Weasels of the Week: Sam Sotoodeh and Barzeen Soroudi

Last month, Ryan Lochte may have sunk his professional swimming career by lying about being robbed during the Olympics. Turned out he wasn't robbed, but rather behaved like an immature teenager and caused some problems for a local business. So maybe it wasn't the smartest of ideas for Lochte to accept an invitation to appear on Dancing With The Stars so soon after the Olympics, but ABC wanted to capitalize on the success Team USA had in Rio, and Lochte, thinking this would be the first step toward repairing his damaged image, accepted the invite.

On last night's season premiere, Lochte and pro dance partner Cheryl Burke, a multi-time winner, had finished a foxtrot and were being evaluated by judge Carrie Ann Inaba when a couple of jabronies wearing anti-Lochte shirts rushed the stage, but were quickly stopped by security. Viewers never saw the two trespassing imbeciles until well after the show ended, when footage began airing on other channels.

As the Joker (Jack Nicholson) lamented in "Batman" back in 1989, "I have a name for my pain". Or, more specifically, all of America has a pair of names for their collective pain.

Sam Sotoodeh & Barzeen Soroudi felt it was necessary to make their feelings known, hoping to get their 15 minutes at Lochte's expense. However, as with a lot of sporting events these days, the cameras turned away from these clowns so they wouldn't get on primetime television, treated no differently than the drunken morons that hop onto the field of play on a inebriated dare, like the moron who interrupted the Rams-49ers game later that night.

But as with 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, there are better, proper ways of going about a protest. Sotoodeh & Soroudi, ignorant of consequence, earned their Weasel ears. Now, ABC has to screen all audience members going forward for the rest of the current season to prevent a repeat. Lochte, granted, raised the ire of a lot of people in the US & Brazil with his impersonation of a frat boy at age 32, but doesn't deserve to be reminded of his failings when he's trying to make reparations as best as possible. We in this country believe in giving people a second or third chance. It's just that there are a few Weasels that blind themselves to reality and get in the way of those chances.