Q: At Penn State, how do they separate the men from the boys?
Still too soon?
Child Abuse is a horrendous, unforgiveable crime. At the same time, Americans have a rich tradition of using black humor to blunt the horrors of a repugnant, offensive or tragic situation, even those regarding child abuse. Cracking a joke of dubious taste is an innate reflex mechanism that makes dealing with an ugly situation a little more tolerable.
When revelations of Michael Jackson’s predilection of playing and sleeping with young children came forward the jokes were right behind them. When Tiger Woods had the back glass of his escalade shattered by a furious spouse, it took mere minutes for the jokes to make the rounds of the internet and for his situation to get inserted into the late night comedians’ repertoire. Alleged comedian Gilbert Gottfried lost the only paying job he had as the voice of the Aflac duck when he made a crack about Japanese Tsunami victims. Aflac was wise to immediately dump the former host of USA “Up All Night”, but Gottfried saw nothing wrong with the joke and has even defended it, as have numerous fans who claim the insurance giant should “lighten up”. Two radio DJs even made fun of Wall Street Journalist Daniel Pearl’s beheading by terrorists, although their comments rightfully earned them pink slips.
The Penn State sex abuse crisis seems to be an exception; the jokes are not forthcoming in the expected manner from the usual sources. People may be disgusted by the situation but they are hesitant to make light of it, unlike the Catholic Church abuse crisis, when the Priest jokes came fast and furious and comedians created YouTube videos showing realistic “Priests” talking casually about having sex with young boys, and SNL’s Darrel Hammond played a randy Priest in “Scary Movie 3”. The Penn State coaches, on the other hand, seem to be off-limits.
Some may claim that it is due to deference to the young victims, but that has never stopped the jokes in the past, therefore the lack of dark humor regarding this monstrous scandal may be attributable solely to the inviolability of college football.
Cases in point: Penn State students rioted at the mere mention of Saint Paterno losing his job, while conversely, there seemed to be zero rioting over Penn State University President Graham Spanier losing his. At Beaver Stadium, 2000 graduate John Matko held up signs expressing sentiments such as “Put abused kids first” and “Don’t be fooled, they all knew … everyone must go”. He was greeted with jeers, a beer shower and a slap to the stomach. “I understand the culture,” Matko told the Washington Times, “I was part of it. It doesn’t surprise me what I’m getting from them.”
Essayist John Zmirak wrote that “Sins committed in the name of a higher good can smell and look like lilies. But they flank a coffin”. These examples show just where the university and the students’ priorities lie; that the sanctity of their football program takes precedence over the safety and welfare of a handful of pre-adolescent boys who were abused then abandoned by not just some male coaches but by a system that diminished and ultimately ignored suspicions of abuse for 15 years.
But for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. While the football program at Penn State grew so large, so respected and so darn holy it at the same time grew insular, corruptible and oblivious to its own wrongdoing. In a situation that sounds chillingly familiar coaches and staff supposedly knew Sandusky was allegedly abusing young boys through his non-profit the Second Mile Foundation and through his connections to the school yet chose to ignore it.
Critics of the Catholic Church’s handling of its own similar crisis a few years ago who were quick to claim that celibate men with easy access to children were more prone to deviant acts than other men have been caught off-guard by the Penn State crisis, their world rocked by revelations of a serial abuser enmeshed in the masculine, rough-and-tumble world of college football. But the crisis reiterates the obvious; that sex abusers come in all forms, not just from a tiny percentage of public school teachers, marginally-employed uncles or celibate Priests but even from married, heterosexual college coaches.
Read my piece regarding the Catholic Church abuse crisis, then some of the comments in my Style Weekly piece “Divinity Abuse”.
Sandusky is no different in this regard than former Manassas, Virginia English teacher Kevin Ricks (“Sext Ed”, Style Weekly), who passed undetected for years from one teaching system to the next while abusing male students, enabled by local school officials who suspected his behavior but simply did not want to trouble themselves confronting him. Again, it seems that acceptance of the status quo and mistaken beliefs in a bogus psychology that assumes serial abusers will stop on their own take precedence over the safety of the children, who abusers seem to continue to gain access to regardless of the cloud of suspicion hanging over them, with little regard to their standing in the community, marital status or stated sexual orientation.
Sandusky is fighting back, claiming in a bizarre phone interview with NBC’s Bob Costas last week that he is “not a pedophile”, and that he was merely engaging in horseplay with the alleged victims. Assistant Coach Mike McQueary claims he actually reported his alleged witnessing of a 10-year-old being abused in the shower by a naked Sandusky, unlike media reports that claim otherwise. In any case, the courts will make those final determinations.
Meanwhile, work to stop child abuse in all forms.
