"SAD SONG" elton john
As I sat in restaurant tonight, the television news was all about the Penn State scandal.
A woman at a nearby table spoke aloud "How long must we hear about this Penn State thing?"
Well first off, it is not a Penn State University thing.
Nor is it a Penn State football thing.
Not a legendary coach thing.
Certainly not a “how will this affect Senior Day and the game against Nebraska” thing.
This thing is about at least six young boys who were brutally abused by a person they trusted. This thing is also about the complete failure of the adults with knowledge about it and how they dropped the ball on their responsibility to those boys.
I could care less about the University, the football team, the most revered coaches in college football or even whether they play a game Saturday or not. The focus should be on the well-being of those victims.
This is what happens when a public or private institution thinks more of their program and/or reputation than doing the most basic right thing. Seems everyone involved thought it was more important to pass the proverbial buck than to confront the perpetrator and report this hideous crime to the proper authorities.
Someone commented to me the only thing worse than the crime was the attempted cover up.
I could not agree more. If you are talking Enron, Lehman Bros. Watergate, and now this... what in God’s name were they thinking?
Student riots? Well maybe in a decade or so those same students will have 10 year olds and then actually understand. Then we will see a justified riot.
Penn State will "heal" and the football program will survive. A famous coach will still have his record along with a footnote of why he was fired November 9, 2011.
We must ask will the young men now in their twenty's be able to live normal lives? None of us can possibly know how deep the scars they bear are.
How screwed up can priorities be when a collective blind eye was turned for years? How can those students actually riot because their Saturday game has been disrupted? How selfish can this society get?
This Saturday there will be no College football for me. This tragedy has brought home just what is important in life and what is used just to fill idle hours.
posted by terminator1 @ 3:09 PM
25 Comments
25 Comments:
Hanlon and Martin should learn a lesson from Paterno on what happens when you cover horrible things up for the good of a statistic or reputation.
Silence of the lambss...
Silence of the lions
Stange what 72 million dollars a year can do? That's what's important to Penn State [State Penn] as well as trying to break a coaching record by someone who should have retired years ago.
This scandal makes the OSU tatogate almost childish. [Another cover-up]
This is just a story that grew because the media wanted it to.
JOEPA and the rest of Penn State did nothing wrong.
Tragically the Penn State brand has sunk to a never seen low level. It was become the place where pedophilia seems to be ignored and enabled. The Coach as well as the admininistration are as guilty as Sandusky. Paterno could have and should have ended it at the very beginning.
You had young boys being molested and raped by a grown man. There was a man who SAW IT HAPPENING to one young boy, and DID NOT STOP IT RIGHT THEN AND THERE. He didn't do a thing to save that child at that moment. He let that horror scene continue for that kid. In the end, at least four grown men knew what was going on, and allowed it to continue. There is just no way that that can be justified in any way. I believe God will judge us not only on what we do, but also on what we do not do. These children had adults around them that should have helped them, and nobody did. This is a tragedy of such huge proportions, that there really aren't enough words to describe the shock and horror of this situation. My heart bleeds for the child that could have been saved at the moment and was not, and for the children after him that could have been saved from the whole thing. The Catholic church has nothing on these guys. They are all sick pigs, and to see Joe Paterno revered as he is being is sickening. He knew nothing changed once he told. It was up to him and the guy that saw it in the first place to save those children as those kids' first line of defense (no pun intended) once they saw that the people in charge were not doing anything. Yet they all four continued on in their lives--walking around as if they were men of honor and good character. I wonder how revered those children and their parents think these men out to be.
Interesting you didn't include Clinton's hiding a sexual encounter in the White House in your comparison to the sex crime at Penn State. "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" Would have been similar since it included sex, lying and a coverup.
Just saying. Double standard?
We could go on and on casting blame, but to what point. Penn State was a coverup of a terrible sexual crime. Why try to bring politics into this? We all know you can't miss a chance to say something negative against the Republican Party. What exactly do your examples have to do with committing a sex crime and covering it up?
Are you that upset at the election results?
4:45 You know I wasn't even thinking about politics at the time I posted.
But since you bring up a double standard let me refresh you on that scandal.. Was Clinton guilty? Absolutely. Was it the right thing to impeach him for this? Now it gets a little fuzzy. The Speaker of the House at the time was Newt Gingrich who at the same time was doing exatly the same thing?
Now he's one of the front runners to be the GOP's nominee.
How you as the "morality" party even consider this man is beyond me.
I wonder if it was morality or politics that drove that impeachment?
Keep watching GOP NEWS I mean FOXNEWS and you will be even more uninformed.
There new show at 5:00pm is a hoot. "The Five"
Four Republicans against one Democrat great odds.
Negative against the Republican Party? Heck I might need two blogs. by next year.
Newt did the same thing?!!! There's no comparison. Clinton did his "act" in the Oval Office. And then he lied to the American people. No comparison.
4:58: What in the world does Clinton having CONSENTUAL sex with another adult have in common with young boys being raped?
And, yes, he was impeached in the end for lying about consentual sex with another adult, which was none of our business, yet Bush got us into the Iraq war based on a lie, and he gets away with that to this day. The Democrats had the opportunity to go into impeachment proceedures against Bush, but decided to take the high road (much to my dismay), and didn't do it.
No comparison in either situation.
Again
"We could go on and on casting blame, but to what point. Penn State was a coverup of a terrible sexual crime. Why try to bring politics into this?
Is that the purpose of this blog?
Seems everyone is wrong but you. Think about it.
I agree with 11/11/11 on the covering up of horrible things at Harvey. How much longer will we the community continue to allow such situations as the gun and pot situation. What were they thinking! And then not to tell the community with kids sit there with cell phones. BAD! BAD! BAD!
I thought you were talking about the catholic churches my bad
7:29 The Catholic Church is the best example what happens when good people let evil to happen.
I'm sorry I didn't want to bring politics into it I mentioned coverups and walla! Someone mentioned I had and I should have just left it at that. I apoligize this situation at Penn State is bigger then party politics.
Term, i am catholic and i dont appreciate your comment.
9:39 Well that makes two of us. I only mentioned that when good people do nothing evil can flourish.
If you have church leaders who's solutions to a problem is just to move the problem to another parish that that has no suspicions whats coming there way. Shame on them.
I cannot understand why you don't appreciate my comment.
9:39: I'm a Catholic, too. So what does THAT mean? That the Catholic church DIDN'T abuse and allow abuse of innocent children? Or that because it's the CHURCH that did it, we shouldn't/can't talk about it? That people SHOULDN'T be talking about it so we can make sure it has stopped, people get justice (for whatever THAT is worth), and so it won't happen again? Get your head out of the sand and make sure they are doing the RIGHT thing now, and make sure YOU are not protecting these horrors of the church. The church wasn't so holy that they did not do this -- for decades -- and we cannot be so holy that we are silent. Atrocities happened, but shhhhhhhh -- it's a church!
TERM, I would have expected you to defend the Catholic Church no matter what they did.
9:39: Anyone who wants to save the Catholic Church better demand that everything be exposed as it concerns these abuse atrocities, and make sure that proceedures are put in place so that not one more child will ever be hurt there again. And it better be talked about as much as, and for as long as it takes to make sure of that. Do you think God would want this covered up, or hushed up, or thoroughly stopped? If I had to guess it, I would think the latter. Those men all did what they did. I would have to think that there were thousands of accomplices, including those who knew and did nothing to stop it, whether for one child or many. Parents must learn that they cannot automatically trust anyone with their kids, whether it's a priest, coach, neighbor, relative or stranger.
I think I understand 9:39's comment. In the past you have seemed to protect the church from attacks, so it seems out of character for you to malign the church yourself. Just confusing, that's all.
Term, I'm Roman Catholic and I was not offended by your comment. We should never forget the shame these molesters and those who covered it up brought upon our Church. Never again! Eternal Vigilance is the price we must pay to keep our children safe.
if you people still attend the catholic churches you should be ashamed of your selfs.if you stop goin maybe the church would look into and stop the molestations.you keep goin ,they keep molesting and covering it up.STOP GOIN TILL THEY START PROSICUTING
Sorry 11:59, I don't agree. If your're not part of the solution, your're part of the problem. I won't be boycotting my Church.
sorry 1159 but you made my point for me you are part of the problem . you keep goin and givin them money and they will keep MOLESTING your children .to you ignorance must be bliss.now i understand how the church has molested for over 100 years,good catholics like you.
4:12, this is not 4:24, but I'd like to give you my take on this pedophiles/Catholic Church stuff. When I first found out about it years ago, and as they kept covering it up, and not admitting it publicly, etc., I was a loud voice against the church. I would not go into the church, and I wanted everyone to boycott/march on the church to force them to come clean, stop all of it, make restitution (as much as it can be made), and I could not get over the fact that the people were going to the churches as if nothing had/was happening. I thought if the priests, etc., were not going to do the right thing, then it was up to the people to force it.
I can't say that I am not still horrendously disappointed in the congregations for not stepping forward, but now that it is finally in the open, and the church is dealing with it, and stopping it, I recognize the fact that God is still in the church, not all the priests, etc. are/were bad, and I have been in the churches, and have found comfort there. Man messed it up, not God. I do feel, however, that if the congregations would have stepped up to their duty where the church was failing, this would have been exposed/stopped years earlier. It's shameful on all sides that it was not, and I still think it was disgusting that the people kept filling the pews and being quiet about it, as if in order to be a good Catholic, they needed to be silent and not call anyone to action--not even themselves.
Nothing can take away what happened and the horror and shock of it, nor how sad it is for the children involved, and I harbor a lot of bad feelings, as probably a lot of people do, but I forgive people for being back in the churches now, and I hope that parents, or the communities as a whole, never let their guards down again. How sad that we cannot trust the priests or anyone else across the board, but hopefully the disgrace will live on to remind all of us.
I am of the belief now as I approach my sixth decade of life, that we can never be really sure that we know ANYONE.
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