Say It Ain't So, Te'o

I was going to go through a big explanation of my thoughts on controversial college football player Manti Te'o, but a flowchart is worth a thousand words:

...and that's the trouble: we have no way of knowing what to feel about Manti Te'o, at least just yet.  But worse, whatever we feel, it's something that we will feel very strongly.  This kid mislead us and tugged at our heartstrings, or this innocent kid was mislead by so-called friends.  We'll probably find out in the next few days.  But until then, he's a pop-cultural Schrodinger's Cat, simultaneously villain and victim.

For me, if a person is in that situation, I'm going to tread lightly.  Whatever pleasure I might get from ridiculing the perpetrator of a national hoax, it's not worth the guilt I would feel if it turned out I had made fun of someone who's already gone through a lot of pain for another's humour.  But most people seem to be taking a different approach, seeing him as at least half-guilty, and thus as viable a pop-cultural target as anyone.  It's not like there are no other targets right now in the area of heart-warming stories involving sports and cancer that turned out to be deception.