So: We go from Deadspin.com to the New York Post to People magazine in, like two days flat. If you don’t know by now that New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan probably has a foot fetish and that he and his wife Michelle might be into swinging, threesomes and unspecified consensual sexual torture, you’re probably not into football or sex, which means that you’re pretty marginalized in the United States, anyway.
Ryan is understandably embarrassed by the furor, yet has stood up in front of the cameras and microphones to let everyone know that this is a “personal matter,” which it emphatically is. What kind of relationship the Ryans have and what they do in their bedroom, or car or at private parties with friends—or even what they do on the Internet—is not anyone’s business but their own.
Yet it is news, somehow.
We do not have to be fans of the Jets to hope that Ryan and his marriage weather this storm. We’re inclined to root for them. "My wife's beautiful," Ryan said yesterday. "We've been married for 23 years. She's awesome."
Does anyone want to disagree with him?
Someday, there will be a day when the alternative lifestyle of a public figure elicits yawns rather than shock. We wish it were today, and that Rex Ryan could stare down his questioners and say, point-blank, “Y’all ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
But that day isn’t here yet.
Here’s the video that started all this. Pretty tame, if you ask us.