They’re rioting in State College in favor of Joe Paterno. ESPN moved its camera crews away after rocks were thrown at them. I’m reminded of what is now perhaps my all-time favorite Balloon-Juice comment:
I imagine 500 years ago, the Aztec ruler-to-be assured his subjects “I believe in Tlaloc. I have always believed in Tlaloc. I believe in motherhood, Tlaloc, and infant sacrifice, all the traditional values. When we get a drought, tradition teaches us that we must flay a ritual sacrificial victim alive and perform a sacred dance in his bleeding skin, and I believe in those traditional family values…”
Rioting in favor of child rape complicity (I know that Paterno did good things do, but they’re rioting in favor of letting him get a pass on this), human sacrifice, not just a big difference, it seems to me.
C.J.
#1 party school, bored college kids, etc etc. Not even remotely surprised this is happening.
If I were older, I guess I’d be ranting about the spoiled youth factor as well.
Joey Maloney
NAMBLA outside agitators?
scav
Tlaloc, kids — Xipe Toltec, wearing the flayed skins of victims for a month. Let’s be exact with the ol’ time religion.
BGinCHI
More evidence, if it was needed, of liberal indoctrination at our nation’s universities.
I assume they’re chanting about the implicit neo-colonialism, the Orientalism, the hegemonic repression of dissent evident in the firing of these counter-cultural Presidential and Head Coaching icons.
Hunter Gathers
Pathetic pieces of shit. Way to give higher education a good name you fucking morons.
CaseyL
At least 20% of the human species is people who are walking, talking garbage. Probably more. It’s always been that way and, unfortunately, always will be.
scav
Actually, the whole flaying thing seems a lot more popular than I remember. I knew kids had a hard time, but the skin shirts I’d missed beyond Xipe.
Comrade Dread
I’ve got nothing.
Bring on the meteors.
Linkmeister
I’m pretty sure among the 44K students at PSU the majority is not in favor of child molesting. And I do wonder how many of the participants in that crowd are actual students rather than townie football fans.
dead existentialist
Meh. They rioted when they heard bin Laden got “let go,” too. Pennsiltucky.
scav
There are cameras about. Some’ll do about anything to get camera time.
Spaghetti Lee
I said in the last thread that this sort of thing, the Paterno faithful rallying around him, isn’t surprising. Guy’s been the head coach there for 45 years and until last weekend was the living embodiment of integrity and goodness. For people with an emotional investment in PSU football, that entire history has just been pulled out from under them. They’re going to do anything they can to hold on. Whether you think it justifies this that or the other, whatever, but I’m personally not surprised it’s happening. Anger is a common response to stuff like this.
Eric F
They’re probably rioting because rioting is fun.
You get a bunch of 19 year olds, get them rip-roaring drunk, surround them with tv cameras and…what? You expect quiet introspection?
The best we can hope for is that some of them will feel like fucking idiots tomorrow.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Comrade Dread:
Indeed.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@CaseyL: Yes, more that 20%. 27%, to be exact. Look it up in the lexicon to your right.
Once you know of the mystical percentage, you will see it everywhere, everywhere, I tell you.
pete
@CaseyL: 27%
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
I think my sister accepted tenure at the wrong university.
pete
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: Curses, slow again
-ly Ballou
‘course, lots of Juicers have no trouble with, say, defending Roman Polanski. Because he’s a Great Artist, after all. We all have our idols.
isildur
I’ve lived there. Eric F is correct. Beaver Canyon (the street all the student apartment buildings are on) is basically a continuous drunken riot in the best circumstances. You don’t walk there at night, especially on weekends, because you’re very likely to have beer dropped on your head. If you’re lucky, it’s just beer, and not the bottle, too.
kdaug
@Spaghetti Lee:
Never got it. Likely never will.
Pete
They ARE – Penn State!! What do you expect?
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@pete: Can’t believe I beat you, as slow as I’m typing tonight.
Lurve the 27%, though. It really is everywhere, especially if you allow for a 2-3 percent margin of error.
BSoSR +3
Dave
so help me, I’m praying for a dirty bomb to detonate in happy valley
Ailuridae
Not a pass, Rome. Thousands of passes. Every day he elected to not report someone raping a child is a discreet separate decision. And each of those is monstrous and indefensible. 1000s of passes not one pass.
Citizen_X
@Eric F:
Uh, no. The best we can hope for is that some of them will find themselves facing expulsion and criminal charges tomorrow.
BGinCHI
Wow. Nebraska will do anything to win this weekend. This took a lot of planning.
Mack Lyons
So the crowd is divided between dumbass kids looking for an excuse to throw rocks and devout worshipers of the Church of College Football?
BGinCHI
@Ailuridae: Hey stranger. Long time.
PeakVT
Here’s some college kids doing something more worthwhile, and being beaten by some cops for it. No major injuries, fortunately.
Spaghetti Lee
@kdaug:
I’m a football fan myself, guilty as charged. I think that knowing that mindset kind of helps me, at least, understand what was going on. It becomes part of your identity. Defending it from charges of wrongdoing is equivalent to defending yourself. People who snort at that, I think, have some other pursuit or interest that they have such an emotional feeling towards. Not all of them, but a lot.
Last thread I asked if there’s anyone I could put my trust in knowing that they wouldn’t fuck up, and one answer I got was Elizabeth Warren. Now, I like Warren as much as anybody, but I wonder what the responses would be here if she were implicated in some thing or another.
Getting back to the football part, I think that a lot of the public resistance to these allegations wouldn’t be coming out of this was any other coach, or any other school. A lot of the coaches and programs are known sleazes (although nothing as bad as this), and people just kind of accept it. Paterno and Penn State were just different in a number of ways. I’m not trying to excuse away any wrongdoing he might have done (although it’s been known from the beginning that the state of pennsylvania hasn’t accused him personally of doing anything illegal), and it certainly must be lined up with the good things he’s done when one takes stock of his life, but I personally don’t think it eliminates them. Nobody’s completely perfect, but nobody’s completely evil either.
Spaghetti Lee
@Comrade Dread:
@Dave:
Yeah, let’s root for people to die horribly! That’ll bring some closure.
I get that these are kind of sarcastic statements, but, really?
sfinny
Sometimes the current events just create a freeze moment. I just can’t process the whole news cycle that includes: man sees another man raping a 10 year old and didn’t immediately stop it, right blogosphere went nuts over a christmas tree tax that was entirely untrue.
The first, when I read about it, made me sick to my stomach and trying to understand why a ten year old boy was not removed immediately from that situation. Don’t care who knew what and when, but seriously if you see an adult raping a child in a shower, Stop It.
Ailuridae
@BGinCHI:
Heyya! I tried to get in touch through comments and Doug (I think) before I left Chicago to meet up for beers. I’m in Austin now (actually looking at Frost Tower as we speak) and it has been great.
How are you?
BGinCHI
@Spaghetti Lee:
False equivalence, how does it fucking work?
Seriously?
Liking college football doesn’t make you a moral cripple, does it? Football is a sport. Child rape and coverup is not a sport.
OK?
eemom
These kids aren’t even thinking about what the actual issue is here. The closest they come to that, imo, is “but Joe Pa didn’t rape anybody!”
They’re just reacting to the downfall of a beloved icon. Their excited, intoxicated little brains don’t take it any further than that.
Not an excuse. I just think that’s how it is.
Comrade Dread
@Spaghetti Lee: Not cheering. Just making a hyperbolic comment on human beings having had a pretty good run these last few hundred years and still acting like jackasses in general doing the same stupid crap we’ve always done.
BGinCHI
@Ailuridae: Didn’t get through. Doug was probably in the bag….
Austin is pretty great. How you liking it? Good music, food, and beer. Just be careful. There are Texans.
If I could get down to SXSW and puke on your floor I would.
Brandon
I just would like to state for the record, again, that I am glad that these are white kids. If this was at a HBCU I can only imagine how different the media response would be. This rioting is just more evidence of systemic moral bankruptcy at that school. From the Board of Trutees, the President, high ranking administrators, police, Athletic Director, Head Football Coach, Asst. Football Coach, police, janitors, and students. And someone would have a hard time convincing me that a significant number of faculty are included as well. Justice would demand that PSU get closed like Murdoch’s News of the World because in my view the reputational damage to the school is beyond repair.
Suffern ACE
If I had a kid at penn state, I’d be calling them this evening to find out what he or she was up to. If I didn’t get a satisfactory answer, I’d be talking about how it wasn’t too late for me to stop paying tuition at that school and offer to pay for Joe’s Strict Military College Where There Aren’t Co-Ed Dorms instead.
Gex
@Spaghetti Lee: This is pretty close to evil.
For me it boils down to an adult human being knowing there’s a potential that Sandusky is out there raping children and not being driven to ensure that something is done about it.
I’m sorry. But if I reported that to my higher ups and then wasn’t interviewed in an investigation, I would demand to know why and what was happening in the case. I would contact the police. And I can’t fathom just going along for YEARS while nothing was being done. And I have a serious problem with the humanity of a person that can just carry on like nothing’s wrong.
Martin
@BGinCHI: Oh, that’s the winner right there! Very well done.
Cacti
But he was a great fuhball coach…or he was 20 years ago anyway.
BGinCHI
@Martin: When Ben Nelson loses the election for Senate and winds up as NE head coach you’ll see it all come together.
That fucker has mad skills.
RalfW
Relatedly, Herman Cain is being picked as a blog ad for me when I refresh BJ.
I click, so Cole can get 0.00015 cents or whatever.
Here’s the schtick that comes up on Cain’s “Truth about Cain” (paid for my his friends) site:
Investigator: Herman Cain innocent of sexual advances
Posted on November 9, 2011
CBS 46 in Atlanta is reporting tonight on an interview with Private investigator TJ Ward, who used software to analyze speeches by Mr. Cain and Sharon Bialek earlier this week.
After listening to Cain’s speech and analyzing it, Ward said there is no doubt, Cain is innocent.
“When he directly talks about the allegations against him there is no high risk,” said Ward. “It is low risk, which tells me he is being truthful in his conversations to the public.”
Read the whole story and watch the video at CBS46 Atlanta
Hill Dweller
OT: Anyone catch Pelosi on The Daily Show?
Stewart was a complete D-bag. He has helped create a good show, that is great when on, but there are times like tonight when Stewart doesn’t seem to have even the most basic grasp of how government works.
Suffern ACE
@sfinny: Wait..that joke on the other thread about the Christmas Tree Tax was real? There is an Obama Christmas Tree Tax rumor out there?
Villago Delenda Est
@RalfW:
WTF?
Voice stress analysis?
Might as well be reading tea leaves.
Cain’s pathetic handling of all this is pretty damning all by itself, and this guy comes up with this mumbo jumbo?
Might as well claim he administered veritaserum to Cain and got the whole truth that way.
Adolphus
@Spaghetti Lee
I lived in Bloomington, IN during the reign of Bobby Knight and listened at the excuses people made about his actions up to and including striking his players and other students. I was at a Maryland campus when Len Bias died. I hear and agree with what you say about Paterno and Penn State and Happy Valley. (And truth be told, I currently live in Gainesville, Florida)
I know what it is like when a town or state raises a sport, team, player or coach up as near deities and to be quite frank THAT’S THE PROBLEM! No one deserves that pedestal. No one. No institution deserves that reverence and level of blind loyalty. It is exactly that mind set that allows such behavior and the cover ups to be so absolute and fester. If Paterno hadn’t surrounded himself with former players and lackey’s (even one of his supervisors who was charged was a former player of his) and if he wasn’t so controlling and raised on such a pedestal, maybe McQueary would have had more concern for that child than the organization (his “family)
I hear too many people lament the passing of the long staying charismatic coach in college football and I say good riddance. And I say that as someone who enjoys college basketball and football but laments the absolute power those programs exercise on DIV I campuses.
An as for your closure comment at #31, I agree death and distraction is not the answer, but I don’t think “closure” is high on ANYONE’S list of priorities in regard to this scandal. We are a long way from closure on this.
Geoduck
@Suffern ACE: Why do people ask these questions anymore, when it’s literally quicker to type “Christmas Tree Tax” into Google than it is to type up the question?
But since you asked..
RalfW
@Brandon:
Between the riots, the Cain attitude vis women, the insanity of the GOP preznit field, and alegedly smart people in Europe watching their economic union unravel before their eyes, if indeed the Christianists are maybe right.*
Did the collapse of the Roman empire have its own version of Faux nooz?
.
*about the depraved moral decay of modern culture, not about some rapture crapola.
sfinny
@Suffern ACE: The Christmas tree thing made me feel that I was broken. Read about the original complaint and went to see what the truth was. OK. No problem the tax isn’t anything to do with tax payer money and is approved by the industry. But this is picked up somehow by Drudge and retweeted by David Addington.
Seriously, Addington?
Spaghetti Lee
@Geoduck:
Well personally I’ve always found that Google, as a mere search engine, can return a lot of hard to sift through crap than blogs like this one where I know a lot of people will have good info that might not turn up quickly on google.
Ailuridae
@BGinCHI:
You are welcome to puke on my floor or the floor of the/my bar any time you want. I basically retired down here and its wonderful. As far as politics it really isn’t different than Chicago: if I want to reduce the chances of being mortified/offended/angry I just avoid talking to other white men +/- 5 years of my age.
There is a singular wonderful beer here: the 512 IPA. Immediately on the top five list ever for me. The food is good to great but a lot of it (BBQ and the ilk) is stuff I eat very very rarely.
Martin
@Suffern ACE:
Just to help parents out there – I went to a tiny church affiliated school (yes, was atheist at the time, and yes I knew what I was getting into), and there is no fucking way I could have gotten more tail at a school like Penn State then where I went.
The school’s marketing materials showed lots of cute, chaste girls and clean-cut guys, the religious roots of the school, the small size so that there were always faculty and staff around, everyone had to live on campus or at home, and so on. Man, what went on there was somethin’ else, though. My senior year I barely spent a single night a week in my dorm and more often than not there were more than 2 in the bed. (Life really went to shit after I graduated.)
My sense is that the more the institution resembles society at large – big school, big town – the more normal it will be. Penn State is big school, small town. I went to small school, small town – bad news.
Just my thoughts on the matter.
Dave
@Spaghetti Lee: Yes, really. Everyone rioting for Paterno is basically complicit in child rape. Victims’ families are watching this happen as a national media event, and some really passionate members of their so-called species are furiously telling them to suck. on. this.
I don’t know what makes people so horrible. I guess it must be football.
ETA: I don’t necessarily wish horrible deaths on those hundreds of people, just want them banished from my species, eliminated, vanquished, exterminated.
Linnaeus
Ugh. I’m not one to casually make historical analogies, but right now I’m thinking it’s Weimar America.
Eric U.
Penn State students riot quite frequently. Joe Pa and riots, it’s what we’re known for. Spanier is probably glad he doesn’t have to work all night because of this riot, unlike the last 5
Linnaeus
@Martin:
So you were in The Rules of Attraction?
Martin
Oh, and not to excuse the student actions, but to explain them. It’s a small town. The campus is their life (and PSU football likely a notable reason for attending), and the campus is under attack. Their community is unravelling and they’re banding together.
Stupid, yeah, but pretty normal. Cut them some slack. They’re not reacting to the merit of the charges, just the change to their lives.
Samara Morgan
Having grown up in a football family, i think you are underestimating the value of a successful football franchise to the academic institution hosting it.
And, what Martin said. ^^
They are defending their school.
kdaug
@Ailuridae: Welcome. Wife works on the 40-something floor in Frost.
Geoduck
@Spaghetti Lee: Guess I should have added, that searcing Google News filters out a lot of the chaff; at least you’re getting the most recent stuff being posted by news(ish) sites.
kdaug
@Spaghetti Lee: So, tribalism?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Brandon:
I’m not sure the police deserve to be listed once, let alone twice. After the 1998 incident, they investigated. Apparently, they ran into the problem of not having enough evidence. Sandusky made a comment that, on a moral level, is largely a confession but that legally wasn’t close to an admission. It sounds as if the kid involved didn’t give enough of a statement to go on. All they had was an admission that Sandusky showered with the boy. While that’s certainly inappropriate, I’m not sure that it’s much to go on for criminal charges.
In the 2002 incident, the one witnessed by McQueary, there’s no evidence that the police were ever contacted at all. It was brought to the attention of the Vice President for Finance and Business, who is organizationally in charge of the campus police but is not himself a member of the police.
Martin
@Linnaeus: Huh. Never heard of the book/movie before. Movie came out right after kid #2 was born, so no surprise there. If Wikipedias synopsis is right, the timing is about right, the state is wrong. There were remarkably few drugs where I went. Lots of booze though.
But I work with a few people that went to schools similar to where I went, and I get the sense my experience was not terribly atypical in the broad sense. What tipped things in a certain direction was the wild male/female imbalance at my school – roughly 8:1 female:male. But other schools did have a big drug culture, etc. They were all twisted, just in different ways.
The prophet Nostradumbass
OT: Check out my bud @OakFoSho doing live video of Occupy Oakland
David Koch
TURN ON ESPN, RIGHT NOW
THEY’RE RIOTING!
Adolphus
@60 Samara Morgan
I grew up in a sports family, too, more dedicated to Indiana basketball than football and I saw first hand how a school’s self image can be commandeered by sport and it is morally warping. Yes it exists and we might excuse a little rioting here and there, but in the long run it just isn’t healthy. I’ve seen otherwise moral, ethical people turn a blind eye to what I thought were awful offenses by players and coaches (The current scandal is a new low). I know that these people don’t condone the beatings, rapes, gambling, and other offenses they defended more than it was their self-image and their community that was defined by sport.
But that’s the problem. A scholarly community just shouldn’t define itself so intimately through sports and raise athletes and coaches to such pedestals. It warps the ethics of the entire institution and we are seeing the fairly inevitable results of this in the downfall of Paterno and the rioting in Penn State. (not to mention the other riots in other towns when the teams merely lose a game, or in the case of College Park, MD just beat Duke)
Spaghetti Lee
@kdaug:
You could call it that, I guess. Seems like it’s the other side of the coin of socialization/community, when people’s naturally social tendencies get used for ill instead of good. I think Martin and Samara made some good comments just above-they’re not rebelling against the charges or the consequences therein specifically, but a huge chunk of their identity and their school has just been destroyed and they’re going to react angrily. Most people have something in their lives, a person, a team, a hobby, a philosophy, what have you, that they really, really feel is a big part of their identity and that they’re going to defend maybe a bit beyond rationality. How are they going to react if they learn it’s a bit rotten on the inside? Depends on the person, I guess.
My point about Elizabeth Warren farther back in the thread was not to accuse her of any wrongdoing-from what I can tell, she’s a fine person and will make a fine senator, but what if there’s some skeleton in the closet? How are people who supported her going to react? Substitute any politician in there if you like. All I’m saying is that the people saying you shouldn’t be building up heroes in the first place, it’s rarely their heroes being torn down at the time.
So, tribalism, yeah, but I think that kind of implies that it’s some part of the human condition that can be removed, at least on a micro level, with enough rational thought. I think it’s just a fundamental problem with the idea that identity isn’t self-contained and relies on outside sources which can, on occasion, let you down.
David Koch
HOLY SHIT!
They overturned the network satellite truck!
Dave
@Martin: If your enjoyment in life depends on the veneration of a criminal, then your life sucks.
No slack. They’re not wee clean-faced college kids; they’re legal adults involved here, and they’re all pieces of shit.
Ailuridae
@kdaug:
I’m a Frost Customer! I miss my TCF (365 day a year banking, 12 hours a day in a major Chicago SM chain) but Frost has the details right.
David Koch
Get off my lawn!
http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/02oWbKgf4i1QY/x610.jpg
http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/07ZI0D6cEibkM/610x.jpg
sdstarr
As a lifelong Nebraska fan, I have to say that maybe the team should just skip this game. This will be the most horrible, awkward and unwanted athletic contest imaginable. What happens to Nebraska fans visiting Happy Valley? As a visiting team would you want to go into those showers?
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
Given the circumstances of the case, you are making an amoral argument.
scav
I think we might be over-analyzing this. Mob behavior has a mad dynamic all of its own.
Richard
There’s been some pretty disgusting shit over the years, but this has got to be the worst scandal in college football history.
It’s a perfect illustration of what’s wrong with college sports, with “the good of the school” taking precedence over basic human morality.
kdaug
@Spaghetti Lee:
Good answer.
Linnaeus
@Martin: I’ve heard similar stories.
Dave
@scav: Interesting theory, but false.
Martin
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Should have been enough for the university to sever all ties with Sandusky and bar him from ever stepping on campus ever again. I’ve seen that done with tenured faculty over less.
But the 1998 incident, even if not rising to a criminal level was enough to separate Sandusky from employment, even if that direction connection wasn’t in the personnel file. That at least would be embedded deeply in the institutional memory and passed along from administrator to administrator. Gotta trust me on that one – I carry forward word of mouth incidents from two decades before I was even hired, and they pass along even after the people involved have died. Those who fail to learn the lessons of history…
First off, the police absolutely should have been notified immediately over such a charge – it’s not like they have anything else to do, so you take EVERYTHING to campus police. Second, with that other incident out there, you go to campus police with added urgency – with extreme urgency.
Shit, if an report came to someone in my office (not even to me personally) by a student regarding an incident like that and I was not personally in the police office with student in hand immediately upon hearing it, and the report turned out to be true, I’d be fired. As would my employee who failed to report it to me. No question. And that’s with no prior incident, prosecutable or not.
I cannot express how insanely out of policy for any public, taxpayer supported university this whole thing reads to me.
scav
@Dave: Oh? Group behavior follows the same exact logic as individual behavior? People don’t find themselves going along with things they wouldn’t otherwise do because everybody around them is doing it?
kdaug
@Ailuridae: Heh. I was a bit nervous when they were first building it – wondered if the crystals on top (given the right sun angle) would create a massive concentrated solar-energy beam that would destroy the buildings on the other side of Congress. Seeing as how that’s where I was working at the time, I had a vested interest.
Thankfully, they thought of that.
David Koch
The may have to send tanks into the streets to restore order.
brettvk
@sdstarr: With the disclaimer that I dislike football especially and bigtime college sports in general, I would be shocked if the game takes place after the riots. It would feel like rewarding lawbreaking, wouldn’t it?
Dave
@scav: It’s an interesting idea, but no. They tried to prosecute rioters in England under laws written with such assumptions in the 1870s; current group research says there’s no such thing as “mob behavior” as it was conceived in the 19th Century (which is basically what you’re describing). People can do things in mobs/crowds that they can’t do alone, but not because of some kind of mystical compulsion.
scav
@scav: I guess I’m just hesitant to immediately assign deep existential meaning to this when I’ve been to a college that rioted and burned a rather astonishing number of couches (and other things) after winning basketball games. And it was a non-sports-obsessed school.
Suffern ACE
I think he confessed that his genitals might have brushed up against the boy. But that “maybe” was followed by a request for forgiveness. That part of the narrative just reads odd. “Well, you know how athletes shower together and horse around in the showers, well I just got carried away with the bear hug.” I’m not certain how the prosecutor could just drop that when someone is known to work with children. Doesn’t that reach some level of inappropriateness that would have been worth pursuing?
scav
@Dave: Didn’t literally mean the mystical / mad. I still think we may be over-analyzing it. I still think situations get into self-sustaining dynamics.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: no, im just speaking truth.
For the kids rioting, its an attack on their identity and their culture, and indeed on their future livelihood post-graduation.
you prolly dont have this in Malaysia, but college football is a localized industry for the unis here.
The prestige and financial status of unis is often bound to successful sports programs in America. Paterno was like the winningest college coach ever i think, so he was worshipped at Penn State.
Exurban Mom
If you are unfamiliar with the atmosphere in Happy Valley, you could do worse than listen to this to get a taste of what goes on:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/396/1-party-school
scav
Maybe using the word “flock” instead of “mob” wouldn’t have set off the wrong associations. Some of them may see themselves as protecting their tribe, some may see themselves as standing up against the injustice of JoePa’s not being able to dictate when he leaves, but odds are others are just drunk and likely would have thrown things on any weekend, and some just showed up because that’s what you do on historic occasions, and blah blah blah. And then somebody does something and the neighbors flock along and it spread through the flock. There’s not a single motivating factor, the behavior isn’t necessarily about anything. It just is.
Samara Morgan
this interpretation simply reflects a deep misunderstanding of human nature and campus culture.
sry.
Humans do not “riot” in favor of anything– they riot to protest.
Those students see their uni under attack, not any moral issue about child rape.
brettvk
@Exurban Mom: Well, I’m into about 15 minutes of TAL’s take on Penn State, and now I think that they’ll play the stupid game, in fear of what 30,000 disappointed drunks will do if the game is cancelled. I hate my species.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Martin:
You are misreading what I said. At no point have I ever tried to excuse the moral failure of not alerting the police, or of not taking steps to deal with Sandusky starting in 1998. *All* I said is that I’m having a hard time blaming the *police* for not coming up with enough to charge Sandusky with criminal offenses in 1998 or because no one ever brought the 2002 incident to their attention. The blame for that is on the administration.
magurakurin
@Spaghetti Lee: How would I react if I found out that Elizabeth Warren was ass raping 10 year old boys with a broom handle?(she doesn’t have a dick afterall) I’d fucking call her a sick, twisted fuck and demand she be removed from any position of authority while quickly tried and imprisoned for her crimes. Any other stupid fucking questions?
Brian S
@Samara Morgan:
As a survivor of molestation, I don’t give a shit about their identity and culture. What they’re defending right now is despicable, and I suspect in years to come, you’ll find it increasingly difficult to find alums who’ll cop to having rioted tonight.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
This is precisely what I mean by saying amoral. Your bare statement of facts ignores the moral considerations without which there would be no issue at all.
Remember, these Penn State University officials failed to report a child molester to the police. This gross collective moral lapse allowed him to keep preying on children, on university premises, for over a decade after he was found out.
Coach Paterno was one of those officials. You can’t protest his firing as a damaging blow to the University without protesting the grounds for it: a justified penance (in my view) for a gross moral failure that has badly stained PSU’s good name.
The protesting students’ putting a sports program above PSU’s good name is amoral. Your not criticizing them for this amorality is likewise amoral.
TenguPhule
They’re protesting that a child raping dick is being let go who also happens to coach football. Apparently football/college > child rape in the rioter’s minds.
Orbital Bombardment with iron spikes. Its the only way to be sure.
sven
Off topic, but we have a new example of the high regard in which Republicans hold women. From TPM:
Ex-SC GOP Official Calls Pelosi C-Word On Twitter
At first I thought it would be some sort of misogynistic innuendo. Nope, it’s just good old fashioned bile.
Amir Khalid
@TenguPhule:
FTFY.
William Hurley
It seems that college is too expensive for the wrong type of people who would put their degrees to good use.
Unfortunately, those who haven’t a clue and indulge in the largesse of doting parents prefer to celebrate vicious, life-destroying violence and to preserve their privileges at the vomitorium.
wk
Looks like I should have posted in this thread. Pasting here…
Just a comment on the students’ reaction. First, I agree that demonstrations to defend JoePa in this instance are pretty awful. At the same time, they’re kids who have also suffered their own loss and they’re in denial. Many went to Penn St to enjoy their 4+ yrs there… and football and the legend of JoePa are a huge part of what they thought they were getting. Now that’s all gone and their college experience will be markedly different. Obviously, this victimhood is relatively meaningless; nonetheless, I think this loss goes a long way toward explaining the student riots. Hopefully most will soon get past the denial and come to their senses.
William Hurley
@magurakurin:
Indeed. In fact, in a real instance of ideology over idolatry, people on the political left needed no prompting to deem John Edwards’ behaviors disgusting, amoral and career ending.
It’s pretty damn telling, to my eye, that right-wing loons can’t even muster minimal human capacity for moral decision making with or without their preferred, infallible religious text in-hard or close by.
William Hurley
@wk:
You’re daft!
If the rioting sub-humans at PSU are angry for the reasons you describe, they should be directing their fury at those within their “beloved” institution who aided and abetted at least one serial sexual predator. Had they, any of them, behaved as a leader should, or simply followed the law or policy or had one moral bone in their body, the pro-child rape rioters would have their institution and could return to their usual program of binge drinking and sleeping their class while mommy and daddy paid the bills.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
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Oh, ye balloonbagger of little faith. President Obama will surely find a way to meet these folks more than halfway in the interest of bipartisanship. And if you can’t get the whole hog, you have to take the ham sandwich. That’s called compromise, and only dirty fucking firebagger progressives believe anything different. eemom will back me up on this.
.
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Amir Khalid
In The Conversation, at NYT (I shall spare you all the link, but you know where to find it) Gail Collins and Bobo discuss this matter. Collins is all for shutting Penn State football down for the season. Bobo’s like, “But the coach is a good guy. Yeah, child molesters are bad; but gee, I don’t know. Maybe that’s too harsh.”
wk
@William Hurley: You’re right that the logical response is to blame JoePa and others. But they’re still in denial and haven’t yet logically processed what’s happened. Like I said, hopefully they’ll process events sooner rather than later. I attended Virginia Tech, a similar rural campus with a football fetish. I’m just telling how I see it, and I assure you the premise isn’t daft.
Uriel
@Amir Khalid:
But that’s pretty much par for the course, given the source, isn’t it?
willard
How can a fucking game cause people at all levels to lose sight of what is important. That sick fuck wrote and published a book titled “Touched” after the first investigation into this matter. Sandusky’s reign of terror likely spanned decades with dozens of victims.
Football? Football? To hell with football. PSU needs to fire its board, forfeit all remaining football games for the season. Further the Big Ten needs to give up the rose bowl. Football ain’t worth it.
amk
Talk about fucking priorities in life. Fucking football rules at any cost.
CaliCat
I know we like to throw around terms like “cultists” and “Kool-aid drinkers” but those students were seriously acting like they’d been brainwashed to believe “Joe Pa” is their divine leader. That protest was really strange and creepy.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Don’t forget that you can’t be sure how much the rioters actually know about what’s been going down. A lot of the reporting has been so muffled with euphemisms that I surprised a pretty intense sports fan yesterday with the details. Many students at a party school like PSU are too busy getting drunk and then recovering from said binge to keep up with the news, even superficially. The handful out there rioting are just the ones who weren’t yet comatose when the big news came down.
Bullshit. It doesn’t matter if Paterno was an active part of the coverup or just looked the other way while the two administrators handled it. His ship, his responsibility.
It’s important to me, for my own sense of justice, that I not rush to judgment ahead of my information. But he is still, ultimately, responsible.
Frankensteinbeck
This is exactly why I don’t like sports and think they’re unhealthy in our culture. In fact, the arguments here – especially M-C’s – perfectly demonstrate the problem.
Sports, especially popular local-team sports, are a vast exercise in tribalism. There is *no other reason* for the average person to support one team over another than us-vs-them. You’ve picked a side, placed yourself on that side, and support that side whether or not they’re right. Have you ever been to a game, or even a school pep rally? Add mob mentality to the process, sublimating yourself and your thinking to function as a group. These things FEEL GOOD. They’re basic functions of the human id, very destructive ones, and sports train people in those functions.
Several people have argued that this is natural. Damn right it’s natural. That does not make it right. On the contrary, letting gut instinct and feelings override your knowledge of right and wrong is called ‘evil’. Letting your gut instinct override thinking is something we make fun of right here on a regular basis.
Ian
@Suffern ACE:
??
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Ian: I think he means he’d want to know if his kid was a part of the rioters.
Yoüf
Brilliant insights, all.
Here’s the view on (cr)Happy Valley from the no-longer-rose-tinted window of a tenure-track faculty member who was just dismissed, despite receiving The Highest rating in all three Promotion and Tenure review categories from the faculty in their department.
Reasonable minds might grunt, “HUH?!?!”
The Sandusky event is in many ways NOT just about football. It’s NOT just about (the horrific) sexual molestation of minors either. What it IS about is a Culture of Cover-up, resulting from the deification of administrators. Penn State is THE LEAST ethical and THE MOST retaliatory environment I have EVER worked in. The system is rigged so that ANY expression of legitimate concern (my error) is met with a rapid escort to the door.
The fact that it took the exposure of administrative denial of an anal pummeling of a child by a sick pervert for The Board of Trustees and the rest of Pennsylvania to wake from their deep slumber on the gross inequities that administrators have been doing for years is an indication of just how bad things really are here. Administrators at PSU have enjoyed life as Pharoahs for a very long time. One simple rule is all that need be obeyed to live a life of comfort and protection: “Should one administrator catch cold, ALL shall sneeze”.
This story is, and will grow ever larger into one about Administrative Cronyism and the manifold consequences of unchecked behavior. I could go on (and I just might) but this one is going to rattle the academic windchimes throughout academia, for some time to come. Reason being, Penn State, with the “aura of ethics” and inscrutable grievance review processes (which are noncompliant with AAUP criteria) perfected the art of assigning guilt while denying the ability to prove innocence for any person who actually cares about education and is foolish enough to raise any concerns.
Autocrats and despots the world over — All Hail Penn State!!!
Citizen_X
@wk:
“Why did you help turn over that TV truck to support someone hiding a child molester?”
“Hey man, I hadn’t logically processed what had happened.”
Yeah, that defense fills me with sympathy.
TheStone
@Linkmeister: I have passed through a few riots in State College and I can assure you that they are all students.
Ian
@Amir Khalid:
Shutting down the football team for a season would have potential long term effects on the careers of all those players.
I think the old dudes should be punished, but no one playing on that team was even there in 1998 or 2002
CarolDuhart2
@sfinny: And 15 cents? Considering how much real Christmas trees cost these days, I’m surprised that the tax is so low. Have you priced real trees lately?
As far as Paterno goes, I kind of like to think that being so insulated and old-school, he probably bought into a lot of manipulation of his loyalty here. Promises of reform, apologies, maybe promises to seek a cure. “Please don’t call the police” so that perhaps this takes place, so he can still collect a pension, so whatever. Maybe even lies that this was just one incident and that something can be done that doesn’t involve his old coach going to jail.
WereBear
This is why we have “institutions” instead of “kings.”
An Institution is not supposed to revere a single human being over their own structure. The point of an Institution is to be Bigger Than That.
Ideally, as in the John Edwards incident, bad behavior is condemned and the Institution can still hold its head up… because that way the members do not lose their Institution.
There is a constant pull to choose humans to “embody the structure” and to a certain extent that is a good thing; people have to model the right behavior for other people to get what that is and how they should behave.
But tip that balance, and the whole thing can go down. Then it becomes about enabling lies and denial and coverups.
The thing about denial is that it seems easy. Instead of ripping my worldview, moral spine, and self-identity up from the roots and re-examining it, I’ll just pretend it didn’t happen. This ability is a short-term coping device that enhances survival; if I see a tiger tear somebody apart, denial helps me keep it together long enough to kill the tiger or scramble for safety or whatever the situation calls for. I can fall apart later, when it’s safe. And there are lots of documented instances of people using it in emergencies for just that purpose. How many times have we heard accounts that go, “I couldn’t think about that at the time, I just had to do what I needed to”?
But denial takes mental energy… more and more all the time. So it always breaks down. It can’t be a long-term strategy; even though people use it that way.
Shlemizel
I mentioned this in an earlier thread but it exemplifies the mind set of the fans of winning football programs. I was having breakfast in a small farm town in Nebraska just as all the crap was coming out about the rapes, beatings, murders (yes, murder) etc committed by Nebraska players while they were winning a national championship. These good Christian men were outraged, OUTRAGED! . . . that the press was printing the truth about what was discovered after having been so skillfully covered up. It was all a conspiracy “they” wanted to get even with NB for winning.
BTW – some of you may have heard of the NB coach who oversaw this thug-fest. He has a second career, in Congress. Tom Osborn
EconWatcher
I don’t think there’s much chance these kids will wake up today and feel embarrassed. But there’s a very good chance that some of them will look back five or ten years from now and cringe.
I wouldn’t defend the conduct in any way. But some college students are mature adults. Others are really just children (often spoiled children) in adult bodies. For the pampered ones still living off their parents, not much is expected of them, and not much is delivered. But some of them will eventually mature and turn into decent adults.
While there’s no analogy to this, there are many things I did and said in college that I’d rather not remember now. Just sayin’.
gelfling545
@Eric F: Or at least hellish hangovers.
CarolDuhart2
@WereBear: I agree, that’s why we have institutions.
One source of understanding I have is from Al-Anon and the cycle of dependence, denial, co-dependency and all the lot. It seems to pretty much fit these situations-and possibly this problem coach as well.
Barry
@-ly Ballou: “‘course, lots of Juicers have no trouble with, say, defending Roman Polanski. Because he’s a Great Artist, after all. We all have our idols.”
And I’m sure that you’ll post a list of those people here Right F*cking Now.
gnomedad
@Eric F:
I hope not — then we’ll get more idiots.
Barry
@Adolphus: “I know that these people don’t condone the beatings, rapes, gambling, and other offenses they defended more than it was their self-image and their community that was defined by sport.”
Please note that they indeed did condone those things. That’s the whole issue.
gelfling545
@Spaghetti Lee:
If there is, and she being no less human than the rest of us, there could be some peccadillo but it depends on what it is, doesn’t it? The degree of seriousness? There is no way to excuse aiding and abetting abuse of the innocent no matter who is doing it.
Also, to add a note of hope for those predicting the collapse of civilization based on the reactions to this – it is well to remember that back in the day there was NO WAY word of this atrocity would ever have seen the light of day so there is progress of a sort. Yes, people can be pretty messed up but at least their crimes are finding them out.
jhtrotter
Some of the kids say they’re mad because of how he was notified. The Ped State board of directors sent a courier with an envelope to the legendary coach of Barebacker U, with a note asking him to call a phone number. And he did, and the board answered and told him he was fired.
And so it turns out Joe does know how to make a timely phone call after all.
CarolDuhart2
@gelfling545: ANd there’s a chance for some justice-even if it’s only in the court of public opinion. Years ago it would have been hushed up forever with no recourse.
kay
The 1998 University Police report covers more than one incident in the showers. It’s plural in the GJ presentment. “Incidents”. There was the one boy in the presentment, but there were others in the 1998 report.
I think the AG has to release more information. People need to know if university, county or state law enforcement treated this case differently than they would any other.
Also, on the missing/dead DA. Prosecutors don’t work on cases completely alone. Presumably there’s someone in that office who has extensive knowledge of what happened with the first University Police report.
It’s not like if the DA dies it’s just a black hole and no one knows anything. “The story died with him”. Not true. There were or are plenty of other lawyers in that office who had access to the information on the 1998 report. This must have been HUGE, within the office. They knew what they had, and how explosive it was going to be.
I think they should look at all of it: any police agency, any prosecutor, any childrens services agency. I think they should look at the state role in this.
They really, really need to know if the corruption extended to state actors. I feel there’s something wrong with this story, as far as the state role.
Keith G
Ok, it does seem that the many guilty are well on their way to facing due process and hopefully punishment fitting their criminal activity. It also seems that ethical problems are being addressed. Good.
After seeing to it that abundant care and support is extended to the many victims of this nightmare, what concerns me is that our society will, as always, focus on overt crimes and not on recognizing, diagnosing, and appropriately dealing with a disrupted psychological development that leads to dangerously abnormal sexual activity.
It would not surprise me if Jerry Sandusky had been sexually abused as a young child. That is one sure way to mis-wire a human’s psychological development – and that is one of the very important reasons that care must be given to his victims.
A society committed to understanding and humanely dealing with such errand psychological development would be able to prevent some of the victimization like that at Happy Valley. Instead at all levels, most people chose not to deal with it appropriately, if at all.
The thing is, with no other mechanisms in place, there is often not a lot of other options than the justice system, and besides being after the fact, that system is woefully impracticable even when operating to standard.
Reading the dick swinging in the other posts does not leave me hopeful. Proactively dealing with the troubled is a lot more complicated that punishing offenders, victims be damned.
The Other Bob
@Joey Maloney:
That is funny – sick, but funny. The Penn State rioters make a Tea Party demonstration look sane.
willard
This quote is from CNN since there is no way I could read the grand jury report:
The PSU Football authorities including Joe Paterno had the above detailed information in 2002 and probably 1998, maybe even earlier. Paterno at best was willfully ignorant of an atrocity that when even a hint was brought to his attention should’ve commanded the full use of ALL his attentional resources. PSU administrators, at the very least had this information for years and yet failed to act, continued to provide haven for a child rapist. The athletic director had to be aware of the Second Mile, the vehicle Sandusky created to facilitate his atrocities.
Every college football team should refuse to play PSU due to that program’s complicity in covering up child rape. Child rape is no fucking game, but football is. Priorities. And if anyone thinks that it couldn’t happen elsewhere in the NCAA football cult culture, they are mistaken.
The Other Bob
Did the grad student call the cops? Did any parent (assuming some knew about it) call the cops? What the hell.
willard
The administrator to whom the GA spoke was in charge of the campus police, so I could understand that he felt he had notified the authorities. However, when nothing was done in subsequent YEARS, he should’ve notified better authorities. And so on until Sandusky no longer had a
welcome signoffice.Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: its human nature dude.
i do not get your bitching. would you relly rather purse your lips and count coup on me than understand what is happening?
the students are not rioting FOR anything. They do not approve of childrape complicitly.
They are rioting against the destruction of their uni.
I get that as a malaysian you do not understand the american football industry, but a winning team enhances university prestiege, drives the engine of alumni endowments and donations, and recruits students.
The negative publicity will depress the value of their degress and PSU will become an object of mockery and scorn.
What happened to the catholic church is now going to happen to Penn State– multimillion dollar lawsuits from victims are going to bleed the uni and depress recruitment and alienate the Alum.
DougJ
@Ailuridae:
I don’t think I got an email from you about this.
Samara Morgan
@Frankensteinbeck: and just wait until the truth about repeat concussion syndrome comes out.
Right now its being suppressed by the football industry, like the tobacco industry suppressed the truth about smoking and lung cancer.
Amir Khalid
@Ian:
Yes, it would affect the playing careers of Penn State students on the football team. But as Gail Collins notes, without football they will still be students, with studies to concentrate on.
As it is, their fellow students have been rioting over Coach Paterno’s well-justified sacking because, FOOTBALL! That suggests that everyone at Penn State — admin, faculty, staff and students — needs to step away from the sport, needs to think about what Penn State University itself is all about. Right now, its very reputation for decency is in tatters. Rehabilitating that reputation should be more important than maintaining its legendary success in football.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: but it cant be done in a “freed” market education economy where student choose their school.
like i said, the negative publicity will persist for a long time as more victims emerge and more lawsuits emerge.
it will take decades to rehabilitate PSU’s public image.
The industrialized football industry will prevent them from recruiting l33t players, and the team will fail.
The students are way wiser than you moral snobs.
They just see the writing on the wall.
Samara Morgan
So DougJ you and your commenter are WRONG.
The model is not Aztec human-sacrifice– its ritual gladitoral combat.
And besides, the protein starved aztecs and incas ate their human sacrifices.
where cities come together to hate each other in the name of sport
AxelFoley
@isildur:
Seriously? That’s the name of that street? That’s just asking for trouble.
willard
@Samara Morgan – Not sure I understand your rational for calling commenters that think child rape an atrocity moral snobs. Child rape IS an atrocity. How can a human being place an institution, a game, a leader, anything, above the welfare of the victims?
Kathy in St. Louis
Those riots have more to do with the ease of frat boys getting booze on campus then just about anything else.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
Don’t condescend to me about what you think I do or do not understand of this matter. I understand perfectly well that success in football is vital to Penn State University’s prestige and financial well-being and institutional pride. I understand perfectly well why those kids are protesting.
Try to understand this: if Penn State University tries to carry on as normal with its football program, that shall do further harm to its already damaged reputation. A senior member of the coaching staff raped, on campus, a series of young boys over at least a decade — or maybe much longer. His bosses looked the other way, or made only a token effort to address the matter. They, and the university as a whole, now have a great deal of shameful behavior over that period to atone for.
And yes, there will be adverse consequences, financial and otherwise, including to innocent parties other than the boys Sandusky raped. PSU needs to atone for that as well. All the protesting in the world doesn’t change that.
Surly Duff
@Martin:
I get that the riots are a response to a feeling of being “attacked” as a community, but that doesn’t justify the actions. In protesting the decision to fire Paterno, they are making Paterno into the victim, rather than focusing on the atrocities that Paterno and the University covered up and the real victims of the crimes and the cover-up.
SBJules
I was at UCSB in 1969 but didn’t live in Isla Vista, the mostly student housing community next to campus. They burned the bank of America there. At least they were not rioting about football.
Surly Duff
@Samara Morgan:
Huh? So, rioting over the firing of Paterno is going to help change the public perception of the currently tattered reputation of PSU? And this will work how?
soonergrunt
@-ly Ballou: And who exactly would those people be? Because I don’t remember anyone here excusing Roman Polanski drugging and raping a 13-year-old.
soonergrunt
@willard: Dude, you’re dealing with one of the most intellectually vacant persons that posts here. You aren’t really surprised to find that she’s also morally and ethically corrupt as well, are you?
Poopyman
@Kathy in St. Louis: “Beaver Canyon” is not on campus. It is a stretch of high-rise apartments along Beaver Avenue that’s about 2 blocks off-campus.
The Beavers were a big name in Pennsylvania, including at least one governor, and were big time contributors to PSU. Besides the State College street, the stadium and 2 (IIRC) buildings are named after Beavers. And yes, Maintenance had a continuous job scrubbing the spray-painted quotes off of the Mary Beaver White building.
Eighteen-to-twenty-one year olds are idiots, generally speaking. Put them in an isolated environment like Central PA, subject them to a combination of pressure (exams) and boredom, and it’s a wonder there haven’t been more riots. At least the number of rioters were well below the Crazification Factor. Twenty-seven percent of all the students would be a lot more people.
And I agree (or hope) that they’ll regret last night – hopefully sooner than later.
Paul in KY
@dead existentialist: Speaking as a proud Kentuckian, how about ‘Pennsilho’ or ‘Pennsiltah’ or ‘Pennsilbama’?
I can come up with more.
Sad Iron
Doug, you completely missed the boat here. Can’t you see that these protestors are far superior to the OWS crowd because they actually know what they want and are focused on that goal? Geez, what’s wrong with you?
Villago Delenda Est
@Paul in KY:
Pennsilzona?
Rome Again
@pete:
2 + 7 = 9
:P Just saying…
Paul in KY
@Poopyman: I thought they were named after real beavers. Shoulda known it was some dude with the last name of Beaver.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: That would work!
Rome Again
@Ailuridae:
Why are you calling DougJ Rome? I’m confused. I thought someone was saying I wrote that and yet I didn’t even know this thread existed until now. I was offline (sleeping and then at work) when you guys started discussing all this.
Adolphus
@139 Willard
I suspect that is why Paterno and McQueary were not charged. (This and possible promises of immunity for testifying)
But it doesn’t pass my smell test. Though the official had administrative control of the Campus Police, this would be like me seeing a City Councilman rape a child and me calling the Mayor. Sure, officially he might be in charge of the police, but he is not independent, does not have subpoena power, does not have arrest power and is not, in the end a truly independent investigatory body. In fact, were he a political friend of the rapist reporting it to the mayor is a step in hushing it up. In the end everyone involved seemed to have kept it “in the family.” (wasn’t one of the indicted administrators even a former player of JoePa’s as was the GA who saw the sodomy? this was kept “in the family” 100%)
Also, and I admit to confusion and no conclusions when I ask: If the administrator to whom the GA spoke (I forget which one and they don’t warrant a google) can in fact be considered a police rep because he has administrative control of the Campus Police, how could he then be indicted for failing to report to the proper authorities?
This onion will continue to peel back for months and possibly years and it will be a long time before it smells any sweeter. More stink is yet to come.
Rome Again
@Ailuridae:
By the way, I agree with this, enough that I’m getting involved in a flame war with a high school classmate on Facebook because my classmate thinks Paterno is innocent and getting railroaded. I told her to read the Grand Jury Report before making such judgments. Someone stated that people who are invested in the reputation of the school are having a hard time accepting this decision. I agree. My classmate is a native Pennsylvanian (before she moved to Delaware).
Rome Again
@Paul in KY:
Pennsylsippi
Rome Again
@Samara Morgan:
Their “Uni” was already destroyed by the child molestor.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: dude. the students are pissed off.
they didnt rape any kids, they didnt even know about it. they see their uni under attack is all, and understand full well the socio-economic ramifications of the attack.
you are accusing them of being amoral.
i do not see how they are.
@willard: i called Maftoon Khalid a moral snob. And anyone that agrees with him that the students are amoral.
Again, they are not rioting to support complicity in child-rape. They are rioting because their social infrastucture is being destroyed.
Amir Khalid
So if I say that the PSU students protesting Paterno’s sacking are disregarding the serious moral issue that led to it, then I’m a moral snob? I’m just pointing out the facts here. Paterno did not do all he could and should have done to bring a child rapist to justice. He and his bosses at the PSU thus allowed Jerry Sandusky to carry on the serial rape of who knows how many boys over how many years. It is this collective failure of common decency, whatever the motives for it, that has ruined Penn State’s good name, that will affect its alumni and other benefactors’ future generosity. It is for his part in this that Paterno deserves his sacking.
You say PSU students are protesting his sacking as a fatal blow to their social infrastructure. If so, they’re forgetting something: Penn State’s footballing tradition is not more important than its good name, which as you say will now take decades to restore. If football has become so central to Penn State as a social institution that it would tolerate such serious moral failures, then Penn State has seriously lost its way. If those protesting students don’t understand this, their social infrastructure isn’t worth saving.
wk
@Citizen_X: Well, if you’d actually read what I wrote, it wasn’t a defense for their behavior. Rather, it was an explanation of what’s happening beyond saying that these kids are subhuman and civilization as we know it must be ending.
Paul in KY
@Rome Again: I was going to try that one, but I didn’t think I could spell it right. Good on ya!
Paul in KY
@Samara Morgan: If that’s what they are doing, then I think they are overreacting. Penn State isn’t that whooptycrap of a university.
scav
Exactly @Amir Khalid: Fox-hunting loko’s social roots are bleeding through. Football is a valid beating social heart for peoples social infrastructure and one that is it reasonable to defend against any and all interruptions of play. It’s the Happy Valley Spring!
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid:
this. You and DougJ are just flashing your moral certitude. This site has a big fucking case of MORAL POUTRAGE 24/7.
ONE MORE TIME CUDLIPS
The students are not rioting “in favor of child rape complicity” and their protest doesnt mean our civilization is returning to blood sacrifice and quetzalcoatl worship.
Samara Morgan
@scav: your class-envy is showing again.
:)
scav
@Samara Morgan: Kiddo, I’ve spent a lifetime avoiding your kind of class. Do you dot your “i”s with little hearts too?
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
Saying that makes you the snob.
Nobody here is accusing PSU students of rioting to defend Jerry Sandusky’s right to rape ten year old boys. You have put up a straw man. wk is trying not to defend the protesting students’ reaction, but to explain why it is natural. wk does note that these students haven’t thought through why Paterno’s sacking was necessary to help save Penn State’s reputation. All they see is bad things happening to Penn State because of this scandal: a threat to football and the loss of Penn State’s good name. That’s why they’re lashing out in the wrong direction. Well, they need to understand the reason for the administration’s long-overdue action if they are to learn from what is happening to their university.
Gromitt Gunn
Throwing around “cudlips” like you possess some secret knowledge which the proletariat is too stupid to understand while simultaneously defending the violent defense of a system that allows serial child rape to go unchecked for longer than most of its victims were alive when they were first victimized? While claiming some sort of moral high ground? Voila! A new low in m_c logic is a achieved.
El Cid
@Amir Khalid: Maybe that football program ‘should’ (in some alt-universe) be given to some other university not as known for covering up child-rape.
pat
I’m late with this comment, so maybe no one will see it, but here goes…
I was listening to Morning Edition on MPR today, and every half hour the news would have some mention of the Penn State “alleged sexual abuse.” I finally called and complained that what had happened was CHILD RAPE (I used the term several times) and that at the very least they could insert the word CHILD. So in 10 minutes, there it was: CHILD SEX ABUSE.
A small victory, to be sure, but they did at least listen.
I wonder if the rioting students are really fully informed. It would be easy not to be…..
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: wallah.
its right in DougJs post.
you called me amoral, and you called the students amoral.
you are so invested in scolding me that you cant even see straight anymore.
Samara Morgan
@Gromitt Gunn: bulshytt talker.
all i said was the students are rioting to protest the destruction of their university football program. they are NOT rioting “in favor of child rape complicity” like DougJ said. They not “amoral” like Khalid said.
The students have not yet thought this through.
They are thinking about the Nebraska game.
Samara Morgan
and its NOT THE END OF CIVILIZATION you moral certitude preening asswipes.
some students
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
What DougJ meant is that the students were protesting for Joe Paterno’s and Penn State’s right to look the other way while Jerry Sandusky raped children. He is correct, and your statement
is wrong; what is looking the other way, if not a passive form of complicity?
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: as an empiricist, i have to go with WHAT DOUGJ SAID, not what you think he meant.
like i SAID, the protesting students are thinking about the Nebraska game.
You and DougJ are both full of shit.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
Ad hominem insults = “I got nothin’.”
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: AMG i just pwned your whole argument with quotes and links and that is all you have?
THE
In ancient China they used to make gods out of scholars and philosophers. e.g. Confucius, Lao Tzu.
In America they make gods out of singers, actors, and sports stars.
I consider this to be a religious riot.
The students are protesting against the blasphemy.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
Is that what you think you did? Have you refuted my contention that Joe Paterno and his bosses are to blame for ruining Penn State University’s good name? That disregarding the moral issue here, while protesting his well-justified and necessary firing purely as a blow to Penn State and its football, is amoral? That Penn State as a whole needs to step away from the sport and reflect on what it has become, if it now prizes football above common decency? You have not done these things, ergo you have not pwned ny whole argument.
That Penn State the social institution is now under threat is true, and not being disputed by anybody here. But Joe Paterno and his bosses brought that about. It is against them that the students should be protesting.
@THE:
I think there is much truth in this.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: your argument was that the students were amoral.
So? your point is?
glad you can read DougJ’s mind.
but this is what he actually said.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
At this point, you’re just like Foreman against Ali in round 6: flailing helplessly, and not landing any punches.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
Oh, by the way, this is what DougJ himself says he meant:
by “rioting in favor of child rape complicity”, which is indeed what I said I understood him to mean.
THE
Scientific American is saying the same thing:
Penn State students rioted because they deify Joe Paterno.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: but they arent. if you asked them if they supported the coverup of childrape they would say no, of course not.
They are rioting because they are going to lose to Nebraska next week and keep on losing for a long long time.
the football program brought +50 million dollars (73 million gross) profit to PSU last year.
that is what they are rioting about.