The Glade 4.0

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

I keep trying to write, and I haven't been able to post. I keep deleting what I've written.

A few thoughts. They aren't very organized.

- The media narrative that PSU is ONLY about football is false. Too much emphasis? Yes. But it wasn't the sole focus for many of us.

- The media narrative that Penn Staters only care about Paterno and not the victims is false. We recognize Paterno's failings, but haven't forgotten all of the good he also did for the university. We have to reconcile both sides of the man.

- That being said, alumni and students are quietly supporting victims' groups and charities, and as a whole want to ensure that this never happens again. However, I think Penn Staters are circling the wagons a little bit at the moment. It feels like we're all being attacked and blamed for the specific actions of a few. That's going to make people defensive.

The Penn State of now is not the Penn State of then, and will never be again. Eternally punishing the PSU community instead of supporting our efforts to fix the problems and make amends to the victims is not productive, and doesn't help Sandusky's victims.

-The new administration has fully accepted responsibility for the university's failings, there's a consent decree already in place with the NCAA regarding the sanctions, and the university is already implementing the recommendations from the Freeh report.

- Criminal cases and civil cases are ongoing. There will be more penalties in the end, not just the athletic sanctions. (IMHO, Spanier has a lot to answer for.)

- I wish we knew why the 1998 investigation by the local police and CPS was halted. They dropped the ball also. (The cover up concerned the 2002 shower incident, not the 1998 investigation, AFAIK.)

- Just because a janitor thought he would get fired doesn't mean that he actually would have been fired. Maybe, maybe not - it's very speculative. If he had come forward too, I think/hope more would have been done. But I don't know that either.

- Sandusky was a monster. May he rot in jail and never see the light of day.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

Maybe the people who keep attacking Penn State and Paterno should arm themselves with the facts. After all, if it was about the victims, your outrage would be directed at the criminal. Instead, you guys just wanna punish someone it will hurt, instead of the nobody criminal that committed the crimes.

Regarding Penn State.
So Penn State's football program doesn't get the "death penalty" for covering up decades of child-rape in order to protect the "honor" of a **** athletics program. Instead they just lose a shitload of money, the Holy Program gets kneecapped for a few years and bunch of utterly-meaningless statistics and records get either wiped-out or asterix'd from the books. And yet some people think this is "too far." Me? I don't think it goes nearly far enough.

Granted, nothing can "undo" the crimes or the cover-up; but the sickness that allowed both things to happen - that allowed a monster to go about raping children while others covered it up goes higher than Joe Paterno and bigger than Penn State. The cover-up was possible because Football Programs wield far, FAR too much power in the American college system. Programs wield that power because it's often the college's main source of income - effectively supporting the rest of the institution. And they are the main source of income because alumni donors, and Americans in genral, care way, way too much about Football.

That we are willing, as a culture, to pump infinitely more money into bloated, greedy NCAA programs in order to maintain a talent farm for the bloated, greedy NFL is obscene enough, but predictable - you can't expect America to start caring as much about collegiate science, art and humanities programs that might yield cancer cures, energy-sources on the next transcendant works of art as we do about whether or not some guy can kick a ball between two poles... I mean, have you met us? Most of the time, these warped priorities manifest themselves in ways that are only superficially irritating; like raising men whose sole contribution to the world is throwing a ball pretty-good to the status of living gods. But the Sandusky Scandal represents the logical-extreme of this obsession: The willingness to excuse/ignore horrible crimes in order to protect The Game itself.

This is, incidentally, why while I feel bad for the players, potential players and other program staff whose careers have been impacted by this; I don't see that as a reason not to have done it - innocent of the cover-up they may be, it's all part of an institution that has frankly been crying out to be knocked-open, re-examined and probably dismantled to a large degree for a long, LONG time now. Yes, Penn State should be made to honor the commitments they made to scholarship athletes who may no longer be playing, up to an including financially-assisting them in finding placement at other schools' programs. Yes, either the NCAA, Penn alumni or their trustees should take the good-faith step of helping potential scholarship prospects already "in the works" get to the school (if they still want to) even if there's no real program waiting for them. But beyond that? Knock "The Program" over, find the rotten parts, reassemble if possible and above all else put the fear into every other Program that they're godhood - and their free ride - is over.

Now, obviously, you can't stop people from caring too much about NCAA football; but if colleges were better funded in other areas to begin with football programs wouldn't be quite so all-powerful, which is the only way you're going to stop the next Penn State from letting the next Joe Paterno cover-up for the next Sandusky. I'll probably be branded some kind of "socialist" for saying this, but y'know what'd be a good start? More federal funding for the non-athletic departments of American colleges. Start with the science and technology departments, since after all those have a tangible economic/security benefit to the nation as a whole so as to warrant such investment.

So what does the NCAA do with the 60 million? roll around in it? Have they said?

going to the victims apparently programs to help victims

http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_bn1#/v ... ctions.cnn

19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

And they are the main source of income because alumni donors, and Americans in genral, care way, way too much about Football.

That we are willing, as a culture, to pump infinitely more money into bloated, greedy NCAA programs in order to maintain a talent farm for the bloated, greedy NFL is obscene enough, but predictable - you can't expect America to start caring as much about collegiate science, art and humanities programs that might yield cancer cures, energy-sources on the next transcendant works of art as we do about whether or not some guy can kick a ball between two poles... I mean, have you met us? Most of the time, these warped priorities manifest themselves in ways that are only superficially irritating; like raising men whose sole contribution to the world is throwing a ball pretty-good to the status of living gods.

None of this sounds like a person able to make a rational, objective judgement on a topic involving sports. I'm sorry that he doesn't like football, but it sounds like he's ready to punish the entire system.

Yeah, Moviebob sounds like an idiot. He comes off like he was the kid always picked last for teams so you know..."shakes fist with rage at those meanies!". I mean, it's not like Hollywood and the movie world doesn't make billions of dollars right?


Also for ole Bob...Roman Polanski.

19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

Guys, help me move these goalposts a bit further.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

Guys, help me move these goalposts a bit further.

19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

Yes, let's do compare an instance of statutory rape by an individual who was arrested, went to trial, and convicted (who then fled the country to avoid sentencing) to a decades-long systemically-enabled cover-up by an entire organization whose sole goal in hiding this evil was to protect a game (and not even an interesting one, I might add).

In one scenario here, the system worked (until the police lost Polanski) and the crime was meted out in a court of law. In the other, an organization conspired to hide (and, indeed, to enable for more than ten years) the (multiple) crimes committed in order to protect a sporting event. Would you like some apples to go with your oranges?

As to the rest, them's the breaks.

Arngrim, a board member and the national spokeswoman for protect.org, an organization that works to protect children from physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, says greed in Hollywood allows sexual predators to flourish. "Nobody wants to stop the gravy train," says Arngrim. "If a child actor is being sexually abused by someone on the show, is the family, agents or managers - the people who are getting money out of this - going to say, 'OK, let's press charges'? No, because it's going to bring the whole show to a grinding halt, and stop all the checks. So, the pressure is there is not to say anything."