I don't normally look to sportswriters for particularly insightful social commentary (with the notable exceptions of the late Hunter S. Thompson and the late Ralph Wiley). I particularly don't usually look for it at CBS Sports—home of Jimmy 'the Greek' Snyder, whose coworkers maintain to this day that they didn't think he was particularly racist). But this Dan Bernstein article on the child-molestation scandal and (repeated!) cover ups at Penn State is... well, I'll let it speak for itself:
The Devil is in the details.
They hurt to read, I won’t lie to you. You cannot un-know them or un-see them. You will stop multiple times in the 23 pages of the grand jury report, needing to avert your eyes or shudder. But you have to do it. You have to read every word, every sickening description and every name involved in the institutionalized evil at Penn State. Your opinion about anything going on is invalid if you have not yet done so.
Here it is. Read it.
You are simply not allowed to say “I don’t want to,” or “I can’t handle it.” Jerry Sandusky’s victims and their families endured – and continue to endure — unspeakable horror.
The least you can do is be as informed as possible about the hideousness in Happy Valley. It will sear your soul, and it’s your obligation to confront the truth at its most real and painful. Relying on watered-down characterization of the acts is a cop-out...
... Do not dare to call a radio show, send an email, post on social media, or comment at the conclusion of this column until you have taken the time to read every word. Until you do, nothing you think or say matters one iota...
... Most importantly, we must stop with comfortable euphemisms that ease the pain of confronting these brutal crimes. This is not “horseplay,” or “inappropriate acts,” or even “sodomy.” It’s worse. We have a solemn responsibility to expose these infections to sunlight, trying as hard as we can to understand as much as we can. You will not think as you did before. You saw the idiot students chanting football cheers last night on Paterno’s lawn, and have heard from the cult of apologists. You will want to kill all of them.
|
Read Bernstein's whole article here. Then steel your stomach and
read the grand jury report. And when some idiot friend/co-worker/relative tries to play apologist for Joe Paterno over the next couple of weeks or at Thanksgiving, cry 'havoc' and let slip the dogs of war.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moragmacpherson) wrote2011-11-09 06:12 pm
no subject
(God)
no subject
no subject
Jesus.
no subject
bogglesrecoils in horror.(Long time no see! Hope all is well.)
no subject
no subject
And the euphemisms and watered down language being used by most of the media coverage is just enabling the apologists. Paterno's reactions are totally defensible! What more could he have done? How many times do you have to hear about how your acquaintance of thirty years keeps using your locker room to
behave inappropriately with minorshave sex with ten year olds before you call the police? Oh, wait: in 1998 the police investigated and Sandusky admitted that hetouched a minor inappropriatelyfondled a ten year old's genitals in Paterno's showers, but, huh, the D.A. decided not to press charges. Well, I guess in 2002 when Paterno had another person report that he'd just watched Sanduskydoing something sexual with a young boyhaving anal sex with a ten year old in the football team's locker room showers, Paterno must have figured that going to the police hadn't worked last time, so he didn't have to bother this time! May as well just tell the Athletic Director about it so he can warn the VP of finance in case the kid sues and offer the witness, Mike McQueary, an assistant coaching job. Let's not involve the police just because your former employee, the head of a major youth charity,was behaving suspiciously with a minorGOT CAUGHT FUCKING A TEN YEAR OLD IN THE ASS IN THE PENN STATE FOOTBALL TEAM'S LOCKER ROOM SHOWERS—AGAINFOR THE THIRD TIME IN FOUR YEARS!It's just another sex scandal. Can't let it get in the way of the football season.
no subject
Exactly, I'm tired of this bullshit. I don't care that you told someone who ISN'T THE POLICE. Why would you think ~passing the info on~ means that you're free to go skip back to your office guilt free? I can't even be happy that Paterno was fired - well, I kind of am, because at least he wasn't allowed to retire like a fucking cowardly weasel, but still. Our system fails in a lot of ways, but holy shit Batman, don't try to cover it up even further. JFC.
no subject
There is no level of society that hasn't failed these children already. I'm thrilled they fired the weasel and the even more weasely ex-President (at least Paterno's pretending that he's remorseful for his inaction). Now they just need to fire all the people who covered for Sandusky at the charity, the police department that dropped the investigation, and about half of the administrators at the college. Have the NCAA give the sports scholarship kids penalty-free transfers and nuke the entire athletic department from orbit, just to be sure. And then the Board of Trustees should resign in shame for allowing this to happen on their watch.
no subject
no subject
Just in case you weren't angry enough, Coach McQueary was the TA who WATCHED Sandusky have anal sex with Victim 2 (the unidentified ten year old) in the team's shower. I guess he thought taking away Sandusky's keys to the locker room was how a school with integrity punishes little things like that.
no subject
I'm for a public stoning, frankly.
no subject
Sandusky, the sicko, will get his day in court (finally - or, more likely, a plea bargain that will keep him in solitary confinement for the rest of his life because prisons, unlike other "honorable" institutions, tend to kill child molesters rather than protect them). But McQueary, Paterno, Curley, and all the rest? They damned themselves with their own testimony and actions and they still don't understand what they did wrong.
no subject
no subject
But defending the people who witnessed it and did nothing because they're in charge of your favorite football team? That's an attitude that's damning of American society in general. And so we must read this, because ignoring it is the greater evil.
no subject
no subject
charity workvictim pool.no subject
no subject
How bad -- how systemic was this cover up? The whole 1998 police investigation (where he admitted to fondling a ten year old in the Penn State showers but the DA declined to press charges) is fishy. Made even fishier by the fact that the D.A. disappeared without a trace in 2005. Before he disappeared, he googled "how to fry a hard drive". They found his laptop in a river weeks later. His hard drive was so thoroughly destroyed that the specialists who retrieved data from the wreckage of the Columbia space shuttle couldn't manage to recover any of his files.
And huh, right after the D.A. closed the investigation, Sandusky complained to the boy he was raping in May 1999 about Paterno refusing to promote him, so Sandusky "retires" but receives an emeritus position? But the football program at Penn State didn't tank until 2003, after the 2002 incident when they finally banned Sandusky from the locker room?
It's not the words - we have words, we need to use them. It's the dreadful arithmetic that scares me. It's the worry that one day this story will start with the question, "How much is a winning football program worth?"
no subject
I mean. I just... I don't even know what to think about that. I honestly hope it's all college kids who are just ignorant because I can't believe that someone could have read that grand jury report and still be supporting Paterno or really any current administrators at that school.
no subject
... except look at how well reporting worked for Victim 6's mother. Oh wait, most of the people I've talked to who are insisting on JoePa's innocence outright refuse to read the indictment. I suspect the rioters haven't bothered either. Why bother to look at the evidence of a two year State Attorney General's investigation when you can blame "the media" for wanting to bring down their hero. The media's persecuting poor "legendary coach" Joe Paterno because they hate... umm... uh... well, you know how evil "the media" are. They hate puppies or something. Let's overturn a TV van!
Like you, I prefer to think that, because otherwise who the hell are these kids and how did our culture manage to screw up their priorities this badly?
(The Catholic Church comparisons are starting to crop up -- I've been avoiding making them because I don't want to muddle this issue, but Pennsylvania had some of the worst cases in that cover-up as well. And given the friendship of our dear, frothy friend Rick Santorum to many of the key figures in the cover-up, I'm just waiting for him to pop up insisting that the real issue isn't covering up child molestation, it's that it was an evil GAY child molester. Gay culture, that's the enemy - not the completely whacked out power that Div. I NCAA football teams have on their campuses and in their communities.)
no subject
/I feel like your icon at this point.
no subject
Obviously football > victims' feelings.
/SO MUCH RAGE!