would you “protest” or “forget” when presented with the reality of the space whale?
I’ve not watched the Penn State thing with a lot of acuity, but given the fact that there are so many people in my social networking feeds that maintain the illusion that while Jesus may sit at the Righ Hand of God, good ol’ JoePa sits just the right of the big JC, I’ve been rather unable to escape it.
So, I read a few articles about the whole littany of offenses and timelines and who did what, and whatever else. My conclusion? It’s a big mess all around, and everybody should have done more, and all this boo-hooing about the tarnishing of Paterno’s career is kind of in bad taste when there are almost a dozen kids who were completely and utterly violated through no fault of their own that very few people seem particularly concerned about.
That’s wrong.
The best reaction I’ve seen written about the whole affair is This One from John Scalzi, which draws inspiration from a classic science fiction story (which I’ve sadly never read – need to remedy that, though it’s clearly inspired lots of other stories) dealing with the issues of the responsibility of knowing something awful and being able to live with it.
It seems a lot of people in State College were just fine living with it. That’s even more wrong.
I have actually read the story he refers to… and it is a pretty good illustration.
November 14th, 2011 at 12:47 PM