Something to remember as we climb over each other in our zeal to express our moral outrage. Squid:
As a PSU alum, one thing I’d ask is that people give us a few days to process all this. Every big college has a thorough indoctrination program; it’s how they keep the alumni dollars flowing back to Alma Mater year after year. Penn State is worse than most, I’d reckon, and I won’t deny that I drank the kool-aid along with everyone else.
People often sarcastically refer to Paterno as “Saint Joe.” Thing is, to those of us who went to State (hell, to a lot of Pennsylvanians in general and college football fans at large), there’s nothing sarcastic about the sentiment. The guy is a living legend. He’s raised ten of millions of dollars for the University. He’s the guy who got the new library built, which is why his name is on it. I’m not joking when I say that my wife and I had plans to return to PA upon JoePa’s death so that we could participate in the state-wide wake. Or at least, that was the state of things a few days ago.
Penn State was an institution I was proud to be associated with, and Paterno was the figure who represented the values of the institution. That’s gone now. I bitterly joke with my cow-orkers that I’m going to be stuck at this job forever, because I’m too embarrassed to send out my resume with PSU on it.
Six years of my life were spent on that campus. My dearest friends in the world, and many of my most cherished memories, come from those days. For years, it’s been school pride. School colors. School spirit. Fight songs. Alma Mater. Alumni gatherings. Driving over to Mpls to cheer against the Gophers when the Nittany Lions come to town. Trash-talking other Big Ten schools.
Now? It’s all gone. Turned to shit around me. People that I respected and admired are revealed as craven, shallow fools who aided and abetted a series of horrifying crimes. The institution that I loved sees its reputation (rightfully) in tatters. I’m not sure that the alumni and the taxpayers of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are going to support the university any more. It may simply cease to exist, broken into pieces and subsumed into an expanded state university system. And you know what? That’s what should happen. There’s no redeeming this. Penn State should get the death penalty. And I hate the people that allowed this to happen, and I hate the bureaucracy that allowed so many people to try to pass the buck or sweep everything under the carpet.
It’s taken me all week to get to this point. I’m 40 years old, and I’ve been away from campus for 15 years. I have all those years of experience that have taught me how very screwed up the world and most of its institutions are. And yet, it’s taken me days to believe that things really are this terrible; to understand just what happened, and what it means, and what the consequences are likely to be. I still have trouble processing the enormity of this week’s events, much less the horror of the Sandusky years. You can imagine that your average state college undergrad, who’s been steeping in the brew for years, who’s coming to grips with the fact that his soon-to-be- or recently-earned degree is going to be an albatross around his neck (not that my fellow undergrads read any Coleridge), may have a bit more trouble going through the stages of grief.
So, on behalf of those of us who attended Penn State without ever molesting anyone, do me a favor and cut us a little slack while we recover from having our world brought down around our ears, okay?
Here’s your place to discuss all things Penn State and anti-child molestation.
But before you begin — and to add some context and perspective — here’s a little tidbit courtesy ESPN:
The last time Paterno wasn’t on PSU staff, the NBA was in its 4th season and Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams were reigning NL and AL MVPs.
Okay, then. You may begin.
****
update: The Right Sphere’s RB sends along thoughts.
Here’s Jonah’s column.
didn’t you know that the Penn state debacle is really the fault of white male conservatives?
Something that occurred to me after reading Squid’s well-written comment was that it could have been from a Catholic a few years ago. Similar feelings about the betrayal of trust from an institution that was an unadulterated positive for so many for so long.
I am not a sports person so this is my impression of the craziness:
I understand if Penn State was your religion it feels like Jesus just said “hey guys — just kidding about all that salvation and hope of the world stuff”
so I’m automatically unsympathetic. But I don’t think this means having Penn State on your resume is a bad thing in the future. Unless you were a coach there.
bh — yeah, it is reminiscent of the Catholic priest thing. That must be why I’m getting the religion vibe from some of the commenters on the internet.
Another thought, one reason I’m not sure I want future Penn State football games for awhile is that I really, really, really don’t want to see the inevitable assholery from opposing fans at their away games. There would/will be so many tasteless pedophile “jokes” that you’d never, ever want to take a kid along or possibly even admit that you’re a fellow human being afterwards.
Added an update. Give it a read and discuss, if such is your wont.
What I find kinda interesting is that amid all the PC stuff we’ve had to endure from colleges – the rape seminars, women safety, queer awareness, the rights of just about everyone under the son who isn’t a white, hetero male, … they allowed THIS to happen under their noses. People KNEW about it.
During a time when a man could lose his job for telling a woman an off color joke, or senators were thrown out of the office for saying macaca or tar baby.
When colleges were purging their mascots of anything that offended anyone (Miami will always be the Redskins TO ME)
at this time, reports that a grown man was raping a little boy in the shower was handled slowly and very little curiosity …
The mind wobbles.
From Jeff’s update:
. To him, it meant turning boys into men of high character. Men who could face adversity and overcome it. Men who would be role models to their respective communities. And for 40+ years Joe Paterno did just that.
And yet -Mike McQuery who was Joe’s starting quarterback in 1997 – completely failed at that test.
If men of high character means “wins football games”, I guess he did ok.
but I judge high character a little differently.
I believe it comes down to when we confuse individuals with institutions. Somehow “institutions” get the reputation of everyone involved and the tendency of those involved is to protect it instead of tossing out the reprobates at first discovery.
While Penn State may have taken a hit if McQuery had gone immediately to the police after witnessing a child being raped, the long-term reputation of the institution would have risen as a place where such evil is never tolerated.
I was just recalling that I dated a chick some years ago who went to school there, and I found it so incredibly off-putting that she didn’t give a shit about Penn State football and never had, that I never called her again. People who haven’t been around a lot of people who went there really don’t understand how central football, the deity that was Paterno, is to the college (and alumni) experience. So much so that even from the outside looking in, a person from there who is impervious to it all seems like a freak.
As a former major college football player, I say shut the whole thing down. Meaning the NCAA. No more sports, no more games, no more scholarships.
And while you’re at it, shut the whole college thing down too. No more professors, no more deans, no more Law Reviews.
“Hey, that guy played college football! He must be a man of high character. I’ll interview him……….So tell me a little bit about yourself O.J.”
or
“Wow Harvard Law Review! You’re hired! No transcripts needed! Black and smart!* This is fantastic!”
*don’t take this as racist. When I say something racist you’ll know it.
Where did you play, alp?
The NYT has as a ‘Room for Debate‘ topic today ‘Should Penn State Cancel Its Season?’. One enlightened professor, Salzberg (who spent many of his early school years stuffed in various lockers by jocks I’ll warrant) wants to do away with collegiate football entirely.
That’s crazy talk from a nobody. But tomorrow’s game, if played, will be the most-watched game in Penn State history; a circus, and a likely train wreck. That one should prolly be scrubbed.
It’s odd. Lord Paden-Powell, the guy who founded the Boy Scouts, and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who did as much to turn the tide against Nazi Germany, were almost certainly both pederasts–the younger the better for Powell, teenagers for Monty–who did some remarkable things. We revere them both, though Monty more so.
The point isn’t to say that it can happen anywhere, although it’s inescapably true, but that it shouldn’t tarnish the institutions irrevocably. I’m sorry Squid feels that way, but he shouldn’t ( I submit.) PSU is a fine school, nothing more and nothing less. What led PSU’s adinistration to this moment is plain old human weakness. No one in post WWII Britain wanted to call Monty out for his constant slim young companions; Paterno couldn’t bring himself to begin the process that would almost certainly end in jail time, and disgrace, for a dear friend, a respected colleague and above all, Happy Valley.
Mankind can face blood, pressure and death i over the course of years, and do so willingly, but comes a time to raise attention to a revered friend’s or leaders personal failings and we blink and rationalzie it all away. We always, always do.
I am one of the last Redskins that Carin mentioned. I have the distinction of being driven into the ground by Leslie O’Neal after throwing the ball. Among other things not so distinctive.
@Carin
I completely understand where you’re coming from, but I ask you to consider that Mike McQueary is one player / coach out of thousands who have gone through Penn State.
In fact, the whole point of my post (I’m that RB) was to explain that we – everyone – aren’t perfect and clearly, Joe Paterno wasn’t either.
Out of the thousands of players who Paterno coached, are there some who aren’t men of high character? Of course. But the vast majority of them are.
I should note that Carin’s comments at 8 and 9 are exceptionally trenchant.
A stuttering white president of the Harvard Law Review would not have been elected.
Oh. alp, that’s not intended for you. Unless you penned this…
You know, anyone who uses the clause ‘In which I…” is obviously off rocker… )
I know I’m all over the place on this subject, because I have kids and I can’t bear to look at it. I’m using one of my defense mechanisms, deflection maybe? I don’t know because a professor let me take the self study course on psychology during the season.
I completely understand where you’re coming from, but I ask you to consider that Mike McQueary is one player / coach out of thousands who have gone through Penn State.
Oh, sure. I’m not ready it indict everyone who ever played at Penn State or coached with Paterno. I’m just saying that this is a pretty big fucking FAIL. It just amazes me that fathers, brothers, etc, would decide that this was something they really didn’t care to investigate too deeply.
But, I will say while players and commentators wax nostalgic over how wonderful and great our athletes and coaches are, perhaps they may want to consider that much of it is bullshit fiction.
Our heroes are in the military.
Would a Marine have walked out of that shower and called his daddy?
Amen Carin
Found here about the wages of cowardice at Penn State.
I found it so incredibly off-putting that she didn’t give a shit about Penn State football and never had, that I never called her again.
That’s what I mean. That’s just weird. It’s like football is a religion. And even though I may not agree with people who want to eliminate sports at college, I *do* agree that college is way too swamped with fucking GAMES that don’t do anything for EDUCATION other than bring in dollars. And occasionally rape children for profit. I don’t need football for my boys to have good character, that’s for damn sure. My boys are already coming home asking me if we are Clemson or Gamecock fans, becuase this is the most important thing at school!
Um NO. I want you to read and do math, son.
I ask you to consider that Mike McQueary is one player/coach out of thousands who have gone through Penn State.
One who actually witnessed the rape in progress, not someone who heard rumors about Sandusky’s nasty little proclivities.
It’s extremely rare to witness actual child rape, which is why it’s so galling that nothing was done after it was actually witnessed. It’s one thing to suspect that something fishy is going on with Sandusky and his boys, and then to hesitate to make a false accusation (which carries its own horrors); it’s quite another to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that at least one kid was raped, and then to do next to nothing.
I can see being afflicted by deer-in-the-headlights syndrome after seeing or hearing about something like that; I can understand wanting it all to go away, but after awhile, after a few hours or days, doesn’t your conscience compel you to act? Doesn’t the shock give way to anger?
I don’t condemn all of Penn State or all of college football or even all of the Penn State football apparatus. But they definitely need to lose their program, at least for awhile. They were guarding their cash cow at the expense of 18 souls. All college sports programs need to know that it will cost them much less to report the awfulness right away than to cover it all up.
From serr8d’s quote:
What unadulterated horseshit. What’s “hurting our competitiveness in technology, science, and engineering” is the politically-correct, collectivist po-mo nonsense the public education system is indoctrinating into our children from Grade 1.
The classic trap: the Institution does good things, therefore anything done to protect the Institution is good. The Catholic Church, Boy Scouts, the Government, and Penn State for the latest example have shown how it happens.
The Vatican issued a statement that they were appalled by the Penn State allegations. And they don’t understand why Jerry Sandusky wasn’t immediately transferred to another school.
How do you separate the men from the boys at Penn State? You don’t.
An older woman going after young boys is a cougar. An older man going after young boys is a Nittany lion.
Sorry, I just had to throw those out there.
Would a Marine have walked out of that shower and called his daddy?
Uh huh. ‘Cuz the Marines have never had a scandal.
I’m not clear why it is the Penn State Athletics programs have to be punished by fiat. Isn’t the judicial system competent to mete out punishment to the guilty after determination of guilt? In the meantime, bringing down generalized hellfire on people who had nothing to do with the wrongdoing seems to me just another commission of injustice. Blaming and whacking people who’ve done nothing wrong is wrong.
Worth a close read followed by careful consideration.
You’re wrong about the Boy Scouts. They protect the institution by banning homosexuals and they catch hell for it.
You may hate Jerry Sandusky, but at least he drove slowly through school zones.
These Jerry Sandusky jokes are old…
…unlike those boys in the shower.
Sandusky is set to remake two Schwarzenegger films into one…
It’s going to be called Kindergarten Predator.
Jerry Sandusky walks into an elementary school just as classes are let out for the day, when a teacher approaches him & asks, “so which child is yours?”
Sandusky replies: “I don’t care, surprise me.”
At Sandusky’s arraignment, the judge reportedly asked him, “How does 8-9 years sound?”
He replied, “secksy.”
An older woman going after young boys is a cougar. An older man going after young boys is a Nittany lion.
an older woman going after a 10 year old is a sick motherfucker. and still a criminal.
I can’t begin to express the regret I feel this week, after the delight with which I fed my Catholic friends shit after their disaster. Keep ’em coming, Joe.
That’s just weird. It’s like football is a religion. And even though I may not agree with people who want to eliminate sports at college, I *do* agree that college is way too swamped with fucking GAMES that don’t do anything for EDUCATION other than bring in dollars.
It is weird, and it is almost cultish in certain aspects. But it’s a huge part of the tribalism that allows 40,000 or more people of wildly different backgrounds and interests to come together into a united whole. It builds community and solidarity, providing an excellent framework in which a physics major from Lancaster and an English major from Murraysville can find instant rapport. You don’t understand why so many people think it’s important, and that’s fine, but you should remind yourself that they equally don’t understand why you don’t get it.
And in case nobody brought it to your attention, the ‘fucking GAMES’ are on Saturday, when very few students would be studying anyway. Believe me when I say that Saturday afternoons at the stadium were the least of the challenges to my GPA. Guitar, whiskey, and coeds, on the other hand…
It’s not the first, and it won’t be the last time a lifetime of otherwise pretty good works is undermined by a very bad decision.
I tried for several days to imagine some set of circumstances where Joe Paterno wasn’t a bad guy, whether it was his age, or not believeing his friend could possibly do this, or something, but you can’t read the grand jury report and hold him in anything but contempt for treating this whole thing more like a potential NCAA infraction rather than an heinous crime. There remains perhaps a small possibility that Paterno, et al, didn’t know of Sandusky’s worst crimes, but even then it is next to impossible to imagine that they shouldn’t have known. Far too many red flags and sirens going off around this guy for this to go on as long as it did. If anyone does evenutally confess to an actual coverup that they knew what Sandusky was but chose to protect the program instead then the punishment they get isn’t ever going to be enough.
Hopefully McQueary is doing everything he can now to make up for the hole in his soul created when he walked away from the 10 year old boy being raped in the shower by Jerry Sandusky. The use of the term “graduate assistant” seems to conceal the fact that he was a 28 year old man, a big man, an athlete who had been a QB at Penn State and played in the NFL, but who’s first thoughts upon witnessing this crime was to think about his career in coaching — which, coincidentally, is now over. Maybe that’s too harsh, but I don’t think so. I’m sure he was shaken, but how do you ignore the fact that he left that little boy there and called his father and then went to Joe Paterno the next day? Does this remind anyone of the behavior of, say, Ted Kennedy? The action of everyone from McQueary up does seem to indicate a desire to deal with this in house rather than go to the appropriate authorities (if not physically deal with Sandusky immediately in McQueary’s case). Those cults of personality never seem to end well.
In all the commentary I’ve read, not enough has been noted about just how powerful a persona Joe Paterno has been at Penn State. Thank God he wasn’t more devious or wicked, or the absolute power vested in him could have done even greater damage than it did. The grand jury report states that Joe Paterno called the AD (nominally, his boss) to come to his house on Sunday to discuss this. Couldn’t wait until Monday apparently. Sort of gives the lie to Joe Paterno absolving himself by reporting it to his superiors as though it was just another of his job responsibilities.
bh – It isn’t just the assholery of fans at opposing stadiums they have to worry about. I fear the assholery of some PSU fans is going to be rather distasteful tomorrow if they go ahead and play this game against Nebraska. Wuldn’t surprise me a bit if they don’t play again this year before all is said and done.
Some people wonder Penn State football will be shut down. I doubt it. A more interesting question might be should they stay in the Big 10?
. There remains perhaps a small possibility that Paterno, et al, didn’t know of Sandusky’s worst crimes, but even then it is next to impossible to imagine that they shouldn’t have known. Far too many red flags and sirens going off around this guy for this to go on as long as it did.
My best gloss is that they didn’t want to know. They (Paterno and everyone else ‘higher up’) really didn’t want to know and didn’t want to personally investigate because they didn’t want it to be true. Tried to imagine that certainly he wasn’t doing THAT! If you never look, you never know for sure.
Denial. And weakness of character.
Carin, you are (of course) correct. But it was a joke.
It’s just too soon, and I knew it was sort of a joke.
I still want to break things though.
I’m not clear why it is the Penn State Athletics programs have to be punished by fiat.
They covered up the rapes to protect their cash cow; ergo, the punishment must be to lose the cash cow, even if only for awhile.
Yes, that deprives innocent bystanders of the enjoyment of a robust football program.
It also turns out that when a man commits a crime and goes to jail, his wife and kids suffer the loss of a family member and breadwinner, even though they did nothing wrong. That’s what happens when people in a position of responsibility fail.
The individuals who were involved in the coverup should be fired and, where possible, prosecuted. They were responsible to keep their program above reproach and failed utterly.
It MUST be the case that if you cover up horrors to protect your program, you will lose your program. It MUST be the case that the punishment for not nipping these things in the bud is worse than the punishment for revealing the horror right away.
And given the behavior of the students—and the admittedly quasi-religious cult of football at Penn State—losing football for a few years can only be a good thing. This has to hurt. People were worshipping false gods and young men have had their souls torn to shreds.
Similar coverups might be happening at other universities where football is the local religion. To let that program continue as if nothing ever happened would be unconcionable.
Who is they?
@dicentra
It already hurts.
I think what Dicentra is getting at is that it is the culture that is corrupt not just the individuals. If you punish a sleect number of individuals but don’t change the culture then nothing is really going to change.
Culture is a horseshit concept in my view. Unless we lose the concept, nothing is really going to change.
Really? Culture seems pretty real to me. Interesting take on culture and how quickly it can change in A Canticle for Liebowitz.
With culture, we get socialism. Jolly.
It is weird, and it is almost cultish in certain aspects. But it’s a huge part of the tribalism that allows 40,000 or more people of wildly different backgrounds and interests to come together into a united whole. It builds community and solidarity, providing an excellent framework
I had season tickets to BYU football as a student, back when they won the national championship in 1984. I loved the whole experience: the banners, the uniforms, the cheering, the rivalries, the drama.
We also had our local god in LaVell Edwards, also a man of great character, a patriarch among men, for whom the BYU stadium is now named. If HE had covered up similar crimes, I’d be similarly stunned and upset, maybe even humiliated.
But I can’t say that BYU football was ever a religion or quasi-religion for me because hey, I already have a religion. That’s the same for most of us (though there will always be those who take their sports zealotry too far). We get all the positives from sports boosterism without it creeping into cultism, because that space is already occupied with actual religion.
Maybe that’s why the first commandment is “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” because if you fill that God space with anything but God Himself, your priorities get skewed pretty fast, and then look what happens.
Who is they?
Everyone from the grad student on up the chain of command who heard about the rape in the showers.
Everyone who was privy to the “open secret” but didn’t at least investigate.
Culture is a horseshit concept in my view.
“Culture” is just the set of unwritten rules and assumptions held by a group of people. Every group has its culture.
The “culture” at NASA is what kept them from delaying the Challenger launch when the Thiokol engineer ol learned that temps went below freezing the night before and called to warn them that the integrity of the O-rings might have been compromised. The “culture” didn’t permit individual objections to stop the presses.
The “culture” in some hospitals prevents nurses and other assistants from calling a surgeon’s attention to a mistake he may have made or questioning his decisions.
Apparently, the “culture” in Penn State’s football program was to pretend that Sandusky’s pedophilia was either non-existent or not a big deal, because The Game Must Go On.
Tear it out, root and branch. Let the soil lay fallow for a few years. Then start afresh.
As an Ohio State fan, normally I tend to take a great deal of pleasure in the misfortunes of other B1G institutions. Especially ones who had lots of fans and alumni that went out of their way to play holier-than-thou during our … unfortunate issues this year.
However, this is beyond a sports rivalry. It’s terrible, and at least 99.999% of people associated with Penn State (including my mother-in-law) are going through a completely undeserved hell right now, and it sucks for you guys. As I said before, at OSU we had some troubles of our own earlier this year and those pushed me to within a hair’s breadth of turning off college sports altogether. I can’t imagine how PSU fans are feeling given the circumstances.
I guess my sentiments can be best summed up by what Off Tackle Empire’s Jonathan Franz said the other day here.
Buck up, PSU fans. At the end of the day, we can all come together and agree that Michigan sucks.
With culture, we get socialism.
So the Founding Fathers, dedicated to the ideals of an independent citizenry with a small-utilitarian government that served at the pleasure of the citizens were not establishing a culture?
Maybe that’s why the first commandment is “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” because if you fill that God space with anything but God Himself, your priorities get skewed pretty fast, and then look what happens.
Brava.
With culture, we get socialism.
Hate to break it to you, sdferr, but socialism is real, too.
…because if you fill that God space with anything but God Himself, your priorities get skewed pretty fast, and then look what happens.
Uh huh. And nothing bad has ever happened at the hands of those who believed they were acting on the Word of God. And there are no Christians in the Big Ten.
It also turns out that when a man commits a crime and goes to jail, his wife and kids suffer the loss of a family member and breadwinner, even though they did nothing wrong. That’s what happens when people in a position of responsibility fail.
This bit I concur with wholeheartedly. When my giant elm was diseased, the whole thing got cut down and taken away to be burned. We lost a beautiful tree, and we hadn’t done anything wrong. But it was necessary to keep the disease from spreading.
It just isn’t true that every group has its culture. Sorry. Before the concept was created, sometime in the 17th century I think it was, right around the same time as phlogiston, no one thought of themselves as “having a culture”, so it’s absurd of us to pretend that they did, or to force upon them absurd concepts we hold. We might even think, hey, if people like the founders could get through life without such an absurd concept, it just may be that we can too.
Don’t erect statues for men until they are dead.
You might want to look at Tulane or SMU as instruction for what Penn State itself should do. Or not do. The death penalty is something that the NCAA claims it will never do again after the repercussions of that action on SMU. It decimated not only SMU, it decimated the other teams in the division and it is still being felt today in the conference realignments that are going on. Far better would be a massive administrative firing with all the admins coaches and staffs fired. I find it hard to believe that the other coaches did not know what was going on, I have a really hard time understanding how no other staff seems to have been aware. People are walking around the facilities at all hours for how many years (players, trainers, staff, coaches), and only McQueary and the janitors ever saw anything? And many of the staff and coaches are there at all hours.
I find it horribly ironic that the interim named head coach was mentored by Sandusky and was his assistant and yet he remains. What did Bradley know and when did he know it?
My husband was a HS football coach for years, and I know that he was aware of everything everyone else was doing. Particularly during football season. Hours of game reviews on Sundays, meetings with booster club on Mondays, Practices Monday – Thursday and after practice meetings of offensive coaches then defensive coaches then a general meeting with the head coach of all coaches to scheme for the weekend game til 8 or 9 pm each night. Scouting other teams on Saturday nights. And all of these activities are mandatory attendance. PLUS, if they had any youth clinics or anything like that going on, all coaches were present and keeping watch over the kids and were responsible for securing the facility and sheparding the kids to and from the locker room for things as mundane as potty breaks.
Granted a college program is more segmented due to having more staff assigned for specific tasks (recruiting, scouting, trainers/training) but football is a TEAM sport and it is TEAM coached. I can maybe believe it could be going on in the dark if the offender was a scout who was not involved in the gaming and scheming for games and who is where on the depth charts, but for those who are involved in the gaming and scheming and depth charts, you know and see the other coaches more than you see your wife during football season. And for big time college powerhouses, every day is football season.
Everyone needs to go. Period. It’s not like a competent college coach can’t be brought in and quickly get a new staff up to speed. It won’t be the Penn State way, thank God, but it will be a structured football program.
Can we also note that culture has a productive and positive place in our lives?
Culture is what leads us to bring a casserole to the single mom next door when you know she has the flu and can’t cook for her kids. Culture is what leads us to crochet a blanket for cousin expecting her first child. Culture is what makes 20-something reformed hipsters go back to church when they have kids of their own.
Culture is what used to keep people from getting knocked up by casual acquaintances and living on the dole. Look how much good has been done by getting rid of that imaginary artificial construct.
They covered up the rapes to protect their cash cow;
My (admittedly sketchy) understanding is that they choose not to uncover a rape, which isn’t the same thing as covering up rapes.* What happened is bad enough that it doesn’t need exaggeration.
*A to the side point, isn’t it the popular (mis?)conception that universities are in the business of dealing with all sorts of sex crimes “in-house,” so to speak? At least, that seems to have been part of impetus for all that “take back the night” feminist haranguing that used to go on, and still does for all I know.
Before the concept was created…no one thought of themselves as “having a culture”, so it’s absurd of us to pretend that they did, or to force upon them absurd concepts we hold.
Also, they had no concept of “gravity,” which is why the only physical signs we have from those days are the ones that didn’t wind up floating into space.
True Squid, before Newton’s explanations there were other and less sufficient ideas of that natural force [Newton’s word, force?], from our point of view. So weird and foreign to us were these ideas of how nature worked that we hardly bother to attempt to conceive the world in the ways in which those who held these ideas conceived the world. This is, as it turns out, easy to do, and simultaneously fatal to our understanding of their understanding of the world in which they lived. Have our political concepts, like culture (or “values”) reached the sort of certainty we demand of our material sciences? I think not. They appear to me to be far more capable of slipping past our bullshit detectors and into practice, as schemes of tyranny, or totalitarian domination even. Which, as I said, jolly.
On the “culture” question, sdferr has a half-point. The concept has been defined and redefined, before being infected with Marxism and then refined into a retro-virus to be injected into our body-politic.
Jaques Barzun has an essay or two or three touching on that, and of course, Allan Bloom wrote a whole book on the subject.
And speaking of books, if you really want to understand what’s happening here, how it was allowed to happen and why, the book to read is Tammy Bruce’s The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the LEFT’S Assault on Our Culture and Values.
I’d link it but I’m really tight on time right now.
It is cultish, and I have a strong dislike of cults because they lead to ugly shit like this.
I live in crazed college football country, and the people around here act like the gamecocks are life and death matters. They talk about the games like it’s a matter of cosmic significance. I’m glad that I don’t “get it”
One of the football moms I know is a Clemson worshipper, and she referred to this whole Penn State thing as “that whole mess” –in a tone that implied some staff had been caught betting or something.
Raping little boys? whoopsie, what a mess!
I went to a school that didn’t have football, and my fellow students were from every country you can think of — and we got along great, we didn’t need football worship for us to hang together.
Uh huh. And nothing bad has ever happened at the hands of those who believed they were acting on the Word of God. And there are no Christians in the Big Ten.
Remember that I’m operating under the assumption that God is real and has a real character. If you put the real God in the God Place, it induces humility, helps put things in perspective, and crowds out false idols.
Those who do horrible things in the name of God don’t have God in the God Place: they have zealotry or bloodlust or politics or power or self-aggrandizement or sex or vanity or whatever in the God Place, and they lie to themselves about what they’re doing and why.
There’s nothing about self-identifying as Christian (or in reading the Bible or parking your carcass in a pew on Sundays) that automatically puts God in the God Place. It’s unbelievably easy to put other things first—things that are more immediate, more interesting, more stimulating. And it’s depressingly easy to miss the fact that you’re doing it.
Putting God in the God Place takes practice, self-discipline, lots of missteps and hard lessions, and most of all the ability to recognize when you aren’t doing it right. Most rank-and-file Christians (like most rank-and-file humans) don’t have God in the God Place. They have work or money or power or football or some other passion or priority in first place, with God in his comfy little Sunday-niche where he can’t disrupt their lives.
There’s a reason we go to meetings every seven days: because we need constant reminders about our priorities, constant opportunities for reflection, constant re-evaluation. Backsliding is as easy as falling off a log.
My point remains: If you worship anything but actual deity (by tuning in to the actual deity instead of your own desires), your priorities are by definition skewed. Football-as-God is just one false idol among many that leads to evil.
Excellent read posted by Insty on this mess. Scalzi nails it. Omelas State University indeed.
Thanks for the Omelas link, Steph. That distills it down to its essense.
OH, and Herman is on Cavuto. Worth a watch later when it pops up on youtube or his website.
“….They talk about the games like it’s a matter of cosmic significance…”
– For many it’s more like an emotional escape from the everyday grind.
– Look around you. Have we ever needed stress relief more than we do right now?
I lived in Pittsburgh for several years and before that in Reading, PA. It was my observation that PSU fans seem to be more concentrated on the Eastern side of the state and I am thaking my lucky stars that I don’t have to listen to the endless ranting about how a) JoePa got crucified or b) the entire football program needs to be disbanded, Beaver stadium burned to the ground and the grounds sown with salt.
College sports are great fun and big business combined. It is unconscionable that something like the Sandusky situation was ignored by so many for so long and that the SOB is out on bond. Spotted shopping at Dick’s, no less.
sometime in the 17th century I think it was, right around the same time as phlogiston, no one thought of themselves as “having a culture”
and no one knew of germs or gravity, but people still got sick or fell off buildings.
Please, sdferr, just because we use a label to describe the traditions/rules/principles that ties individuals together that “didn’t exist” MORE THAN 100 YEARS AGO!!1!!1 doesn’t mean the thing being described did not exist.
Spotted shopping at Dick’s, no less.
Evidently the need for a suicide watch as some have suggested is overblown – unless he was in the rappelling section. If he was in the hunting supplies section, I hope someone follows him into the brush… IYKWIMAITYD.
Stephanie
I than better than the Omelas story, would be Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. The people can’t even remember why they still do it … the banality of evil.
sdferr,
If there is no ‘culture’ as a construct, then what word do you use to describe the unwritten rules and assumptions and general understanding by which members of a community order their lives?
We are… Ped State.
One of my coworkers is a PSU graduate and he’s been pissed off since this story broke. He was one of the first people I knew who thought that Paterno should be kicked out. And now? Well, there are a lot of other Big Ten grads in our area and my friend no longer talks football with them. He simply stays in his cube until it’s time to go home.
I would like to point out that I think Scalzi is almost right, but that he misses the point. There is a 3rd choice when you see evil: smite the ever living shit out of it. Scalzi does not mention that as an alternative.
A minor quibble, but Sandusky would have been a grease stain if I’d have seen him raping a child.
When McQueary was telling Joe Paterno about the incident at his house on Sunday, who asked, “Where is the kid now?”
Darleen, if you didn’t, give the comments a skim. Some excellent additions to his ‘rules.’
3.e) Engage in some serious fucking introspection about constructing an organization where an employee might have even the slightest worry that his bosses won’t support his intervening to stop a child being raped by a member of the coaching staff.
and
5. When the person accused of ignoring the rapist and allowing more children to be abused gets fired, you should a) not fucking riot in support of him. Not only are you not helping his reputation, but you’re basically going, “YEAH! GO RAPE!”
Also thought this was on point:
He’s Joe fucking Paterno. The only person at Penn State who could get more respect from the police for reporting a crime would be Jesus Christ. [In response to a comment that his going to the police would be ‘hearsay.’]
I was just recalling that I dated a chick some years ago who went to school there, and I found it so incredibly off-putting that she didn’t give a shit about Penn State football and never had, that I never called her again. People who haven’t been around a lot of people who went there really don’t understand how central football, the deity that was Paterno, is to the college (and alumni) experience.
We may not understand it.
I am not convinced I should want to, or that it is a good thing. Football is nice and fun but not really important.
Because of the omerta.
It’s not terribly important. But it’s such a pervasive part of the culture there that I think I wanted anything to do with a who couldn’t at least feign interest while she was there. It isn’t just the football aspect, but the event nature of it. I mean, at least fucking tailgate, fer cryin’ out loud.
Should read: I don’t think i wanted …
My (admittedly sketchy) understanding is that they choose not to uncover a rape, which isn’t the same thing as covering up rapes.* What happened is bad enough that it doesn’t need exaggeration.
That depends on who you’re talking about, and of course, what actually happened.
But yes, a few people involved with this are actually being charged with covering this up. Paterno isn’t one of them.
It’s sorta like people who say they don’t own a TV.
Oh, #81 is in regards to weirdo PSU alum that Abe has met.
Squid, if we look to an older people, one which didn’t have a culture, in contradistinction to us I suppose (since we’re presumably a clingy sort are we, and we’re going to keep it), we can look around to see how that people chose to designate such a thing, if they even recognized one.
The tricky part of our newish concept however, is precisely its claim to universal applicability, as witness this thread. Why would the concept need to be universally applicable? Well, forsooth, it is science, or Science, or however that works! But, really? Is that the point? Why yes, I do think it is.
How now if instead it turns out that what was sold as science isn’t anything of the sort, but is a pseudo-science, modeled after the highly successful and highly prized physical sciences, so-called? Oof. That wouldn’t be good, would it? Yet, after more than a century of the destruction, mayhem and murders of the applications of these social sciences and their strange political concepts like culture, we still find it necessary to hang onto them for dear life. It’s a mystery to me.
Understand the the moral outrage is only aimed at those who attended PSU who DID molest kids, and those who didn’t but knew about it and did nothing to stop it. Oh yeah, and those who protested, rioted and smashed shit when their GOD — who knew about it and did nothing — was rightfully fired from his job. If you don’t fall into any of those categories, the moral outrage is not directed at you. Is that fair enough?
What holygoat said. Also, the Penn State fraternity dorks who stole a painting from the living room of my infinitely cooler fraternity and then denied it. You’re not absolved either. Douchebags.
Perhaps there is a difference between thinking you have an ethos, mores (latin?) or a culture. Hard to go wrong by distrusting the Germans.
Have to assume sdferr’s thrust has to do with — sorry, wiki snippet — this: “This concept of culture is comparable to the German concept of bildung: “…culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world.”[8]”
Pursuit of total perfection > historicism > progress of history > Progressivism. Maybe.
Assume that was Bloom’s thrust that Ernst mentions above as well.
Towards its current colloquial use? People seem to understand what others mean by it so it’s perfectly functional.
I don’t own a TV, it owns me.
That’s a decent synopsis bh. I don’t actually expect to rid us of it (culture) “root and branch” to be honest, but wouldn’t mind so much if more people would merely look into the origins of these things to see what made them necessary for those who invented them, what questions those inventors thought they’d answer, what facilitation the concept brought them and so on. Much of the time the concepts might raise more questions than they answer, but we couldn’t tell that from their use today.
That’s how I feel when I can’t find the remote, guins.
The other thing is…
Fuck yes, they covered it up.
They knew he was raping boys. He confessed to it, and somehow the charges were dropped. I know the laws weren’t the same in 98 but how the hell do charges get dropped on rape? That is a crime against the state.
Right after that happens, he finds out he’ll never be coach, retires early at 55, never takes another job as a coach.
That was a goddamn cover up. There was ANOTHER instance when a janitor walked in and caught him with a naked kid, and SEVERAL janitors knew about it. They were afraid of getting fired. This has happened multiple times. They all knew Sandusky was raping boys. For at least a decade. There’s no way in hell any of them could not have known. Paterno. McCleary saw it with his own eyes. This guy is running a children’s charity. And they know it – they know him. And they never made a fuss for years afterward when they saw him with children.
They didn’t just fail to uncover it, they covered it up.
Several people walked in on this motherfucker with his dick in a little boy, on multiple occaisions. And then a dozen others were informed first hand.
I know a few orthodox Jews, and none of them own TV’s. Or at least that’s what they say. I’ve asked one, and he told me in his families social circles, few people do.
-Mike McQueary has been placed on administrative leave.
You forgot ‘ indefinitely ‘.
Never see the inside of that building again IMO.
Mike McQueary has been placed on administrative leave.
Until they feared for his safety from the death threats, he was going to be on the sidelines at Saturday’s game.
That tells you all you need to know about how well these idiots “get it.”
I have to wonder if people were operating under the assumption that getting buggered isn’t that big a deal. Some of the people who merely transferred the priests to another parish were treating it the same as if the priest had had an affair with a grown woman, in which case the best solution is to move him away from the object of his temptation.
That’s all it was, right? Sandusky had a kink, but we don’t judge him for being a homo. We’re all adults here. Who he decides to do it with is his own business.
Wondering what you all think of this line of reasoning, in the comments for the French article:
His whole argument is kind of stupid. Paterno is not some run-of-the-mill quasi-meathead football coach. He’s a Brown graduate for fuck’s sake. He’s well aware of what a sick compulsion pedophiles have, and he did nothing but sweep it under the rug while also enabling Sandusky to continue his vile behavior. Petty cowardice doesn’t even begin to cover this.
Okay entropy. That’s more than I knew five minutes ago. Thanks.
Yes.
did you ever see a parent ranting at their child in public? did you call child welfare? what if that parent was physically abusive behind closed doors, are you liable?
Dude continues to make the same bad analogies all through the thread.
In rushes dicentra (where angels fear to tread):
Here’s what jumps out at me in the comment Di linked:
It’s not “monstrous beyond imagination.” Rather the opposite I think. A lot of things, monstrous or otherwise, that used to be beyond imagining are quite imaginable these days, more’s the pity.
You are the #99%, Ernst.
I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means, serr8d.
When I first heard about this, I didn’t know who Paterno was. College football isn’t an interest of mine. Fuck Pennsylvania, you get what you pay for.
The more I hear about guys like Paterno and McQueery about their regular public lives, I want to like them. All-around American sports legend types, who’s personal lives (supposedly) read like motivational speeches.
But the more details you read, the more my head is sure they fucked up huge and we don’t know the half of it. It does not add up at all. As temptingly pleasant as these guys seem in public, I cannot allow myself to be naive enough to fall for it. You have to make ALL the most generous assumptions to pretend these knuckleheads stumbled through the whole decade without really realizing.
To that end, I think they are still covering lots of things up. But we’ll see. I’m not an investigator, nor investigative reporter, nor savings investor.
The more people learn about this, the angrier they get. Over at Ace’s the other day, you could watch people do 180’s before and after they read the grand jury court report. If you want to see what’s in it, go look for it. And keep in mind that’s just what’s in the report. I’m thinking he must surely have been caught other times, that got swept a bit more thoroughly. We can safely bet this guy raped kids in the locker room showers a lot more times than he got caught doing it, times no one was even looking, despite the well known pedo heading into the locker room with kiddies again and again for years and years.
Looking forward, yes, that’s the necessary RESET button.
Bleach it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Your comment number; and your general take on things in general. But mostly your comment #.
Well, others have said my keywords; cult, false idols, what holygoat @84 said.
I found squid’s comment a little disturbing, and suspect(I mean, I wondered at first if it was sarcastic,) like it was parody.
I also think tomorrows game should be canceled; players get suspended for bad grades or dirty hits, I’d think the coach fucking up at this level would have a similar appropriate result.
So, having nothing more on topic to add, my participation in this discussion is about “culture”.
I thought “culture” was merely a word for the current state of a society. As it forever is at any given point, before pharaoh built a pyramid even, and as it will always will be at any time in the future.
Maybe I’m insufficiently educated on the matter, since I don’t have a college credit to my name…
I think there is some confusion here about pedophilia and homosexuality. Who’s to say that if Sandusky were coaching girls powderpuff football that he wouldn’t have been cuddling up with the underaged. Granted, I don’t know this guy (TG), but it’s the fact that the victim is a child that makes a pedophile do what he or she does.
Paterno is a Brown grad? That explains it then. Abe has told us before that all Brown grads are duplicitious whores.
I didn’t even notice the comment # thing. That makes sense. I’m sorry you don’t like my take on things. It makes me too sad to work my moral outrage up. Instead of joining in on the “what ought be done to the guilty?,” I’m more interested in attempting to understand why it happened in the first place, so we can ask “what must we do that this never happens again?”
If there is, and I agree that there is, the extent to which such confusion exists is not accidental.
“Fuck Pennsylvania, you get what you pay for.”
you do know the new gov. was the attorney general before the last election:
Link
More like you reap what you sow. We’ll be lucky if we all don’t end up reaping the whirlwind.
Lee, if you’re curious or interested to dig further into the subject(s) (but I’m not sure about whether your bandwidth will give you enough use?) check into the various lecture recordings here. The transcripts have been coming for over a year and a half now — and who knows when they’ll arrive — but the recordings are almost intelligible enough as is, if we’re willing to put up with a thick German accent. There’s a fairly thorough overview in particular on the second page under Introduction to Political Philosophy, winter quarter, 1965. Or, if you want the transcript to that set of 9, email me at sdferr amperthingy comcast.net, and I’ll send them to you.
Thanks, nr. I had read that the investigation had been active for three years, but I didn’t know Corbett was AG then. I also hope that we find out what happened to the disappeared prosecutor. Four years is a long time for his family to not know where he is. This could turn up a pretty nasty can of worms that goes way beyond the grounds of PSU.
It will happen again.
First, start with rational goals, and plan rational methods.
Declare farcical goals and you will get quixotic plans.
Let us be honest with ourselves, this is neither the first nor the last.
It will never end. The darker side of basic human nature. But, most everyone knows what we need to do if we want to fight against this stuff. If you see it, you speak up. TALK. Let people know. Call 911. You don’t even have to do shit, just tell someone who will and you can be hero.
This went on for so many years at Penn State because they covered it up and hid it. Anywhere you find this kind of abuse, it is hidden. These pedators pick kids who are already isolated and cut off and incommunicative. If it could just be exposed, it could be dealt with. If these kids (or anyone else) would just make a fuss and call the cops, abuse anywhere in the country can be stopped.
But these people buried it.
sdferr, amperthingy?
My point was, culture is just a word(a contemporary one I’ll grant) for what is. Someone upthread compared it to gravity, as something that exists whatever word used to describe it whenever.
It is a concept, but no less real for acknowledging that’s what it is.
That is exactly why predators pick out at-risk chilfren: They won’t make a fuss. They won’t tell. They won’t band together and go to the authorities. Most importantly, they are ashamed and embarassed and the abuse makes them even more isolated. The people who enabled Sandusky are just as guilty as he.
@ = amperthingy, but never mind if it isn’t of interest.
I’m beginning to regret my #104, as that wasn’t the take I wanted to send. To the contrary, I 99% approve of your take on things in general. Or is it 9-9-9 ?
I should stop drinking at some point.
But…FRIDAY NIGHT~~!
no keep shouting 9-9-9 til baracky leaves
How so, Lee?
To clarify, you’re talking about the comment that makes up most of the main post, right?
Now there’s a Texas angle to this whole Penn State fiasco: Police Launch Inquiry Into Possible Sandusky Crime in San Antonio
Yup. Sandusky took his lil buddy with him to the Alamo Bowl. Texas Rangers have questions.
that wasn’t the take I wanted to send
Wasn’t sure if you were having fun or implying I’m as disconnected from reality as the 99%ers, occuppied as they are with their own rectal-cranial inversions.
Please, do enjoy your Friday night libations. I know I’m going to.
ot
monica crowley filling in for hannity has hughhewitt and a dem talking about the rethugs. mittens for the winning!
I’d say the colloquial sense of culture is a universal for about a hundred thousand years or so. Emergent group behavior, to put on a different hat.
Yet, the new term was coined. It was intended to mean something new otherwise it had reason to its maker. But, again, now it’s a very broad term.
Dicentra occasionally speaks of romantic love in a similar way. Can seem very universal. Has a real referent.
Granted, I don’t know this guy (TG), but it’s the fact that the victim is a child that makes a pedophile do what he or she does.
Actually, pedophiles are highly “preferential,” meaning that they only like a very particular type of child: age, hair and eye color, and most definitely sex.
So a homosexual who digs prepubescent kids goes for the boys; the heteros go for prepubescent girls.
That article I linked says the ratio of homo to hetero pedophiles is 1:11, but that’s raw numbers. I don’t know if homosexuals are more likely to be pedophiles or not.
That is exactly why predators pick out at-risk chilfren: They won’t make a fuss. They won’t tell.
Even worse, the pedophile might be the only person in the kid’s life who takes an interest in him. A perverse interest, sure, but often the perv also takes the kid to ball games and the zoo.
Poor kids are in a terrible bind.
All men who set up organizations for troubled kids need to be monitored constantly, because setting up a charitable organization provides the perfect cover for a pedo. So that’s what they DO.
Dicentra occasionally speaks of romantic love in a similar way.
That sounds like a provocation, mister. I don’t speak of romantic love on the Internet at all. O_O
“All men who set up organizations for troubled kids need to be monitored constantly”
’cause the slut female teachers can be discounted.
The word was coined. Perhaps to mean something new. Or pheraps a new word to mean something old – that happens too. Every great civilization in that last 3,000 has had a chip on it’s shoulder about being the only cultured people. Cultured – in that meaning – civilized, what is the difference?
Crap. I certainly hope you’re smiling right now. I didn’t mean any clever hidden meaning.
I’m drawing a connection between your use of romantic love as an apparent universal even though it really isn’t. Seems to fit the criteria. It’s real in one sense (brain chemistry, pair bonding). Yet, it wasn’t so real that people ever thought it was real before everyone started talking about it (arranged or practical marriages as the rule). Seems similar to culture.
“That article I linked says the ratio of homo to hetero pedophiles is 1:11, but that’s raw numbers. ”
’cause sticking a dick in little boys ass is a hetero problem
I don’t mean to be even more flippant than I usually am around here, but this culture discussion is very strange.
Culture comes out of a rather specific German social science tradition, doesn’t it, Entropy? They coined words rather specifically and precisely. Like German (social) engineers.
This wasn’t slang, it was jargon.
Di, I worked with at risk youth for a number of years. You are correct that many times the abuser is the only person in the child’s life who is their “friend” which, of course, makes it all the worse. I am most concerned with the stories of there being a child sex ring that was headed up by Sandusky. As I said upthread, this has the potential to be a real pot-boiler.
Some sexual predators/pedophiles are selective about their victims. To others, it is a crime of opportunity and, in this case, made all the worse by the cloak of do-gooding charity outreach. I have left the field so don’t have any current data. However, it is untrue that homosexuals are more likely to be predators/pedophiles. Pedophiles are specifically sexually attracted to children and the worst of it is that they will not change. The recidivism rate of pedophiles is astronomical. They should all be locked away forever.
Jargon doesn’t really work above. Howsabout technical term?
“but this culture discussion is very strange.”
yea marco polo was an idiot to describe what he saw. same with cortez. what’s a little human sacrifice between commentators on blogs? i dig the burka thing and felafels.
I would argue that all people who work with kids need watching. Doesn’t matter gender. There are some well known women’s programs at the college level that are well known in the HS girls recruiting world that are known to be heavily lesbian preferenced and several of my husbands All Americans wouldn’t visit or consider them when they were being ‘courted’ for their commitment letters. Lesbian preferenced as the girls there were and so was the coach. Coincidental? Not sure as UNC was well known for their lesbos but their coach was a guy who was brought down by an extramarital with one of his players. Basketball soccer and volleyball are lousy with the lesbos. Golf tennis and softball not so much.
Point being that girl on girl or boy on boy or cross gender coach player guarantees nothing. It is the observations and awareness of people in and around a program that are the check on predatory behavior.
Which is where PSU failed so spectacularly.
I’m mostly interested in why people chose to look the other way and pretended to not see what was in plain sight, why doing what everyone now agrees was the right thing to do was so hard (especially for McQueary), and in reclaiming some of that gray space for black and white thinking —especially since the gray areas are getting lighter with each passing year.
So it seems to me that the larger problem, the problem that enables the enablers in the first place, is that we currently exist in a cultural milieux best described by the admonition You will not judge (me). Unless, that is, you’re one of the übermenschen, part of the Vanguard, or a member of the neo-gnostic Elect, and privy to the higher knowledge; which, being the case, it’s your job to judge for us.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that a lot of things went wrong with individuals within the Penn State football program. But before those things went wrong, a lot of other things had to go wrong within the culture (and not just the institutional culture of Penn State).
The irony is that the things that went wrong more broadly, and which set in motion the mentality that encouraged inaction on the part of Penn State officialdom, originated within the university itself. (And by university I don’t mean Penn State specifically, but what passes for higher learning and what trickles down from there into the larger culture.) As I said above, you reap what you sow.
Apologies for being a long-winded bastard.
“. To others, it is a crime of opportunity and, in this case, made all the worse by the cloak of do-gooding charity outreach. ”
the whole progg agenda.
yea marco polo was an idiot to describe what he saw. same with cortez. what’s a little human sacrifice between commentators on blogs? i dig the burka thing and felafels.
Lolwut?
Culture is…biology.
Damn Yankees. (mutters… )
nr, a lot of pedophiles who diddle little boys and girls are married and have families. The fact that they are sexually excited by children and not grown women or men, in the case of your “slutty teacher” example is what makes them pedophiles.
I can’t begin to tell you all of the little girls (now women) I have done work with who were “Grandpa’s favorite girl” and how afraid they were to have Grandpa come to their rooms at night, but let him because they didn’t want the scolding from their clueless parents for hurting Grandpa’s feelings.
several of my husbands
Little misapostrophe!
What I got from your link, Serr8d, is that if I was shorter and ate pizza for a week, I would scare both Southerners and Yankees in a hallway.
geez, di, if the number is 1:11 then there is a greater possibility of homo-pedophilia than hetero, since gays:straights is 3:100 generally.
Now I’m becoming enraged and want to fight that “American style football player” myself to save all those fags in the hallway.
You’re right, this is an awesome experiment.
I’m on the iPhone so sue me ;)
“nr, a lot of pedophiles who diddle little boys and girls are married and have families. The fact that they are sexually excited by children and not grown women or men, in the case of your “slutty teacher” example is what makes them pedophiles.”
diddling something that doesn’t procreate is darwinian fail says the god sort of peep. the “natural law” frowns on such endeavors. yea well reading to The one-time adult film and “Entourage” star, issued a statement after Emerson Elementary School parents in Compton, Ca were upset by Grey reading to their children as part of “Read Across America.”
Crap. I certainly hope you’re smiling right now. I didn’t mean any clever hidden meaning.
Oh, I’m good. You’d have to be awfully nasty, deliberately and aggressively, to ruffle my feathers. I thought you were trying to provoke a gratuitous flame war again. For fun, of course.
They should all be locked away forever.
I was thinking that one of the Aleutian islands might be free. Canada’s got some nice islands to spare, too.
Part of what needs to happen is that we have to set down ground rules for adult/child interactions. Sandusky kept having these boys sleep over at his house, kept taking them to the PSU facilities to work out and “wrestle,” then insisting that they shower together, just the two of them. TWO shower incidents were witnessed: one by the grad assistant and one by a janitor (oral sex that time). Both incidents were reported but nothing was done. Other incidents of inappropriate contact occured, too, that were not witnessed.
Sandusky also bought the kids tons of gifts, kept calling them on the phone, generally obsessed over them. These kids had mothers who often suspected something rotten and DID complain about it. Furthermore, incidents were reported to Sandusky’s charity as well, but they did nada.
Pedos follow a pretty predictable pattern, have a fairly distinct MO: grooming and time alone and sleepovers and whatnot.
This plus the Cain incident just goes to show how careful you have to be to avoid certain 2-on-2 situations where there are no witnesses. In Cain’s case, the women could falsely accuse him, and in Sandusky’s case, he could commit the actual crime in secret.
leigh
You know what’s sad, it’s that the sensationalism of child molestation … on one hand you have this huge coverup by Penn State, but on the other hand fathers and grandfathers are looked at with suspicion if they are alone taking their kids/grandkids out in public.
We demand that males take more of an interest in child rearing but then make men feel like they may be criminals if they hug their kid after a great catch or have their kid on their lap while reading them a book.
“Lolwut?”
did those folks describe the “cultures” they encountered?
certain 2-on-2 situations
Though I reckon it’s the 1-on-1 situations what cause more problems.
“This plus the Cain incident just goes to show how careful you have to be ”
in not smearing people unrelated to psu situation. mormons pologamy and child sex central and the romney dog thing. smears are easy.
It is sad, Darleen. I think Ernst is onto something I have been turning over in my mind for a long time and that is the corruption of the cultural norms. (That’s for you, sdferr.) When nothing is forbidden, then where do we draw the line?
This, the line-drawing, is all going to get a thorough hashing out in our lifetimes, I think. There are a number of court cases on the docket in various states that are looking to overturn convictions of incestious couples who had children together. Lawrence vs. Texas, the case that essentially decriminalized sodomy has been held up as a referent in these cases.
This just in: Ramos found alive.
And there’s some Tweeting about a “white house shooting” that took place 700 yards away from the actual WH.
Immanuel Kant thanks you for your attention leigh. Me, it’s water off a duck’s back.
A little farther down…
Monkey see, monkey do as you’re trained to do.
Don’t you love it when every aspect of (human) behavior, whether it be acquired then nuanced or spontaneous and reactionary, is defined by SCIENCE! as merely regurgitation of an inevitable predetermined genetic configuration; in our (human) case, just that of a somewhat bigger ape with a fortunately swollen braincase? That’s why I found nishi to be such a pest; she actually believed this…the purely scientific definition of the human condition; reduced to mechanics and limited by hardware; and that SCIENCE!-approved definition could define the whole of our human experience. And, worse, she was quite satisfied with that definition!
did those folks describe the “cultures” they encountered?
True. But I don’t think that’s lost on anyone who’s frolicking deep in this weed bed. You can’t think that sdferr, of all people, is unfamiliar with Cum Romanum venio, ieiuno Sabbato; cum hic sum, non ieiuno: sic etiam tu, ad quam forte ecclesiam veneris, eius morem serva, si cuiquam non vis esse scandalum nec quemquam tibi.
I reckon it’s the 1-on-1 situations what cause more problems.
IIRC when Billy Graham’s autobiography came out, and in it he related his simple policy never to travel, meet, dine or be in a room, alone with any woman other than his wife, left-feminists were insulted.
But hey, if they can’t control their sisters …
the corruption of the cultural norms.
I was thinking how the norm used to be that “good girls don’t, and gentlemen don’t ask.”
Of course people did it anyway, but they had to “opt in” to sex because the default was No. Now the default is Yes, so you have to “opt out.”
You men with daughters: you want society to make it easier or harder for your girl to say no?
That last period is an almost invisible link.
Is it coincidence that the lawyer for Penn State during the period of time that the original claims surfaced (and nothing was done except the admonition to not bring kids to the campus) changed jobs and became the lawyer for the charity headed by Sandusky? I don’t think so; it’s too convenient. So the question becomes: Why?
That question, plus the rumors of the pedophile ring, really could be a whole big nest of nasty that is yet to be exposed.
And, worse, she was quite satisfied with that definition!
Machines can be upgraded, controlled, and manipulated.
OMG! She’s a cyberman!
we need more porn “stars” reading in the class room – no child “left behind” {accent political left and perversion}
HA! I reckoned it had to do with “when in Rome,” but there was all that other verbiage in there.
Link up at Drudge’s of a cinder block being thrown through Sandusky’s window. He wasn’t home.
Also, his autobiography is still on sale at the PSU bookstore. Seriously? WTF, it’s called ‘Touched.’ You would think they would have some attempt at distancing themselves from him at this late date, but the bookstore is probably carrying it to avoid ‘censorship’ issues. Defining cultural mores down one misreading of the constitution at a time.
#162 Given the details so far it is clear this an onion with plenty of layers. Why am I starting to suspect that the investigations will be declared complete long before it has been fully peeled?
Does it strike anyone as particularly rich that Arne Duncan (how kiddies should wear condoms 101) is the one that made the announcement that the feds education department would be looking into PSU – in addition to the FBI?
How his head didn’t explode is beyond me.
Not sure, quite possibly. Sounds plausible (heh – that was a pun, I mean phonetically).
But that relates to the etymology of the word ‘culture’, not the concept behind it. The people who originally coined the word, as they first intended, I wouldn’t be shocked if they turned out to by genocidal misanthropes. But that is circumstance, coincidence of the word’s history.
The concept though, depending I guess unless anyone disagrees about what that meaning is, was concieved of thousands of years before the germans and had many words to describe it in many different cultures.
That sort of atrocious viewpoints the germans who made the word that rhymes with vulture had are probably similar to those held by the ones who made the nifty car and the nice opera. Dewey was a bastard, but I’m not sure that means the Decimal System is unworkable though.
“You men with daughters: you want society to make it easier or harder for your girl to say no?”
with the legal system we just say no to the womyns. find a sperm donor
miss/hon/sweatie/gal etcfemale humanBecause it will open up education in general to too much scrutiny vis a vis the purposeful move from teaching actual subjects to ‘how to wear a yoke and like it?’ The socialist’s agenda is being implemented bottom up in the K-16 arena and too much sunlight is not going to be a good thing for them. When parents realize that their kids are not being educated and are tools of subversion, it ain’t gonna be pretty. Why do you think Arne Duncan stepped in to announce the feds were going to oversee ‘certain aspects’ of the investigation that was conducted and the new one currently commencing at PSU? Command and control.
‘Touched’, the sequel.
That’s all I’ve got for it.
For now… )
Mr Levin led off his radio show tonight with a story how a federal judge had ruled that the US flag couldn’t be worn on clothing in a classroom on Cinco de Mayo on account of being a source of division. Of division. This is culture. Si. And, I think, is what culture gets us as a governing or foundational political concept in the schema of positivism, or sociology. Is it a troubling thing? Well, perhaps, but isn’t that dependent on one’s point of view, whether as a member of the ruling class governing the ruled, or as a member of the governed class, bowing to the wishes of the rulers?
As details trickle out is is becoming all too apparent that McQueary wasn’t taken by total surprise that day in the showers, he had to have at least a general idea that Sandusky had ‘a little boy problem.’
He didn’t call his dad because he was at a loss for what to do. He knew what his conscience was telling him to do, and he knew what the University expected him to do. Calling his dad was an attempt at passing the buck. If dad says call the cops he does the right thing and damn the consequences because he was just being a good son. But dad read it wrong, and thought he was saving his own little boy from being eaten by the machine.
“This is culture. Si. ”
if you think propaganda is “culture”?
sdferr and I have talked of the use of the word “culture” many times.
From an email. I hope you don’t mind sdferr.
That’s why I’ve been saying that “culture” works just fine in everyday speech, Entropy. Don’t disagree that way.
Yet, it would be worth remarking upon if we said hello by giving a fascist salute to one another, wouldn’t it?
(Fuck you, Godwin. I like it. I will not apologize.)
And if you think that was too long, well… this is from one of mine. Sorry for the length.
No, don’t mind a bit geoffb (I’d forgotten that!) not least because it may be helpful.
-The core question, why would a number of “good and decent men” act in unison to manage the situation rather than totally expose it to the proper authorities and put an immediate stop to the whole thing.
– You’re embedded in a massively public enterprise which feeds a major university and thousands of people, not just the student body. You are constantly bombarded with your own greatness, and the importance of what you are doing, and have been doing, for 46 years straight.
– The pressure to manage it in-house must have been overwhelming, while at the same time the whole area of child abuse has become the cause celeb for the press in the last 30 years. Any sort of connection with the university might spell financial disaster.
So poor judgement prevailed.
And being conditioned to bow and scrape and like it. Individualism is being rooted out in our society and a culture of ‘caring’ is being ingrained. Those ‘clinging to their bibles’ must be supplanted by those who subsume their will to their betters. Credentialed morons are the arbiters of the truth and science is settled cause they say so. Zero tolerance breeds procedures that make no sense and people zombie like follow them. Claiming personhood as a member of a subgroup (black, white, victim, homo) is your new identity. And the bread and circuses is the interaction of these groups set against each other. We are too busy fighting amongst ourselves to notice the yoke descending.
It is in large part this subsuming of individualism to the collective that caused the ‘paralysis of action’ by McQueary ISTM. He was thoroughly conditioned to bow to the authority of the PSU hive and not to step back, evaluate and act on his own. The ‘evaluate’ part of that equation is subsumed to the rules of the hive including the hierarchy of the procedures set in place to move the ‘evaluate’ and ‘act’ (both activities deemed best not left to the individual) to the top of the food chain where the credentialed and ‘proper authority’ can take over and all non action by the lower levels of the hive is excused.
“sdferr and I have talked of the use of the word “culture” many times.”
hey when do you guys do “civil society” or “every day life” or “before you named it”? do it dudes if you think 1600 england/egypt /china don’t have standards. please show us your intellect.
“. This unity Kant called “culture”. His three Critiques were an attempt to systematize “culture”. ”
eff kant and his kunts
“His three Critiques were an attempt to systematize “culture”. ””
really? or just wordy bloviating?
Caps took the away game of a back to back/home and home set with the Devils, so I’m content. The Stars winked out tonight, I see. Wanna start a pool on Sid the Kid’s return? Gimme Tampa.
Why do you always have to turn dickish around this time each night, nr? Seriously, enough with that. It’s not a worthwhile use of anyone’s time.
Do some conversations bore you? Well, do something else. That’s what adults do.
McQueary update…
He’s going to be a haunted, hunted two-fister for the remainder of his days.
“Kant was the first to use the word in its modern sense. ”
shut down the academic machine
They’ll shut it down newrouter: right about the same time you begin using capitalization and punctuation. Any day now.
Seriously? Grandpa? What is the deal with that?
Wouldn’t the parents know?
“Why do you always have to turn dickish around this time each night, nr”
tired of the pantheon of “west. civ” as provided by sdferr et al. not kant kafka. not adjust the machine, destroy and rebuild in a constitutional manner. don’t worry mittens to the rescue. it will go on til it can’t or kant.
“They’ll shut it down newrouter: right about the same time you begin using capitalization and punctuation. Any day now.”
that’s why you have ammo, guns, food, and property!
The deal is though that the “constitutional manner” didn’t leap into existence from the void, or crawl fully armored from the side of Zeus’s head in the shape of Athena. People had to work centuries to build the thing, synthesizing from pieces developed slowly at best. And then, lo and behold, the constitutional manner was deconstructed by newer (and poorer) ideas over the course of the two ensuing centuries. It won’t hurt to attempt to understand what happened, when, and why.
That presentation of modern classicism really isn’t sdferr’s. That’s how I can barely make out the edges even though I’ve freakishly underread. That’s how Ernst spots it clearly.
You have to come to grips with the fact that sdferr isn’t really sdferr. He’s just a stack of books we all have to read before the papers are due on Friday. Friday being that day that we start thinking about the importance of an informed citizenry again.
It’s either a goal or something we’ll all hate and mock. Pick one. (Actually, if you decide to read it all you can also hate and mock it. So, pick one or pick both or pick none.)
From the Grand Jury report McQueary told three higher ups about the rape but they seemed to have elided what happened when reporting it up the chain by changing rape to inappropriate touching and then the next up the chain made it even more nebulous.
Sort of the reverse of the Cain situation where they are trying to imply a greater crime than happened by elusive language, here they used it to make a horror seem almost accidental.
What would be the diffence between geoffb’s email on culture and tribalism as evidenced by say Bill Whittle’s discussions on the subject?
Tribalism being those thoughts and mores that we adhere to out of a learned or
culturedaffected response which those being learned are harder to discard and those affected (tried on), easier.Ultimately, this seems to be just another instance of Lord Acton’s aphorism of absolute power corrupting absolutely. Joe Paterno reached at least demi-god status at Penn State and the rules for the hoi polloi just didn’t seem to apply anymor ein the eyes of all those attached to or affected by the cult of personality.
The sad thing is that Joe and most of the others weren’t really bad guys, but once the rules we all take for granted are shoved aside in favor of some other “God”, well, maybe Darleen has a point, and I say that as a devout agnostic.
Geoff B, appreciate the extended comment. I mentioned A Canticle for Liebowitz earlier because in it there was a poignant point about culture changing much more rapidly (for the worse) than anyone anticipated after a nuclear holocaust. There’s another point to be made here, but I’m afraid I’m out of my depth.
sdferr, you seem to be effectively making a cogent argument in favor of conservatism as it relates to culture as well as noting the philosophical leeches which are draining away the vitality in centuries what took millenia to build.
Uh, can I say I that way without you taking offense?
And newrouter, be thankful we’re not exploring the mysteries of histoire événementielle and mentalitiés
Oh, my libation of choice this evening was a 2007 Trefethen Merlot. Pretty good, but could definitely have held on to for a few more years.
Search me charles, but then I don’t take offense anyhow on account of . . . well, I just don’t take offense unless there isn’t any other choice.
“It won’t hurt to attempt to understand what happened, when, and why.”
yea gotcha the demonrats and their party of control 1820? – 2011. you go nword/editforpolitical pc do the plantation hustle. eff your “culture” theme or meme or narrative.
President Ronald Reagan – Liberty State Park
“Again, culture (meaning social restraints) makes neurotics”
you go ernst let’s have murder @ #ows or rape you go grrl
Very good, Ernst.
You always deliver.
This was at Insty, don’t know if it was a comment in the article referenced or a comment emailed to Glenn, but it seems to fit this discussion of culture:
College Culture, Football Culture, JoPa Culture, etc seems to imply a set of actions and reactions that are expected based on traditions that change over time. Kinda what geoffb was saying. Duke didn’t always spend the whole fucking basketball game ‘bouncing’ but now you are ‘outkast’ should you not participate.
Colleges, prior to the 1960s, weren’t subject to riots at the drop of a hat. Matter of fact, rioting has seemed to evolve over the last 50ish years to include more than political/societal protestations. Riots over OJ, riots over a football loss, etc. I have a hard time picturing the folks I’ve seen in the ‘NFL Today’s’ movies of games from the 1960s with Namath and Starr and folks in the stands dressed in their Sunday best taking to the streets with toilet paper or performing car-b-ques. And it seems to me that these subcultures, if you will, are frequently looked at askance by those who are not ‘of the culture.’ The JoPa culture being no more or less than say a David Koresh culture. Or cult of personality. Whatever, but the essence of the culture as described is a set of actions that all in the group agree to partake.
Yes, I would giggle. Ever since the world exploded over niggardly I’ve amused myself occaisonally by seeing how many bombs I could drop on people that actually WERE etymologicaly racial slurs or some such without them noticing.
Ahh, those innocent days before astronomic physics was racist. Why they gotta be black holes?
I do. But somehow, you never seem to have any cash on you, and I’m tired of carrying your bill over from week to week. [grin]
“. It is based on agriculture—the tilling of the soil, planting of seeds, and reaping a harvest of nourishing things. ”
ziccoti cough brilliant
http://www.verumserum.com/?p=32944
Next week, Ernst. Paid in full. Maybe.
Seems Insty has several posts tonight that are apropos to y’all’s discussion. I’m just poking at the edges, asking questions and hoping for some larnin. Might want to do a look see. I’d link, but well, everyone has Indy bookmarked and the linkies are freaking long and I don’t want to screw the html and frag the blog w/o Jeff around.
One of the Glenn links is to a Dan Collins piece, btw.
no you kant whittle you eugenics progg
Link
The long quote from 205 is Jonah Goldberg from 1.
Somebody pass the tequila. And tell a joke. I’ll start: Kerry Collins. No no, wait, Chuck Fusina, yeah, that’s better.
It reminds me of Rand, everyone just does what the manual says, that way they’re not responsible for anything and they can’t be fired.
I see it all over. The cashier at the gas station knows the new law saying you have to card EVERYONE for tobacco purchases even if they’re 85 is goddamn stupid, but he doesn’t feel demeaned. He says this way, ‘at least I don’t have to think about it’ (he means it as a good thing).
That’s the thing. This St Joe stuff is kind of dysfunctional I think. Blind faith in authority is never healthful.
That quoted article was from Jonah Goldberg. He’s blaiming part of this on modern left-wing academy culture. But was it of left wing academic culture? It was the football team. It was bourgeois midwestern american culture. The radical commies in the sociology department like to screw litte children too maybe but they all want the stadium torn down.
Will the NCAA give Penn State the death penalty in football? I would say probably not.
Why?
Well, here in Bid D, they gave it to SMU, and the place hasn’t been the same since. And that was back in 1987-1988. EVERYTHING at SMU has gone down in stature starting there. They are hoping to reverse that a little with the library of Bush II (and that really messes with the all of the liberal heads there), but the athletics at the school really took a hit. ALL of the athletic departments have sucked for years until just recently. They had their first bowl appearance in over 21 years this past bowl season.
I’m not sure that the NCAA wants Penn State to wander in the wilderness for 20 years.
What’s the difference between tequila and Chuck Fusina?
One has a worm and one is a worm.
YMVVW
A comment on it.
Thank you Stephanie.
I posted on that at #55. I noted that Tulane has the same problem and their death penalty was self imposed . An object lesson that some evidently want to relearn.
Welcome. My dyslexia has been especially bad today, and I didn’t want to frag teh place. That armadillo is scary on Friday nights. Has his ration of tequila been #occupied?
“the raw material of our physical bodies – is essentially interchangeable. By this I mean that I could take the children of Fallujah and turn them all into Astronauts, convert Jewish babies into fanatical, mass-murdering SS guards, and shake a generation of the poorest Voodoo-worshippers in Haiti into a cadre of top-flight nuclear physicists, chemical engineers and computer scientists.”
whittle
no you can’t idiot.
The radical commies in the sociology department are the ones pushing moral equivalencies and value relativism on everyone. They’re the ones making us question our judgement, which they dismiss as “bias” or “bigotry.” They’re the high priests of tolerance and non-judgementalism.
They’re metaphorical sick fucks and they’re warping the culture for the benefit of literal sick fucks.
Joke? My husband is watching a roast of Larry the Cable Guy (don’t ask) and they just showed his wife. Damn. That’s just wrong.
From that thumbsucking navel gazer geoff relinked:
Oh I’m disturbed alright. But not in the way I think you mean for me to be.
He claims to be a republican in the comments section at Dan’s, but Dan and Joy took that apart pretty readily in the comments. Cain Clinton. When Cain lies under oath and has some blue dress show up for testing, that guy can get back some cred.
– The Left is disturbed that they don’t seem to be getting the political results Alinsky/Marx/the press promised them.
He may be a Republican Stephanie. Hell, he may even think he’s conservative for all I know. My problem is that he seems to think that because he was once emotionally invested in a lying scumbag, everybody else who defends someone accused of being a lying scumbag must be as emotionally invested as he. (We’ll ignore the whole, “seriousness of the charge” undertone). That, dear lady, is prima facie evidence of leftwing projectionism to my mind.
Whether he’s the one projecting, or he’s only been taught to think in terms like that is another question.
But he said Princess Nancy! Gah, what more should we need?
OK. Why didn’t everyone and anyone who encountered this beat Sandusky into a bloody pulp? That’s the part that gobsmacks me. I cannot imagine encountering this situation and not doing my dead level best to kill the son of a bitch. And yes, that includes shooting the bastard dead if I had my carry gun on.
With two kids in SEC schools (both have been on varsity teams; one of whom is playing in a national championship come December) I confess to having become entirely disgusted at NCAA sports. Actually, I am rather beyond it. I am thinking that everything Glenn Reynolds talks about in the “Higher Education Bubble” is largely designed to reinforce NCAA sports (as they exist now.)
It’s a laughable culture of “compliance” at the expense of doing the right thing. Penn State is just the fat end of wedge, something that, like 9-11, can unite everyone in a comfortable moral certainty.
Strip it all away. End Title IX. Fund Math, Science and Engineering departments at the same level you fund basketball and football. Defund anything that ends in ______ studies. Bring back a canon. Cut the drinking age back to 18. Re-emphasize the sports that are predicated on training, conditioning and effort–where relatively “average” athletes have a chance at exceling–such as crew, rugby and wrestling.
Whatever the university is supposed to be, this ain’t it.
The remedies are simple, just not easy.
This? Fuckers.
Oy, did Dana P. faint dead away when she heard, Stephanie?
15 miles down the road from me that was. We were over in Kazoo just yesterday. Didn’t know he would be coming through till it was over.
Yeah for the national championship thingie! Whatever sport it is…
Mine is in a D2 private school playing golf under the NCAA rules and I thank God that she didn’t make a D1. She just sent me her class schedule for next semester and she’s taking 7 classes including chem lab. Well, including choir, too (which they’re gonna add some $$ for that one – yay!), but there ain’t no way she could do that at a large university. She is allowed to skip practice if she has a called study group or needs extra help, and for her coach, school comes first. That isn’t a D1 philosophy that’s for sure.
Most of her classes are 14-18 kids and they have mandatory study halls and group sessions for all classes in addition to class time plus a peer advisor and an RA and a tutor. She added two classes cause she was, ready for this, bored with having nothing to do between her early morning classes and her 2 o clock class!! What the shit? Seems all that mandatory studying produces As (she was an underperforming C/B in HS with excellent SATs). And she has changed her major to chemistry from undecided.
And she still managed to drop 7 strokes off her golf game.
Oh, they did manage to send me a notice that tuition was going from $15 to $19 per semester next year… which will be offset by the choir money and a promised increase in her academic scholarship for doing so well. They also added that anyone whose scholarships/student loans didn’t cover the increase would be maxed out at an increase of $6 K. Higher ed bubble indeed.
I can only imagine, sdferr. I refuse to take that chick seriously. Of course, she’d prolly say the same about me. Yay! Have I said lately that I hate wimmins?
BTW, you did catch the Politico reference in that Cain story, didnya? By way of the NYP. Journolist at its finest.
I did, and went looking elsewhere.
So, Newt of the ‘just leave Herman alone’ of Tuesday/Wednesday(?) is now in 2nd place on Friday according to some polls, moving up in others and is getting too big for his britches. Figures. Speakermania v 2.0.
Nite all. NR will be pleased that I have a tee time in the morning. :)
The tendency to turn a blind eye to child sexual abuse is as old as the hills, being neither left nor right, neither Christian nor atheist. It was the other “love that dare not speak its name,” except for the part about the love being entirely one-sided.
As I said up-thread, there is a latent belief that buggering a kid isn’t that big a deal, especially not for the kid.
Ask the Pashtun.
Newt is caught up in something he should be smart enough to pick apart. The left uses/invents terms in order to conflate together things which should rightly be seen as quite separate.
Use your hand to show the height of your wife compared to you. Bugger a 10 year old in a shower. Hey, they are both “Sexual Harassment” and so can be snuggled up together just like spoons in a drawer.
“Violence” is another as I’ve noted before. It allows for the conflating of self-defense with attacks as being the same thing and so to both be condemned alike.
I could take the children of Fallujah and turn them all into Astronauts, convert Jewish babies into fanatical, mass-murdering SS guards, and shake a generation of the poorest Voodoo-worshippers in Haiti into a cadre of top-flight nuclear physicists, chemical engineers and computer scientists.”
whittle
no you can’t idiot.
Dude, what you smoking tonight? He’s saying that at birth we’re eminently teachable, so if you take an infant from poor, Voodoo-worshiping Haiti and raise him to be an engineer, you can do it: there’s nothing in his blood to stop it.
In contrast, Cervantes wrote a short story about a wondrous little Gypsy girl whose grace and discretion amazed all, in stark contrast with the other filthy, money-grubbing Gypsies she traveled with. It turns out she was stolen from an aristocratic family by the Gypsies, and her more excellent bloodline showed through.
Never even heard of that. What’s the title?
La Gitanilla
The Little Gypsy Girl
Thanks, di.
A pleasant morning read, Senorita. Thanks.
That might be taken wrongly today; perhaps used as a quiet motto by some of the party-house fraternities. )
Out of the thousands of players who Paterno coached, are there some who aren’t men of high character? Of course. But the vast majority of them are.
Take “vast majority” and multiply times millions – that have befitted from the Catholic Church. Recall that less than 3% of Catholic priests wre convicted of sexual misconduct, and that it was not pedophilia, usually, but homosexual men seducing teenagers.
Quite a perspective.
“But was it of left wing academic culture?”
Yes, especially at Penn. Spanier’s agenda (and possible proclivities) made crushing judgement of paraphilia of any kind the greater sin.
Tammy Bruce:
The Sandusky’s will always be with us, like the rabies and the cholera and the plague. We’ve just made it easier for them to lurk and prowl openly.
Making my point in #241.
h/t Dan Riehl via Twitter.
Other than the rape part, Bill exactly the same thing. Just exactly.
Moral degenerate.
geoffb
Saw that Press thing … reminds of the “study” that came out that said “sexual harassment” is AN EPIDEMIC of ELEVENTY PROPORTIONS!!1!!! a few days ago
You know what qualifies right along with being pushed up against a locker and groped? Having a rumor spread about you that is “sexual” in nature … e.g. “Miss Goodytwoshoes is really a slut.”
“a few days ago”
I question the timing.
Ernst, in addition to my other duties in my former life as a psychologist, I also taught public high school. Public displays of affection (PDA) are verboten on school grounds. This was originally intended to stop make out sessions by the locker, but sadly includes bro style one armed hugs for sympathy or jobs well done, and innocent thanks for being my pal type hugs. Also, God forbid, if as a teacher, you hugged a crying kid or a joyful one. Oddly, ass-slapping by teammates on the football field continues. Of course, we are in Oklahoma and they pray before all games, too, so there’s that. Apparently, sports are not held to the same standard as academics. It’s only a hop and a skip to ignoring a Sandusky in the shower after giving a nod to the rest of the rules for dozens of years of social engineering and special treatment for a guy like McQueary.
Spontaneous human behavior is forbidden, in other words. Nature, as understood in contradistinction to convention, is annihilated. Conformity to rule or convention, however artificial, will be enforced. Slavery is freedom.
Precisely. And we wonder why so many of our young are seemingly soulless little monsters?
That’s really powerful coming from Tammy Bruce. Once you’ve established that every person is a sex toy for you, you’ve destroyed the possibility of compassion, friendship, love, and pretty much all positive human interaction.
Public displays of affection (PDA) are verboten on school grounds. This was originally intended to stop make out sessions by the locker, but sadly includes bro style one armed hugs for sympathy or jobs well done, and innocent thanks for being my pal type hugs. Also, God forbid, if as a teacher, you hugged a crying kid or a joyful one.
As is typical for a bureaucracy, they never manage to solve the problem they aim to solve. If they wanted to stop make-out sessions, they should have forbidden make-out sessions.
But instead they went ahead and abolished all of the positive types of physical contact between humans, while at the same time sexualizing students as Tammy Bruce says, during class, and unfortunately, after class.
[…] That is the sarcastic answer to an ancient question lately revised in the matter of the Penn State University athletic department having enabled a coach to serially molest young boys for decades – the question being, ‘How you separate the men from the boys at ____?’ Understandably, a large portion of the public is upset to furious about this, and those who are Penn grads and/or college football fans, and/or Joe Paterno fans are particularly distressed and/or seriously disillusioned. […]
[…] That is the sarcastic answer to an ancient question lately revised in the matter of the Penn State University athletic department having enabled a coach to serially molest young boys for decades – the question being, ‘How you separate the men from the boys at ____?’ Understandably, a large portion of the public is upset to furious about this, and those who are Penn grads and/or college football fans, and/or Joe Paterno fans are particularly distressed and/or seriously disillusioned. […]
He’s going to be a haunted, hunted two-fister for the remainder of his days.
He will serve as an example of why doing the right thing in the face of evil is the only thing.
He will serve as an example of why doing the right thing in the face of evil is the only thing.
Given that part of McQueary’s present ignomy arises from attempting to do the right thing in an, at best, half-assed manner, I’m more concerned that the lesson is going to be it’s better to not intervene in any manner —half-assed or otherwise.
Afterall, if they don’t know what you didn’t see [stet], you’re not liable for what didn’t happen.
You know, Ernst, there were probably many who did see something at some point over the years, in the showers or elsewhere (Sandusky didn’t seem to be all that concerned with clamped-down secrecy). Let’s hope they too are haunted by their own pained conscious.
And also hope that there are few fellow travelers amongst that group. There’s a phrase I’ve heard used, a co-worker who observed certain things in his high school: “gym-teacher eyes”. Makes one wonder how many of these pervs are out there.