What’s Happening To The Tuohys Is Destructive Beyond Belief
You probably have heard a little about a lawsuit filed by former NFL offensive lineman Michael Oher, who achieved fame and fortune not just thanks to the years he spent playing for the Baltimore Ravens, Tennessee Titans and Carolina Panthers, but also because his story was made into a blockbuster movie called The Blind Side.
Oher was an underprivileged kid from a broken family who was taken under the wing of Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy while he was in high school, and thanks to their care and the investment made in him by Briarcrest Christian School in Memphis, he blossomed into a blue-chip football recruit who went on to play for Ole Miss, where Sean, now a wealthy businessman and restaurant franchisee, had been a basketball star. Oher then went on to be drafted by Baltimore and made a handsome fortune as an NFL star.
If you saw The Blind Side, you know all this. You probably also know that Oher’s father was a criminal who died in prison, that his mother was a crackhead who had 12 kids by a myriad of men, and that he spent his formative years bouncing from one foster home to another until the Tuohys, who had a son on the Briarcrest football team after Oher made his way to that school mostly thanks to his obvious athletic talent and the suggestion of one of his foster parents, invited him into their home and gave him the solid foundation and concerned parenting he’d never received before.
Of course, The Blind Side made more than $300 million at the box office, and the Tuohys sold their story to the producers for a cut of the film’s profits.
Which meant they profited handsomely from their association with Oher. As he profited handsomely from the association as well.
The Tennessee family accused by retired NFL star Michael Oher of tricking him into a conservatorship and taking all the proceeds from a blockbuster film about his life responded to the allegations Tuesday by claiming that Oher threatened to go public with his story if they did not pay him $15 million.
Attorney Martin Singer issued a statement on the Tuohys’ behalf that called Oher’s claims “outlandish” and said “the idea that the family ever sought to profit off Mr. Oher is not only offensive, it is transparently ridiculous.”
“In reality, the Tuohys opened their home to Mr. Oher, offered him structure, support and, most of all, unconditional love,” Singer’s statement said. “They have consistently treated him like a son and one of their three children. His response was to threaten them, including saying that he would plant a negative story about them in the press unless they paid him $15 million.”
Attorney Don Barrett, a member of Oher’s legal team, said in a statement Tuesday night, “We try cases in the courtroom based on the facts. We have confidence in our judicial system and in our client Michael Oher. We believe that justice will be served in the courtroom, and we hope to get there quickly.”
The story of Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy and their efforts to help raise Oher out of poverty to the NFL was immortalized in the 2009 movie “The Blind Side.” On Monday, Oher petitioned a Tennessee probate court with allegations that a central element of the story — that the Tuohys had adopted him — was a lie concocted by the family to enrich itself. Instead, less than three months after Oher turned 18 in 2004, the petition says, the couple tricked him into signing a document making them his conservators, which gave them legal authority to make business deals in his name.
The petition further alleges that the Tuohys used their power as conservators to strike a deal that paid them and their two birth children millions of dollars in royalties from the Oscar-winning film that earned more than $300 million, while Oher got nothing for a story “that would not have existed without him.” According to the legal filing, the movie paid the Tuohys each $225,000, plus 2.5% of the film’s “defined net proceeds.” In the years since, the Tuohys have continued calling the 37-year-old Oher their adopted son and have used that assertion to promote their foundation as well as Leigh Anne Tuohy’s work as an author and motivational speaker.
In his statement, Singer said agents for Michael Lewis, author of the bestselling book that became “The Blind Side,” negotiated a deal in which the Tuohy family “received a small advance from the production company and a tiny percentage of net profits.”
“They insisted that any money received be divided equally. And they have made good on that pledge,” the statement said. “The evidence — documented in profit participation checks and studio accounting statements — is clear: over the years, the Tuohys have given Mr. Oher an equal cut of every penny received from ‘The Blind Side.’ Even recently, when Mr. Oher started to threaten them about what he would do unless they paid him an eight-figure windfall, and, as part of that shakedown effort refused to cash the small profit checks from the Tuohys, they still deposited Mr. Oher’s equal share into a trust account they set up for his son.”
It gets even worse.
Singer’s statement said Oher “has actually attempted to run this play several times before — but it seems that numerous other lawyers stopped representing him once they saw the evidence and learned the truth. Sadly, Mr. Oher has finally found a willing enabler and filed this ludicrous lawsuit as a cynical attempt to drum up attention in the middle of his latest book tour.”
The ugliest thing about this is that the Tuohys don’t even oppose the termination of the conservatorship. They’re only fighting because they’ve been trashed as exploiters because they wouldn’t agree to pay what’s essentially blackmail.
Jason Whitlock spared none of the rod when he took this subject on in his most recent column…
What Michael Oher is doing to the Tuohy family is despicable. He’s telling an obvious lie that he knows most of the media will be too afraid to question because of the racial dynamics. Plus, the media is lazy. It’s easier to repeat Oher’s allegations than to question and/or research the legitimacy of them.
It’s also easier just to feel sorry for Oher. He’s broken. The first 15 years of his life are a tragedy. That’s not my opinion. Read his book. His mother was addicted to crack cocaine and birthed a dozen children with a variety of men. Oher and his siblings would routinely come home and find the door locked, their mother nowhere to be found. She would disappear for days, ingesting cocaine with friends. Her kids, as young as 14 months, would be left locked out of their apartment, forced to beg for food and a couch to sleep on. This was a regular pattern.
That type of neglect causes lifelong trauma. Oher met his father but had no relationship with him. His grandmother hated him. State social workers eventually intervened. Oher moved from foster home to foster home, school to school, from one friend’s couch to the next.
At the time of his 2011 book and after being dissatisfied with his portrayal in “The Blind Side,” Oher reached the conclusion that he wasn’t getting nearly enough credit for his rags-to-NFL-riches story. In “I Beat the Odds,” Oher argued that at age 7 he watched Michael Jordan slay the Phoenix Suns in the 1993 NBA Finals and he crafted a plan to become a professional athlete.
Seven-year-old Michael Oher saved Michael Oher, not the Tuohys or anyone else. The Tuohys and everyone else simply assisted Oher in executing his plan. He planned to be the next Michael Jordan. He wound up being a solid eight-year NFL lineman.
For years, he’s complained that “The Blind Side” made him look stupid, like he couldn’t read before tutors in high school taught him. He has expressed frustration that the movie suggested the Tuohys’ young son taught him football and that Leigh Anne coerced him into being aggressive.
Michael Oher wants credit. I get it. He wants to be the star and hero of his own movie. Most people do.
Oher lacks self-awareness, humility, and, quite possibly, intelligence. Making $34 million as an average professional athlete will certainly create some delusion.
At 6-foot-4 and 300 pounds, Oher fancied himself as the next Michael Jordan or Charles Barkley. He had to be talked into focusing on football. He thinks hatching the scheme to be a pro athlete at age 7 was a sign of brilliance and vision. It’s a ghetto dream that 99% of the time leads to failure. Where would Oher be today had he stopped growing at 5’9″ like most American men?
Where would he be without the Tuohys? They provided the stable home where a tutor could come work with him every day so he could catch up academically. By his own admission in “I Beat the Odds,” Oher never attended school regularly until he enrolled at Briarcrest Christian School as a sophomore.
Oher is so arrogant and delusional that he believes that his natural intellect would have been developed regardless of circumstance. It’s a naive worldview.
This case is charged, and it’s given more credence than it should, because of the racial aspect to it – namely, that the Tuohys are white and Oher is black. But it’s a terrible shame that this is the case; as Whitlock notes, the Tuohys sold their family business for $200 million. They didn’t need the money from The Blind Side. They’ve always been wealthier than Oher and they’ve done nothing but good things for him.
And his efforts to shake them down have destroyed what was one of the best feel-good stories modern America had to offer. Sandra Bullock’s portrayal of Leigh Ann Tuohy led a whole generation of Americans to appreciate what love could do across racial lines. It was a wonderful lesson for a nation which, at the time the movie came out, had just elected a black man president in what could only be appreciated as a yearning for that kind of love writ large.
But that’s all gone now.
And what Michael Oher is teaching the next family considering what they might do to help an underprivileged kid who needs a break is that it isn’t worth the trouble, that you’ll be made to regret it.
That no good deed goes unpunished.
That even if your efforts lead to someone making $34 million over eight years as an NFL offensive lineman, you will be disparaged, defamed and treated as an exploiter. And if you should happen to reach across racial lines to do good for someone else, you’ll be tainted as a racist exploiter in the bargain.
It’s so stupid and awful that there are now morons suggesting Bullock give back her Oscar for portraying Leigh Anne Tuohy…
And the “intelligent” responses mostly look like this.
This isn’t good. It’s another example of the coarsening and combativeness and greed which afflicts us. And nothing but bad consequences will come from it.
