Evanson: Caitlin Clark’s stalker is just another reminder of where we are and where we should be going

Published 3:00 pm Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Am I crazy? Or are we as a whole just crazier than we’ve ever been?

That’s a question I find myself repeatedly asking when I read, watch or listen to a lot of people discuss things in what’s now 2025, and it’s one I was reminded of when reading about Caitlin Clark’s ongoing fight with her Texas stalker.

I’m not going to mention his name for there’s no reason to make him the belle of the ball, but while Jack Nicholson suggested to his neighbor to “go sell crazy somewhere else, I’m all stocked up here” in the Academy Award winning movie, “As Good As It Gets,” clearly levels were low in “The Lone Star State” because the 55-year-old gentleman accused of stalking Ms. Clark is facing up to six years in prison and a $10,000 fine for behavior highly unbecoming.

Said nut is alleged to have sent threatening and sexually violent messages to Clark via X (formerly Twitter), in addition to telling authorities that he was in “an imaginary relationship” with the former University of Iowa and Indiana Fever star during a welfare check by local police when he went to Indianapolis on vacation.

His response:

“It’s an imagination, fantasy type thing and it’s a joke, and it’s nothing to do with threatening,” he told police, according to the court documents.

Apparently, his sense of humor differs from mine because I find little funny about a middle-aged man traveling a thousand miles with the sole purpose of acting menacingly in a movie of his own making. That may not be considered “threatening” to he flying over the cuckoo’s nest, but to this relatively level-headed sports columnist it reeks a bit of someone a sandwich or two short of a picnic.

Stalking is not new, for history is fraught with celebrities, politicians and even regular people like you or I who’ve dealt with the obsessed. But while presidents, actors and actresses, and sports stars have dealt with said lunacy since the relative beginning of time, it’s never been so easy for run-of-the-mill and/or expert-level psychotics to spread their word to the masses — or specifically the object of their desire or disdain.

Social media offers a conduit to and from all who partake. It’s a platform not only for all that is good, but sadly, all that isn’t. And increasingly the latter is front and center more so than the former.

Somewhere along the line cute pictures and videos of family and friends, pets, vacations and tee-ball mishaps, mixed-in with encouraging comments about the aforementioned, became a bastion not for what’s good with the world, but rather what isn’t and those that aren’t.

Be it bullying, criticizing, mocking or in the case with Clark, threatening, the level of dehumanizing behavior directed at users of X, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook or any other social media platform-to-be-named-later has reached, and in my opinion, far exceeded alarming rates, and I’m not sure how you get that toothpaste back in the tube.

As long as people are allowed to, and we accept them attacking from a distance, we leave the door open for people like Clark’s stalker to close that gap. And like it or not, they’re doing that.

It’s happening with actors, internet celebrities, professional athletes and even lesser-known ones, and in our case close to home.

Last summer, a Grants Pass man received a one-year suspended sentence and three years’ probation for stalking University of Connecticut basketball star Paige Bueckers.

The Connecticut State Police rearrested the 40-year-old on Aug. 27 while he was walking along a highway near Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Connecticut. According to UConn Police, the man told state police that he was going to see Bueckers. Prior to his arrest, he posted on social media that he was traveling to Connecticut to propose to Bueckers and to get her expelled from UConn.

He was arrested a couple weeks later by UConn Police and charged with breach of peace, electronic stalking and harassment.

Wonderful, right? I’m being facetious, of course, but by no means unserious when it comes to something that’s becoming a very serious problem, and one that’s affecting a lot of people on both a big and much smaller scale.

Be it to the stalking degree or by a lesser but equally harmful means of bullying. If you have teenagers, you likely know. You’ve seen it first or secondhand, and what you haven’t seen you’ve heard about either near or far from home.

What’s the answer? Good question. But while the solution might be complex, I have a simpler one for you and I: Be better and become more.

For while you can’t cure crazy, you can condemn it — by both actions and words.