Thoughts on Hero Worship and Cultishness.
Now that the Freeh report has come out, one might have expected that the Paterno/PSU cultists might have been cowed by shame into a welcome silence. And yet the newspapers are full of headlines about "JoePa's" precious legacy being tarnished. My response to that is, who cares? His legacy was managing a lot of overgrown adolescents in the play of a game. There was a lot of talk about "success with honor" and integrity and honesty and teaching youth all sorts of good things that supposedly comes from playing sports. But in the end, that's been revealed to have been a complete sham. And anyone not drinking the blue and white Kool-Aid would have seen that last fall when the grand jury report came out.
The continued reverence for and lionization and defense of a man who sought to protect his legacy above all else, even if it meant a decade and a half of enabling of a monstrous pedophile makes me rather sick, to be honest. And yes, it is right to feel this way, I think. Nobody excuses the actual perpetrator of the crimes -- he's clearly a beast and my preferred solution to the problem of his existence would involve a shotgun blast at point blank range to the head. No reason to keep him around. He, and people like him, have no place in this world. There's a special place in hell for creatures like this.
There's also a special place in hell for those whose inaction and active cover up of their crimes allow them to flourish, at the expense of young lives. I don't care how many precious games he won, or how you chose to idolize him or how much you cherish the kindly grandfather image. It wasn't true then. It isn't true now. Grow up. It was a lie. All of it.
Enough.
The continued reverence for and lionization and defense of a man who sought to protect his legacy above all else, even if it meant a decade and a half of enabling of a monstrous pedophile makes me rather sick, to be honest. And yes, it is right to feel this way, I think. Nobody excuses the actual perpetrator of the crimes -- he's clearly a beast and my preferred solution to the problem of his existence would involve a shotgun blast at point blank range to the head. No reason to keep him around. He, and people like him, have no place in this world. There's a special place in hell for creatures like this.
There's also a special place in hell for those whose inaction and active cover up of their crimes allow them to flourish, at the expense of young lives. I don't care how many precious games he won, or how you chose to idolize him or how much you cherish the kindly grandfather image. It wasn't true then. It isn't true now. Grow up. It was a lie. All of it.
Enough.