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Wednesday's Most Active Threads

by Jeff Steele last modified Aug 18, 2023 09:01 AM

The topics with the most engagement yesterday included "The Blind Side" scandal, a ticket at the airport formerly known as Washington National, an embarrassed son's reluctance to return to college, and FCPS not adopting state model policies.

Yesterday's most active thread was titled, "The Blind Side scandal" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. This thread has been going for a while but apparently took off yesterday, adding 15 pages to reach 25 pages in total. As most can probably guess, this thread is about the lawsuit filed by former NFL player Michael Oher against Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy. Oher and the Tuohys were the subject of the 2009 movie "The Blind Side" starring Sandra Bullock. Oher claims that he just learned in February that he had not been adopted by the Tuohys as he apparently believed. Not being a family member, Oher says he did not receive payments from the movie that were provided to the couple's children. The entertainment forum seems to have attracted a number of obsessive posters who often appear deeply knowledgeable (though that appearance is often misleading) and are capable of a prodigious number of posts per day. We have seen this in threads about Meghan Markle and Taylor Swift. In this case, I don't think these posters are longtime fans of either Oher or the Tuohys, though it is pretty clear that many posters have been influenced by Bullock's portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuohy. Indeed, quite a few of those posting seem to have gotten most of their information from either the movie or the book on which the movie was based. Many of the posters in the thread are suspicious of the Tuohy's motives and accept Oher's contention that he was misled into thinking that he had been adopted when, in fact, he had not been. Some of these posters believe that the Tuohys exploited Oher, were only interested in him due to his football skills, and had no interest in making him a formal member of their family. Other posters side with the Tuohys, arguing that a conservatorship was more practical than an adoption and that Oher should have been aware of the legal implications. One argument made by Tuohy supporters is that they have not actually received that much money as a result of the book and movie and that the money they spent raising Oher exceeded any income. So they don't expect him to receive anything from the lawsuit even if it is successful. One particularly strong supporter of the Tuohys continually launched attacks on Oher that appear based on nothing more than conjecture. She suggested that Oher is out of money and going after the Tuohys as a money grab. Moreover, she alleged that this was being done at the best of Oher's wife, contending that this was mostly a mother-in-law vs. daughter-in-law conflict. I haven't seen anything to support this view, but given the innumerable mother-in-law/daughter-in-law conflicts that are routinely fought in our Family Relationships forum, it would fit right in on DCUM.

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