For those of you who’ve been living in a black hole with utterly no communication for the last two months or so, there’s been a recent scandal. Longtime NFL quarterback Brett Favre, who played for the New York Jets in 2008, was accused of sending lewd voicemails and pictures to Jenn Sterger, who was then a Jets employee.

But I happen to have several problems with this case. In the first place, why did it take two years for Jenn Sterger to become upset? Did it not occur to her until now that she’d been accosted? I don’t presume to say Ms. Sterger is stupid and therefore didn’t understand or know what happened (it’s a little obvious), but I am wondering why it took her two years to complain. It’s like, say, a pair of sisters. They fight. Two years later one sister brings it up to make her sister look bad in their mother’s eyes. In the same way, it seems that Jenn Sterger and Brett Favre had contact with each other – two years later Ms. Sterger brings that contact up to make Favre look bad in the eyes of the NFL, the media and the country. Childish behavior, if you ask me.

Secondly, when the MSN homepage gave links to articles about the affair, why were there links in the right-hand column reading “See Jenn Sterger’s sexy pics”? One of these links even featured one of the said pictures, showing Ms. Sterger about to take her top off. Wait a minute. She accuses the guy of liking her enough to try to seduce her, while meanwhile she doesn’t mind trying to seduce any man with an Internet connection. If she’s taking her clothes off for the camera, she really can’t afford to be upset when someone is impressed by what they’ve seen. She’s encouraging people to give her attention. Then she gets mad when they give her that attention. Is she playing them for suckers? Or is she too immature to know what she wants from them? Either way, she is behaving childishly. Again.

My third problem with this case involves the media’s reaction. The entire news world seemed to be ablaze with its fury at Favre’s actions. But unwanted sexual or romantic advances occur every day across the nation in any combination of who approached whom. The only reason everyone knows about what Favre did is because he was already famous. In my opinion (and since this is an opinion piece), Jenn Sterger’s better course of action would have been to handle it more discreetly – perhaps explaining to him privately – and I mean privately - that the attention was not welcome and to back off. Only if he persisted should she have made her complaints public. Bottom line: Jenn Sterger behaved childishly. Or have I made this point before?

And as a final thought – if it had been any other quarterback but Favre, would the reaction have been the same?