl has a professional quality photograph ready for the United States press corp to download for easy consumption.  When I was in college, most of my pictures were of me passed out on couches and mattresses on floors.  I don’t recall myself or any of my friends doing any quick modeling spreads.  Maybe times have changed?   

I also find it odd that this item breaks just hours before his staged interview with Katie Couric is scheduled to air.  This is the mark of true professionalism.  This technique is called “controlling the narrative” and is used to water down and guide the press where the client needs them to be focused.  The goal is to get you focused on unimportant details and forget the larger story.  You will get so wrapped up in this new girl, and listening to the highly coached interview questions/answers, you will forget that absolutely none of this adds up in any way.  The goal is to make sure that Manti Te’o remains a highly draftable NFL #1 draft choice and receives his multi million dollar signing bonus and contract.  These are very high stakes.  That’s why there is so much bullshit being slung.  

If you are still somehow skeptical, allow me to direct you to Alexandra del Pilar’s Linked In page.  http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alexandra-del-pilar/57/b4b/341 You can imagine how shocked I was to discover that she is a public relations major entering her final year of school.  What are the odds that she was promised a plum public relations job in exchange for “a little help” with this particular project?  I would think that whatever firm brings her on after graduation is the one that is handling this public relations disaster.  You have to admire this woman and her ability to take advantage of this amazing career opportunity.  If she could speak honestly to her classmates about this, they would learn more about public relations in 15 minutes than all their previous class work combined. 

The next hurdle for team Te’o is to explain why he was talking for hours on the phone to a man that allegedly was pretending to be a woman.  Whew.  That ain’t gonna be easy…  Doesn’t this seem like way more trouble than just saying “I’m gay!  I’m sorry I lied about all of this!”?  It has snowballed so wildly out of control now there is no stopping it.  This is truly my favorite news event of the decade so far.