I believe his pimp slap was reversed with a psychic IQ punch.
I’ve inquired further about the situation and asked if there is anything else that could be done. This is the response I received:
"Hi John,
We received an explanation from Planet Zero about this issue and also
the player who is disqualified from team member by interview process.
We were lectured from Planet Zero about interview process in February
2008. We understood that there is a highly respectable reason.
However, according to the situation of operation, It can be easily
imagened that player will complain about this process.
We’ll tell this fact to Planet Zero and investigate whether there was
any problem in Planet Zero’s judgment in operation.
We know players complain about this process for some reason.
We can’t know the concrete reasons of complain, so we leave everything
of this issue to the Planet Zero.
That is the only way We can think of.
–
Tetsuro Sugita"
So as expected, the committee has decided to be hands off and leave it under Planet Zero’s control. They want to avoid confrontation and stay out of things. This kind of behavior is typical with Japanese culture. It’s not necessarily bad, it’s just how they operate.
BTW, it seems some people have been questioning whether PZ John made up the response from Sugita-san allowing the exemption. Although I do not agree with some of his decisions, I do not think he would make up such things, and this response confirms that he was telling the truth.
This has been a long and heated discussion with finger pointing and what ifs. This response from the SBO committee confirms that PZ John has authority to do as he pleases with his qualifier. I know many of you may not agree with it, but the bottom line is there is not much that can be done at this point. There is no use in wasting energy by arguing over something that you do not have control over. So I suggest the community empowers themselves by planning for an alternative option for next year. You’ll have full support from me and pretty much everyone else on SRK.
Best of luck to the community,
John