tango14
November 15, 2011, 11:55pm
21
<p>Let’s not forget that whatever Bobby Knight’s issues with temper and tantrums and throwing chairs and yelling at players, that is no where near on a par with the crimes we’re talking about here. I almost hate to see him mentioned in the same thread with the Penn State crowd. About the only commonality is that he was a high-profile coach fired by a university.</p>
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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. </p>
<p>…</p>
<p>It no longer matters if there continues to be a football program at Penn State. It no longer even matters if there continues to be a university there at all. All of these considerations are trivial by comparison to what went on in and around the Penn State football program.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>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.) This wound should be left open and gaping and raw until the very last of the children that Jerry Sandusky is accused of raping somehow gets whatever modicum of peace and retribution can possibly be granted to him. This wound should be left open and gaping and raw in the bright sunlight where everybody can see it, for years and years and years, until the raped children themselves decide that justice has been done. When they’re done healing — if they’re ever done healing — then they and their families can give Penn State permission to start.</p>
<p>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.
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<p>[Charles</a> P. Pierce on the brutal truth about the crimes at Penn State - Grantland](<a href=“http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7233704/the-brutal-truth-penn-state]Charles ”>» The Brutal Truth About Penn State )</p>