The Brutal Truth About Penn State by Charles P. Pierce

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7233704/the-brutal-truth-penn-state

It was midway through the pregame prayer session that the gorge hit high tide. There is always something a little nauseating in large spectacles of conspicuous public piety, but watching everyone on the field take a knee before the Penn State-Nebraska game, and listening to the commentary about how devoutly everybody was praying for the victims at Penn State, was enough to get me reaching for a bucket and a Bible all at once.

The crimes at Penn State are about the raping of children. That is all they are about. The crimes at Penn State are about the raping of children by Jerry Sandusky, and the possibility that people lied to a grand jury about the raping of children by Jerry Sandusky, and the likelihood that most of the people who had the authority at Penn State to stop the raping of children by Jerry Sandusky proved themselves to have the moral backbone of ribbon worms.

There will now be a decade or more of criminal trials, and perhaps a quarter-century or more of civil actions, as a result of what went on at Penn State. These things cannot be prayed away. Let us hear nothing about "closure" or about "moving on." And God help us, let us not hear a single mumbling word about how football can help the university "heal." (Lord, let the Alamo Bowl be an instrument of your peace.)

If that blights Joe Paterno's declining years, that's too bad. If that takes a chunk out of the endowment, hold a damn bake sale. If that means that Penn State spends some time being known as the university where a child got raped, that's what happens when you're a university where a child got raped. Any sympathy for this institution went down the drain in the shower room in the Lasch Building. There's nothing that can happen to the university, or to the people sunk up to their eyeballs in this incredible moral quagmire, that's worse than what happened to the children who got raped at Penn State. Good Lord, people, get up off your knees and get over yourselves.

We're constantly told here on DU how radical atheists all disrespect religion.

In a crowd that big there has to be a few atheists, I don't *see* any mooning the religious ceremony but they have to be there.

hundreds, if not a couple of thousand, atheists in that crowd.

Can't possibly be true. ;)

most atheists respect peoples' religion, however the reverse is often not the case

that their football program not be axed.

n/t

Speaking as a Penn State alum.

Penn State is anything but an evangelical Christian school, and public prayer really isn't the norm. But based on the feedback from my friends who were in the stadium on Saturday, it hit exactly the right note. The people in the stands didn't know anything was going on with Sandusky, and felt horrified and betrayed.

At a time like this, a prayer like the one Coach Brown offered, which comforted and promoted hope, was most welcome.

Hope you and your tender gorge turned the channel quickly if it upset you that badly.

theatrics forbidden by Jesus, who said specifically that only hypocrites pray in public. I think he was correct.

It worked for me and other alums who were watching, and it worked for the people at the game. That was who it was meant for - not you or anyone else, and I could not possibly care any less what you or anyone else thought about it at that moment.

And the only reason I replied to this thread was so that the chorus of outside condemnation wouldn't go 100% unanswered.

In what way?

BTW, the entire article is well worth reading. The excerpt posted here doesn't do it justice.

Like most of those in the stands, I felt sick for what had happened to the victims, and also sympathized with the young men on the football team and the kids who attend the school (some of whom are the children of my friends) who were all being painted by the actions of the pervert and the those covering up his acts.

The rapes needed to be spoken about and acknowledged by everyone there. They could not be ignored. The public prayer was a way to for those who were not among the 10,000 at the candlelight vigil the previous night to acknowledge what had happened. And, as I previously mentioned, I give not a single fuck what anyone else in the country thought about them. I'm sure there are many on DU and in the rest of the country who would have preferred that the players and everyone in the stands commit hari-kari, but I'm not sure even that would satisfy the rest of the country's lust for some sort of vengeance.

And no, it's been a long, emotional week; so I have no interest in another article about the issue. All I want to see is justice done to the perpetrator and his enablers, an investigation into why the cover-up happened, and a change in the culture of omerata in the sports hierarchy and administration.

I'm also hoping the good young people up there learn something from this and don't let it get them too discouraged - they have a Dance Marathon to run and some fund raising records to break this Spring.

and administration,...........

I'll tell you how to change it........and you won't like it..

Get rid of big time football.......no big time team
..................................................
The University of Chicago did it ....I think it was the l930s..it can be done, but TV and sports industry won't like it.
and ................it ain't going to happen...it will stay the same...

which you refuse to read is that it's way too early for people to have any sort of "cathartic" experience around what happened at Penn State, unless you're one of the survivors who was himself abused. That any attempts at this point to make people -- other than the survivors themselves -- more comfortable with what has happened are way too early, and are, if nothing else, in terrifically poor taste.

Has it ever occurred to you that a little discomfort in such a context might be good for the soul? And that whatever you and others might be feeling after your "emotional" week, it amounts to a fart in a hurricane compared to what those children --many of them now presumably adults and following this story, minute by minute--are probably feeling after their "emotional week?" And that, rather than help make the case that everyone at Penn State shouldn't be tarred by this scandal (a rather obvious proposition, if you ask me), that your posts about how horrible this crisis has been for you and your alma mater convey the opposite message--that is, that you are indeed self-absorbed and filled with self-pity, and concerned more with how this affects you, the Dance Marathon, and Penn State fundraising than you are about the survivors? But then, you've already said you "don't give a fuck" about how anyone else views what is happening. Which is precisely the sort of attitude that has some people, from the outside, looking at the Penn State community at large and saying: WTF?

And I wonder-did anyone at Penn State--has anyone at Penn State--reached out to any of the survivors to ask what THEY might need by way of "catharsis?" Or are we witnessing a repeat of the original disregard for the survivors and their families? I honestly don't know. I would hope such an effort has and is being made, and perhaps you can steer me to a story about some such. The candlelight vigil struck me as just the right note. A public prayer at a football game, not so much.

"All I want to see is justice done to the perpetrator and his enablers, an investigation into why the cover-up happened, and a change in the culture of omerata in the sports hierarchy and administration."

Spot on.

And so I have a suggestion for you, something I've been repeating to people I encounter who have a direct relationship to the school. And that is, rather than focussing your energy defending the school to outsiders (for whose opinion you "don't give a fuck" about anyway), you might think about how you personally can be engaged in making all the things you want to see happen actually happen. You have an opportunity here, as someone so invested in the college, to do some things to benefit survivors, past and future, and the community as a whole. For one thing, if this were MY community, I sure as hell wouldn't leave it up to "the authorities" to get it right on their own. I'd do what I could by way of organizing and reaching out to be certain the investigation and the administration response doesn't subside (as these often do) into filling a need for "closure" once the media spotlight has moved on. I'd also be concerned about the students who rioted last week in reaction to the news that their exalted hero had been fired. Who are these kids anyway? What were they thinking? What are they thinking now? Is anyone trying to reach out to them, perhaps educate them as to why their actions were so bizarrely inappropriate, and be educated by them as to how a community might end up fostering such a violent knee-jerk reaction in the context of such a terrible story? I'm quite serious about this. You have an opportunity to educate others, and be educated yourself. And for all I know, you've already started such an effort. In any case, my first step would be to contact the local rape crisis center, to ask if there are any such efforts underway, and if not, how you might go about organizing something yourself. You are obviously emotionally invested in this community, and want to see it restored to something approaching a genuine, caring, nurturing environment. Just from the look of your posts, Penn State has got to mean something to you beyond football games and dance marathons and such.

In my heart of hearts I feel awkward begrudging you your "catharsis"--but this can't be where it ends for you and for everyone else at that stadium. And if all that we -- those of us inside and those of us outside the Penn State community -- take away from this horror is that a few bad apples have to be punished, then I don't see how we won't be reading the same awful headlines ten, twenty, thirty years from now. You obviously feel the same way. And so I'm quite sincere in what I'm saying, trying to be as measured and reasoned in my response to you as I can. I'm hoping you'll indulge me with the same effort, if not here (I don't expect anyone to devote themselves to answering me post for post) then in your thoughts.

In any case, best wishes to you and yours.

About how we're losing our souls as a people in our devotion to a brand.

How much is ok to sacrifice to these too big to fail, too big to exist monsters?

sort of like, "OK, we are going to go on the record with our concern for the victims, and now that's done, and we never have to think about it again". If it helped some people get through the ordeal, I guess that's OK, but if anyone thinks it will mitigate a horrific felony and cover-up, they're probably in denial