Vakkotaur

* Make your own Penn State/State Pen joke. *

As those who know me know, I am not a sports fan and tend to think of anyone involved with such as more likely of being guilty of something than the averages of probability would indicate. Note that I am not defending what happened. I am explaining how I think the failure mode worked.

Joe Paterno was, from what I can tell, the guy that all the stuff about "good sportsmanship" was about. He didn't jump to the NFL when offered the chance. He didn't use illegal or even questionable recruiting gimmicks. He followed up on the academics of his players. Oh, and he also managed to build teams that tended to win without having used various shady practices. Sounds like a great guy, right? Overall he likely he is. But he made a couple errors, very critical errors, and they really reduce to one.

One error was that when he found out about the abuse (as I understand it, he did not witness it himself, but was told of it) he went to campus authorities rather than the real police. The other was that he didn't follow up on that, as he did with his players, and make sure that those authorities were really doing their jobs and acting on that information rather than ignoring or suppressing it. Those are really one error: He trusted University authorities to act as adults and do their jobs. For all I know, there might have been a mild followup that was met with, "We're still looking into it, don't worry about it." or such. It would not surprise me if something on the order happened - but that is mere speculation on my part.

But money and prestige were involved, and that's when adults are most likely to play childish (not childlike) games and ignore or suppress things they do not wish to deal with. The price is that now there is a Big Scandal of things going on for some time, involving multiple people, rather than a much smaller scandal that Got Fixed. People keep forgetting or missing a lesson of Watergate (besides "Don't do illegal things"...) which is that a coverup makes things worse[1]. But the big lesson that should be taken away from all this? Do not trust an organization to properly investigate itself. To get results, you must go outside the organization that needs investigation. Sadly, I do not expect this to change and in a while another scandal that could have been averted or corrected sooner will blow up.

I cannot help but think of Dr. Seuss whenever I hear the name "vuvuzela." It sounds like something the Whos would play on Christmas morning.

While I am of the opinion that a lot of the controversy around sports team and mascot names is contrived nonsense, this article brings up a question that is oddly absent from the article. Never mind any problems with the name PorkChop. Why wasn't Ferrous, which had more submissions or nominations, chosen in the first place?

I suppose it's been long enough now that I can tell it. I very nearly got mixed up with a really bad crowd. This group seemed to live on hate of the other and believed, really truly believed, only in their own movement. Dissent was not tolerated. I was very fortunate to have escaped this movement.

I hadn't intended attending their rally. I pretty much just got caught up in the flow and soon the crowd had pressed me into attendance whether I wanted it or not. I had expected to be elsewhere, but there I was, and all the avenues of escape were guarded. I'm sure they had a more pleasant name for it, but when people stand by any means of exit to make sure people only go one way and never the other, that's a guarded escape route.

There was an attempt at reassurance, or at least a bone thrown to patriotism. Things began with everyone standing, facing the flag, and The Pledge was recited or the National Anthem sung. After that came a speech, or speeches, about what I'll just call The Movement which said nothing of substance but glorified The Movement without the slightest hint that there could just possibly be anything wrong with it, that it might have some flaw in need of attention. I was quite uneasy by now, but everyone seemed to be so caught up in things that they didn't notice my discomfort. That was the bit of the mass-hypnosis that was to my benefit. But the guards remained and escape was not a possibility. Everyone was to stay for the full dose of indoctrination.

Eventually things were built up enough for the Hymn that The Movement used. This wasn't just a bit of singing, this Hymn required standing just as the flag and Pledge or Anthem had. And it had more than that, even. It had a salute! It was an eerie, scary thing. I'm not sure if started with a standard hand at the forehead salute or if that came after the raised outstretched arm salute (it did look very Sieg Heil though those syllables and anything else hinting at them were studiously avoided). This cycled a time or two during the Hymn. If I hadn't been scared before, now I certainly was. It was, pardon the understatement, worrisome that this was happening here.

There followed more speeches, again praising The Movement. These were predictable Us vs. Them with no reasonable or even comprehensible explanation given to why They were to be held in such low regard. Though everyone was supposedly part of The Movement, it was a few people who were really involved in things. They were introduced and the attendees cheered and applauded every last one of them though, as far as I could tell, none might have ever done anything for The Movement. Then again, I wasn't really in The Movement, so they might well have done much for it.

Once the introductions were finally finished, there was more speech to incite. Curiously, despite all the promotion of a lockstep solidarity, there was a contest of sorts. This was no show of any talent at all. Not physical strength, not skill of some sort, and certainly not anything calling for thought - a thing that The Movement seemed to be designed to resist if not fear. Instead the attendees were grouped and each section yelled, with the loudest yellers winning. What was won? As far as I could tell, nothing. It was a pointless thing, but gave the impression though not the reality of not being in homogeneous lock-step with each other. It also was another item like the Pledge (or Anthem) and the Hymn which let attendees feel as if they had participated in The Movement without actually getting involved at a practical level. Perhaps that was just as well.

At last, at long last, it was over. There was something about another meeting for The Movement and a large fire, which seemed aptly destructive, but the rally ended and the guards let people by. Eventually things thinned out and I could get out of there. I did so with some speed, trying hard not to draw suspicion by going just too fast. These people and their way of thinking, or rather, not thinking and merely acting as automata scared me.

( Where It Happened )

Football Fans for Truth.