Bothered again...

I've been considering this move for some time now, but the news coming out of "Happy Valley" this week pushed me start writing again. To be clear, this blog is not intended as a means of keeping up with friends or family, or keeping you apprised of everything going on in our lives. It's not for posting pictures of dogs or kids or trips to Target. It's going to be a collection of things that keep you up at night, things that are real - things that matter.

So we start with Penn State. I read through the grand jury report against Jerry Sandusky this morning. His crimes will shock you. They will horrify and disgust you. You'll wonder what kind of a man can willingly destroy lives this way. You'll wonder how he hid this from family, from his wife, or if hid it at all. You'll wonder what he did to his foster children. That's the surface of the situation.

I believe the Jerry Sanduskys out there represent a small fraction of the population. They frighten us, they represent a threat to our sense of security, and they should be separated from the rest of society. I believe that.

However, with all due respect to his victims, the (other) shocking aspect of this story stems from the gross negligence of Sandusky's colleagues and peers - the group that represents the rest of us. David Brooks and Gail Collins engage in a fairly even debate about whether Penn State should cancel it's football season next year, but I really don't think this even begins to address the issue. In many ways, as this story unfolds I'm having an easier time understanding Sandusky's actions than those of anyone else. And that's disturbing.

If you read the report, you'll notice there's a history of behavior here. Who knows where this all began, but I'll bet you dollars to donuts it didn't start at Penn State. Going back to 1994, there's a list of 8 victims and roughly 40 counts of sexual abuse against children. But equally alarming, there's a history of people reporting this behavior! On occasion, first-hand witnesses were reporting this stuff; it wasn't hearsay. Yet, here's the kicker. They weren't reporting to police authorities. They were telling their bosses.

Now I can understand if you walk in on two co-workers, or two teenagers, or two adult strangers for that matter. Maybe you tell your boss, maybe you don't tell anyone at all. But an adult molesting a kid?!? We're not talking drug or alcohol abuse, gambling, or pornography. We're not talking recruiting violations, bribery, or some "oh shucks, this could happen to anyone" moral dilemma. We're talking heinous, violent crimes, felony offenses that tend to earn perpetrators life sentences and daily prison beatings. How does anyone not call the cops in on this one?

Penn State, understandably, is in an uproar. The trustees have fired Coach Joe Paterno and University President Graham Spanier, and my guess is some more heads will roll before this thing blows over. I agree with the firings, as much as I've admired Paterno for years. These guys clearly had to go and may yet face legal charges. But again, this only scratches the surface. What about the janitor, or the grad student, or Sandusky's wife for that matter? What about all the King Herods in this story that washed their hands after they reported the incident?

In many ways, this story reminds me of the murder of Kitty Genovese. The woman was stabbed, raped, and murdered - with witnesses watching the whole thing. It was everyone's responsibility to stop it, so no one did. Most people never even consider committing crimes like these. They're totally foreign to us. They're not human. But neither is letting them happen.

"The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.
The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.

The self-critical jackal does not exist.
The locust, alligator, trichina, horsefly
live as they live and are glad of it.

The killer whale's heart weight one hundred kilos
but in other respects it is light.

There is nothing more animal-like
than a clear conscience
on the third planet of the Sun."

- Wislawa Szymborska, In Praise of Self-Deprecation