My take on PSU and the Scandal

OK, I think I've got the jist of this. This is a dark topic, so,  no ray of sunlight here.

First, full disclosure: I'm an alumnus of Penn State.  I've been to close to 100 games, travelled all over the country.  I also spent the grand majority of four years at University Park doing many things completely unrelated to football- beyond sharing a university affiliation.  That said...

I'm not defending the university.  The university will and must suffer for the events that transpired.  I'm a hypocrite and a coward... but then so are you.

The first issue here is always- and always should be- the alleged victims.  No university charter in the U.S., and I'll project in the world, allows for the sexual assault of children by former employees, or for that matter current employees.  When something was known, it should have been treated with seriousness.  From the accounts that we have in the public domain, several public institutions including the university failed to take appropriate action.  This is bad enough, but then when confronted with information the lead representatives of the university went silent, fired some people, then went silent again, before they started begging.  In today's day and age, that's just suicidal.  They may have been private citizens, but they work for a public institution that receives a (small) portion of operating revenue from the state.  They failed to represent themselves to the taxpayers, and those taxpayers have a right to demand accountability.

But was the first priority the victims?  For all parties, the answer is no.  ALL parties.

The State's Attorney did not put the children first.  The State's Attorney had this grand jury testimony for 10 months and could have easily gone public then.  She could have made the grand jury a spectacle, and honestly there is no media outlet that wouldn't have seized on this story the moment it broke.  Instead, the facts remain that they waited until a pivotal football moment had passed and then, on a Saturday when the football team wasn't playing, they broke the story.  It is difficult to conjure a reason for that precise set of events beyond posturing, aligning the cameras just right so that they look serious about crime.  "Pay attention to me, I'm an attention whore that needs to shine for my next political office."  If it was so serious, why not slap the warrant on Sandusky the day the indictment was received?  No, we waited, because closure for the children comes second to a goddamn photo-op.

The media did not put the children first.  Arguably, the media are second only to Sandusky in being creepy and disgusting.  Saying that they failed to do their job is an understatement, because they willfully neglected to do their jobs and have potentially committed libel and slander en masse.  The media reported the basic news, added inappropriate and biased adjectives intended to enflame the readership, then proceeded- and continue to even today- take a sanctimonius high horse about how it's all about the football team, and not about the students.  Stuart Scott's now (in)famous for the "Don't you get it?" line for the post-Paterno firing riot.  Well, considering the media is in fact the media, they had every ounce of power to make the story about the victims.  They still do.  And they do not- they abdicate the position because they can't.  The victims have to remain anonymous by law.  Even still, the media could have run story after story about child abuse, brought prominent sociologists to explain the phenomenon of child abuse and why it's so hard to find.  The media didn't do that.  No, they willfully and purposefully focused on the alleged criminal and the system for which he was previously employed, then tut-tutted about the affiliation and made members of the university guilty by association, potentially committing libel and slander.  To Mr. Scott- yeah, I get it.  Completely.  You want to be Keith Olbermann, but you don't have the chops and you're old news.  Come back and tell me how you and your leaders in sports entertainment handle the Syracuse affair when that's all clear- haven't heard about that in a while.

The non-affiliated public did not put the victims first.  No, actually, many of them that were vocal parroted the spoon fed drivel of the media, then sat at home and barked about how big a badass they are on the internet and how they would have kicked Sandusky's ass, and about how "everyone knew."  Since you obese mouthbreathing morons know everything, you certainly know that the reason many high-profile sex offenders have so many victims is because they are masters at keeping their offenses secret.  Obviously you know that, because the number of people picked off the street for child molestation is really, really low.  On top of that, a very high proportion of child sex abuse victims are related to the abuser.  You just choose to ignore all these facts, and the fact that you may very well have had a sex abuse victim in your family, because you totally would do something about that.  No, you chose the path of least resistance to express your anger- and where did it go?  At the alleged criminal!  Where were your donations to child abuse charities?  What did you do to help the victims?  Speak on their behalf?  Please!  If you actually got off your ass and went to the university to protest, you didn't even protest for the kids- you protested against the coach, the assistant, the football team, and the university.  I was there, I read the signs.  But the real icing to this was "how everyone knew."  If this were politics you'd be fitted with a tinfoil hat and given a free corkboard to tack all the articles to outline your conspiracy.  And if everyone did know?  They need to go down, which I've not disagreed with from the beginning.  But spare me the armchair social conscious drivel.  Your faux chest pounding likely supports a culture that allows child sex abuse to flourish.

The affiliated public did not put the victims first.  No, it's very clear that the affiliated public can't seem to let go.  It's all about Joe.  They had to be shocked into giving to the charities- after the firings, the riot, and the news- and even then (and to this day) it's about how it was wrong to fire Joe.  Even if I agree that it was wrong it won't bring him back, nor will it change the fact that there were children vicitmized and that there's a giant festering maw of filth where your university leadership claims to be because the leadership chose to protect themselves.  The default position was to rally around the team and the Great Experiment, and treat the victims as if it were another THON this year.  At least the affiliated public stepped up, tried to make things right- but the victim's weren't first and still aren't.

Joe didn't put the victims first.  His mind was always about the university and the team.  I have to wonder why no one has taken the plausable angle that Joe didn't take action because the charge, the statements were so incredible that they defied belief.  What would you do if a high school student said to you "I don't know, but I think I just saw your best friend molesting a neighbor's kid.  Just saying..." That's pretty much how the grand jury testimony read.  Don't kid yourself that you would have stood up and gorilla raged and beaten the crap out of Sandusky, or called the police, or anything like that.  You would have had the same shock and disbelief he did, and then you would have defaulted to your most programmed behavior.  But to ask an 80+ year old man to drop everything and rage against a lifelong friend on behalf of kids he may only have met in passing?  Kiss my ass.  You wouldn't do it now, why would he?

The team didn't put the victims first.  But of all the people here, they had the hardest choice of all.  Do they stand up for a moral justice and quit a team, lose a scholarship, and leave the program and ultimately the university because someone that they may have met once or twice molested children before they arrived at the university?  Or do they stay, endure the endless stream of media feces, finish the job they committed to like goddamn men, and then assess their options?  I know for damn sure none of the spineless cowards that talk trash, whether in the media or regurgitating the media, would have taken the principled stand.  Talk about the kids?  After the way the media treated the students and the university, do you blame them for keeping their mouths shut?  I will not venerate the team, but I will respect them. 

The university most definitely didn't put the children first, or second, or third.  No, what became evident after bowing to public opinion was that they used the opportunity to bolster their own careers.  One Board of Trustee member was made Athletic Director, another acting University President.  They took action without consulting the faculty senate, and may have broken equal opportunity and labor laws by placing themselves in positions of power.  Then they threw anyone affiliated with the scandal under the bus.  Politically, it was the right thing to do- but none of the people involved save two were accused of crimes.  The university then comes out with the Board's puppet and goes to tell alumni that "it's ok, we're serious about helping kids, we're gonna do all this stuff with the university for kids."  Reality check?  No one believes you, and your credibility is shot until your role is this scandal is investigated and vetted in the public circle.  Might have believed this was about the kids... if you hadn't laywered up and gone silent before acting like a corporation.

And the Judicial System didn't put the children first.  They didn't because they can't.  They received enough evidence to  convince a grand jury to go to trial.  But in our hyperventilating, we seem to have forgotten some key elements about law and court.  For instance, the evidence in a grand jury trial is not challenged by defense.  It may be incomplete, out of context, or outright wrong... or worse, it may have been obtained illegally or denied a citizen his constitutional rights.  But the grand jury wouldn't ever know that.  The grand jury hearing is conducted by at State's Attorney in order to get maximum bang for the buck- so it's scripted to sound as bad as possible.  But somewhere in this system, an accused person still has the right to due process.  They still have the right to a trial by a jury of their peers, and they still have the right to challenge the evidence.  And I still believe in that heavily flawed system, and it would not be outside of the realm of possibility that the police or the AG made a basic blunder so big that Sandusky would walk.   "If the glove don't fit..."

It is so easy to watch the gullible in our society be pulled around by the nose, told by the media with the barking dog AG that "he is bad" and how anyone that was remotely affiliated with them "doesn't get it," and there's a great nodding of heads around the country.  You really, really want to help the victims?  Destigmatize sex.  Seriously, foster open discussions about sex, make it so that you understand that sex is not just for the young and beautiful.  All humans have the potential for a sex drive, and if that is abused, insulted, and repressed, it can manifest in ways that are damaging to society.  Allow kids to hear open, honest discussions about why people want to have sex- not to be pornographic, but to understand that it's one aspect of humanity.  Stop writing laws that parse sexuality into age groups and approach statutory rape with common sense.  Accept the fact that sexuality turns on biologically at puberty, not at 18 like a light switch.  Most importantly, shine a giant light into every corner of the world where a sexual predator of children would prey.

Make sure the victims are taken care of, then rip out the culture of secrecy at the university.  You don't need to kill the football team to do it, either.  Just start with those responsible... those at the top.  But spare me the 'holier than thou' routine, because you're likely a hypocrite and a coward... just like the rest of us.

Hello everyone,

I will be here on my own for a while.  My fellow blogger is up to his ridiculously happy-exhausted eyeballs in fatherhood and kind of has very little spare time these days.   He is movin' on up in the world and has a sooooper cute kid.  Since I'm his aunt, I know this for sure and can say it without prejudice or bias.

His life has take a turn for the better; mine for the worse.  I have kind of lost my job because of a physical impediment and a corporate loophole.  I will be having a very tricky surgery in less than a month and have to worry about getting another job ASAP. 

I wanted to take the Praxis and apply for grad school by November 1, but it's looking like March 1.  This will change my career completely.  I want to become a teacher.  In school, the thought of it frightened me like nothing else.  I have since tutored and taught and thought that now, in this world where teachers are becoming a dwindling resource, maybe it's something I should look into.  I am looking into English as a Second Language, which in VA is the #4 needed teacher on the list.  It is also a subject that people take because they want to, they need to, which avoids the whole "what's the point" argument.

The downside to all of this is that it will take about 2 years to complete a master's degree, which I will need.  Everything takes so much time.  I'm not a fan of losing my own time.  Apparently, it's the only way there is.

Rebellion Is For Everyone

I read a series of books about what it would be like if Revelations actually happened as written.  If you cut out all the preachy crap, it was a pretty vivid description of the end times.  It'd make a good 85 minute flick.

After reading the previous post, I'll add my take on the subject.  See, rebellion is something that I and my sister have been around alot by the choices we've made.  You can't be involved in the arts and NOT see this stuff.  Like I said, I have geeky friends who grow up and like stuff like tattoos and odd piercings and shaved/dyed hair.  Whatever.  It was for them.

It's not me.  For a number of key reasons, it is not now nor never will be me.  But that's me and only me.  If you want it, go nuts.  It's your money.

I chose to rebel in plain sight.  I like dressing to fit in, blend in. What's going on in my head is far more rebellious an existence than any outward showing.  I sometimes speak my unfiltered mind, take people to places I've only imagined.  That place is the razor's edge of creativity and insanity.

The view's okay, but the drinks suck.

Maybe it's because I did something that many people didn't approve of at such an early age, or maybe it's because it's more mainstream.  Maybe no one really cares.  But I'm so used to the doing something that disappoints feeling that I now own the action- I embrace it.  No one ever 'approved' of anything I did except school and work.  It's not that they didn't -actually- approve, they just never communicated that sentiment.  I know I didn't invest myself in hobbies and activities where the end result was someone else's approval.  When in music, I was just happy if I made it through the pieces and I hadn't screwed up.

Only my parents ever said "wow, nice report card."  College drove that home- I was only a number, found on a dot matrix printed sheet after every test.  No one swooped in to help, no one at school or anywhere other than family cared if I passed or failed.  No one other than family cared if I got my Ph.D, or was unemployed, or had to work 70 hours a week...

Youth may be about rebellion, but it is inelegant.  Crude.  Arguing for the sake of argument, and not for a real intelligent reason.  The reasons for rebellion are rarely considered, but that's the point.  The reason people didn't get tattoos are numerous, but do those still apply?  We expect the 20, 30 year old to sky dive.  We shun the 40 and 50 year old, because they're supposed to be serious and have families.  We celebrate the 60, 70 year old- "oh, they're so "alive!"  But what's the difference?  You can take rebellious actions at any age.

Ever notice that we're only really truly concerned when people rebel for others, as opposed to for themselves?

But whatever.  Point is that rebellion is very much a normal part of life.  I would offer that you start to die- really die- when you have stopped rebelling in any capacity.  And if you never rebelled, I would offer that you never truly lived.

But please don't call it body art.  That's so inane and vapid a description that you should swallow a bullet.  Most people that get such are incapable of their own creativity or expression and they pay to advertise someone else's.  I know my sister has more creative power in her pinky than just about anyone- but the sullen goth, emo, metalhead, cam/scenewhore, fanboi/grrl, or other trendy wastes of DNA just don't, and they realize their entire existence will be summed up by some bored dude in a rural tattoo parlor.  Sad.

Rebellion Is For Grownups

Today was revelation day. That's revelation with the lowercase 'r' because otherwise we'd be dealing with biblical-type stuff - if you believe that.

I've done some very odd things in the last year and some. I wouldn't assign these actions to the mid-life crisis category although I can see they fit in that category as well. Shortly after my 40th birthday, I got a tattoo - during my first trip to Vegas. (that's 2 - tattoo and Vegas).

Yesterday, after giving it years of thought under the "Oh my god, I would NEVER do that category", I merely got up during lunch and drove myself to the tattoo and piercing parlor and had my left nostril pierced with a tiny stud and my navel pierced with a not-so-tiny stud. I really haven't told anyone. I guess the cat's out of the bag now. (that's 2 more.)

Non sequitur - neither one hurt more than having blood drawn. To me. I realize now that I am extremely pain tolerant. I will address that another day.

I spent the majority of my life looking at the people who did those things as reckless, dangerous, scary, rebellious...all of the things I had heard from my parents and authority figures all my life. The society I grew up in preached things like that were scandalous. Nice girls didn't do any of those things. And so, that was my perception as well. Deep down inside I found the forbidden intriguing but I pushed it quickly out of my head, knowing that I would be judged by people. Judged negatively. My parents would be horrified, disapproving. I was worried what people who didn't even know me would think of me. Deeply worried.

I know that my parents (my mother) will probably roll their eyes over the piercings and STILL I get nervous.

I grew up living in fear of disappointing my parents; disappointing authority figures, disappointing everyone really. It's one of my biggest faults. Cliche but true; if you spend all your time trying to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. And you certainly end up not pleasing yourself.

Tattoos and piercings are more common now thanks to celebrities and athletes who have numbed the shock value by making them mainstream. I think professional athletes are practically required to have multiples of each. Also, a generation of young, more brazen and cavalier people have made it commonplace. Off the top of my head I can't think of anyone I know in their 20's and teens who doesn't have one or the other.

Youth is all about rebellion. The most rebellious I was as a teen and in my 20's was arguing with my parents. I never even considered what I thought about anything. I accepted my parents' point of view as gospel and went on my merry way. I stayed that way until my early 30's.

Yeah, I get it, I'm a real late bloomer. But I have a tattoo and am considering another. I have multiple piercings in my ears - de rigueur for girls who were in their teens during the '80's. And now the tiny stud in my left nostril and the somewhat larger cubic zirconia stud in my navel join them. Maybe someday I'll regret it. Right now, I love it.

The lifelong church lady voices in the back of my head still cluck their tongues and try to make me feel guilty. But I wanted it and I did it.

Tattoos and piercings are not a big deal anymore to anyone. That isn't the point. It doesn't make me cool or edgy, because everyone does it. Yeah, strippers have tattoos and piercings; but I also know lawyers and doctors that do, too.

As painful as it is to admit, by the time someone my age gets around to doing something daring, it stopped being daring years before.

The triumph to me was that it was my decision and if you don't like it; I don't care.

Only took me 41 years to say that and really mean it.

How do you do, indeed?

I'm the younger sibling.  Because she set the time frame based on me, I'll say I'm a certain age.  I had a different midwest experience, leaving when I was 12... from being picked on as a nerd in a rural elementary school to being picked on as a nerd in a "big city suburb."  It's nice to know some values truly are American.  But I came out okay, mocking derision aside.


I attended the same college as my older sister, starting the semester after she graduated, and "doing my thing."  Like many 20-something guys, I was a huge sports fan.  Always loved hockey- started watching it when ESPN made it to our rural midwestern hovel at the tender age of 8- and grew to like or tolerate the rest.  My zeal for sports has calmed a bit, though.

I am an Alpha Nerd.  I have a Master's in Chemistry, I can still fill 90% of the periodic table by memory.  I am a gamer.  Not just video games, but the tawdry, freeform variety that involve sweaty, obese men with neckbeards that can quote rules and probabilities of events in an amateur attempt to be Rain Man.  You might say "You mean like Dungeons and Dragons?"  I would respond... "roll for initiative.  it's on." 

This is not to say I am completely socially inept.  Just enough to struggle with events and issues that the average human being takes for granted.  Mostly because I dislike anything that's popular.


I've had a bit of an arrested development- got married at 32, had my first child four years later.  Ended up making a career out of the desperation of simply finding a job for awhile.  For 8 years I still don't understand how I made money doing what I did.  Now I don't understand how others do.

I am pretty relaxed as far as personal politics go- as long as you don't tell me what to think, I won't tell you where to go- and that's served for some time.  Occasionally people will try to get me to change my thinking.  This is when they realize I can be... difficult.   I really, honestly don't care about "what side of the aisle you're on."  Unlike many of the mouth-breathing, adderal-addicted, generic simpletons that graduate college but can't find China on a map or a chinese restaurant on the internet I can actually argue both sides of a political issue.  I do this to induce apoplexy in the weak-minded.

I also like jello.

And much like my sibling I am also a faceless, nameless drone in the buzz of our nation's capitol.  I truly revel in this, though.  I feel no need to stand out.  The less people know the better.  Becoming a father has made me truly understand my general worth, or more appropriately worthlessness.  I don't exist to be a person, I exist for my wife and son.  My joy is irrelevant anymore.

I am here because my sister- the woman who shares my parents, 13 years of my life, and many other things- asked me to and to show that despite having the same DNA donors you can have two human beings as dissimilar as we are... or at least, dissimilar is how we are able to sleep at night.  It's when we'll start to accept the similarities that will come out of this interwebz dokument that revelations will be made, gasping will be heard, a giant crack will occur in a glacier, and as the tower of jade topples in front of us we will run through a grassy field and realize the meaninglessness of existance.

sNOw! and a taste of reality

I spent 7.5 hours last night in a commute that typically takes 30 minutes. All that time in a car gives you lots of time to think. Mostly, I was thinking that any car that wasn't a truck or an SUV had NOOOOOO business being out on the road. They were spinning out, couldn't make it up the smallest of hills.

But the underlying thoughts running through my mind were, what if this were really an emergency? It was mass chaos, gridlocked and unpredictable. This was just a heavy snow fall. There was no way out of where I was. I didn't panic, but this area is completely ill-equipped to handle real emergency situations. Makes you think a lot of how you can get out of a bad situation. You need a plan. A survival plan.

I realized that I would never be without an SUV again, at least as long as I live here. That's a sad thought to me because I always wanted a convertible. :( That vehicle was the only reason I got home. I was able to drive through a blizzard only because of it.

Cars were abandoned everywhere. I can't even imagine abandoning my car. I was crazy, depressed and frightened...and it was only a snowstorm.

How do you do?

I'm the older sibling by 5 years, female. I suffered through Catholic school and I moved from the Midwest -where I lived from the ages of 5 - 17, to the hustle-and-bustle of the East Coast. It was a bit of shock, but I think it was just fine in the end. I don't have any wistfulness for the high school days. College is a totally different story.

I watch and follow college football and now, the NHL. My brother is a HUGE hockey fan, and we share a love of at least one team.

What we don't have in common: physical health. I'm a year in to finding out just exactly what degenerative disc disease actually means. Today it meant a cervical pain block epidural. Feels like a bee sting my ass.

I'm also a singer, been singing since I was 11 years old. All types of music: pop, jazz, classical.

Now my new thing is learning social media. I'm learning that it is youth driven (duh). All sorts of abbreviations, the most recent I learned was "SMH". Had no idea what it meant and it's used like an article on Twitter. Means "Shaking My Head". It's a nice, sensible abbreviation - particularly because there is no emoticon for rolling eyes. That would be my 'go-to' response, as I'm sarcastic and a bit of a cynic, but not in an unapproachable way. I do not like what texting is doing to the English language - especially spelling.

I am my father's daughter: in appearance, in humor - even our handwriting is similar. I have a dark sense of humor and will often chuckle at the borderline unacceptable. Sometimes I'll laugh out loud about it.

I'm kind of over organized religion. This is not something I broadcast, but nowadays, I find it pretty unappealing. For me, the thought of politics and religion merging scares me. I am not a fan of freedoms lost. Read what you want, say what you want and don't worry about others. I find that most people who have a problem with some political point and complain vociferously really are just looking for validation.

I don't really have any hobbies to speak of. I'm getting into yoga and really liking it. I don't like art with people in it. No faces.

Lest I lead you astray, I'm not as serious as all that. I'm a girly girl. I love clothes, shoes, makeup, perfume, jewelry, handbags. The human body as art. I love gadgets - my iPhone, iPad, iPod - love.

I do NOT like jello.

And I'm in love love love with my dogs. I have three and the total weight of all three is approximately 230 pounds. I own multiple tape rollers to remove the huge white hairs off my clothes.

But mostly, I'm a faceless, nameless drone in the federal contracting arena (private), which in the DC area is a large component of what keeps a lot of people employed. I've gone through many, many jobs that have turned into disaster and have found one that I might like, but I'm kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. I'm working very hard on keeping a positive attitude about that, but my formative experience keeps me wary.

This blog is for my Dad, who encouraged me to write because I have something to say. I don't know what that is yet, but hopefully you'll take the trip with me.