Saturday, June 23, 2012

End of the Story?

Article.

19 comments:

  1. If it is the end of the story, then a Happy Valley PR team was successful in identifying a scapegoat, and a society was successful in deluding itself.

    Tip of the iceberg.

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  2. I did my undergrad at Penn State. It was a terrific place, but big time athletics (players and coaches) get such a free pass on so many things, the possibility of abuse is always there.

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  3. It's not over until he gets offed in jail. It's too bad Paterno didn't live a little longer. It would have been nice for him to be trapped in his house surrounded by reporters for a few more mile-stone moments in the case. And THEN kealed over and croaked. Can you keal and croak? Chemists are notoriously bad with mixed metaphors.

    They should make him a bus monitor.

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  4. Look at his fucking face. Remember when Marge caught Homer with the gun and he said "Marge, you gotta believe me: I never thought you'd find out."? He doesn't care about what he did; he just can't believe he was caught.

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  5. When I was a child in the early 1960’s, I would never have believed that cigarette smoking would one day fall out of favor.

    Is it possible that the safety issues surrounding football will one day make it fall out of favor, too? Will the day ever come when football coaches aren’t worshipped?

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    2. The Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War ended without a nuclear exchange, so one might hope so.

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  6. It's a cycle: The abused tend to become abusers.

    Working on breaking the cycle by openly talking about the issue and counseling kids who are abused is clearly a start.

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  7. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy. This guy built an entire charity empire around finding young black boys he could groom for rape.

    Burn in hell, motherfucker.

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  8. Hardly the end of of the story. There are apparently two generations of victims who will need cubic shitloads of therapy to every approach normalcy (desired) or at least break the cycle (required).

    Pennsylvania taxpayers will be paying many many millions more in lawyer fees and civil suits, and that money will have to come from other places it might other be spend (whether the uni system, public schools or their nightmarish roads...take your pick)

    As for Sandusky...
    When I was young I strongly believed in capital punishment. As an older person, this is no longer true. Take that prick out of a protective arrangement in the big house, send him to shower with the general population, and let Darwin and Big House justice take care of the rest. Then he can testify in his own defense at the Pearly Gates, and see what special place in hell awaits.

    As a parent, I delivered very few straight up "life lessons" to my kid (Jerry wouldn't have liked her...wrong sex). The things that I told her she should never forget:
    (1) As she became aware of things like murder, rape, child abuse and other delights of the human condition, I told her that the real monsters in the world --sadly-- look just like other humans. So pay attention...
    (2) As she developed an interest in boys: Always remember that no matter how good a friend he pretends to be, and no matter how nice...that for the most part, you can count on most of them being interested in one thing and one thing only before all other things (her father being one of the few exceptions, of course).
    (3) Trust your judgement. If something seems not right to you...it probably isn't (and don't cloud it with chemicals!)

    I wonder what the over/under is on this bastard seeing his 70th birthday...

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    1. The taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for the lawsuits that are going to follow Sandusky's conviction; that money should come directly from Penn State's athletic budget - particularly the football budget. If Penn State doesn't have a football team for a few years because of that . . . oh, well.

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    2. I agree 100%, A.G. Football is not the root of all evil, but at the D-1 level it runs a close second to basketball.

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  9. Um, yeah, well, MA, dads are not exactly exempt from the possibility of untoward contact. I'm not sure that casting all young men as single-mindedly interested in taking advantage of your daughter is a fair way to introduce her to her own sexuality, either. And I say that as a lesbian and a feminist. #1 and #3 seem more on target to me.

    As for Sandusky, good riddance, but that hardly makes it over and done with for the victims.

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    1. Froad, you've obviously never been a teenaged boy. We may be interested in other things, but our intentions are seldom honorable at that age. Raging hormones and all that.

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    2. Excuse me, but when I was a teenage boy, raging hormones and all, I never did anything criminally depraved of the kind that Jerry Sandusky did. My parents did a fine job of teaching me empathy for other people, and that I was responsible for my actions.

      Because of this, they never had to tell me not to do anything they would deem "unspeakable." But then, that's part of the problem: what sickens me most about this case was how many people at Penn State looked away, thereby letting him get away with it, for so long.

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    3. Frod & Froad: Look, MA's point was not that boys are monsters. Most of 'em aren't; the problem (point 1) is that the monsters look like everyone else. But...

      Point 2 was that even the non-monster boys are highly interested in getting a girl's pants off, and willing to apply pressure to do so. They might be too well-trained for the pressure to be brute force, but they are willing to apply pressure.

      I didn't say teenage boys are criminally depraved. Just hormone-driven.

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  11. @ F & T:
    Regarding (2) above:
    -Not single-minded interest...just primary interest. There's a difference, but most men are happy to pass through the friend zone quickly if given the opportunity.

    As for the rest of that, I could have said it better. It was meant to be a tounge in cheek comment that indicated her own father was only interested in respectful and substantive relationships.

    In no way was it meant to diminish the sad reality that close male relatives, including fathers, are often the perpetrators in abuse cases, something I entirely understand.

    The whole PSU/Sandusky thing is grossly tragic on so many levels.

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