WARNING TO THE READERS: if you are one of those people who gets uncomfortable when someone starts talking about their personal business in a public forum, you should probably quit reading now. i'll blog something later and you can forget this entry ever happened.
so the Ball Bustas wrapped up their final season of the 2011 calendar on Wednesday night with another extra-inning thriller... that we won 20-12 after two innings of one-pitch softball.
i tell you this not only to brag about my team's accomplishments but to also explain my whereabouts last night from about 7 until 10. i rarely go three hours without checking the Twitter - occasionally i will do that when i am sleeping - but when you are chilling at the softball fields and your team is winning softball games in dramatic fashion, that will happen.
when i got back to Chastity's house, i checked my Facebook. i saw a few comments about Rick Perry's gaff at the 78th Republican debate this month... but those comments were quickly overshadowed by comments about Joe Paterno's firing at Penn State. i quickly switched to the Twitter app on my phone and that thing had literally exploded with commentary about the firing and the ensuing press conference craziness.
i rushed inside and spent the next hour watching the TV and Twitter as more people swooped in to offer their comments on the incident and the campus riot that it spawned.
the whole thing was stupid.
i'll say this: i'm fine with Paterno's firing. i didn't lose any sleep over the firing (i am up this early because the time change has messed with my internal clock). i can see why it happened. if Paterno had been allowed to coach out the football season, i would have been fine with that response too. i am not concerned with Joe Paterno.
i'll be honest though, i also get a little annoyed when people who have never been in a situation like this get on a moral high horse.
this alleged child-raping defensive coordinator had worked for Paterno for 30 years so i'll assume that they were pretty close. i'm not going to lie, if one of my best friends walked into a room and murdered 20 people in front of me, there is probably a 99 percent chance that i am not going to turn on them. does that make me a bad person? i don't think so. i think it makes me human. it's real easy to vilify Paterno but until i hear from a media member who has actually turned on a friend or family member in a similar situation (and since we are talking about molested kids here, let's hope that nobody comes forward), i don't really care about your opinion.
i'm not trying to justify what Paterno did but i'm not angry at the guy. as a lot of people know, a case of molestation pretty much was one of the first removed block from the Jenga structure that was my soon-to-be in shambles family.
this case of molestation lasted nearly two years. i didn't witness it but if i had, i honestly don't know what i would have done. maybe i would have gone to the police. maybe i would have tried to stop the abuse myself. maybe i would have done nothing. luckily i was never put in this situation - even though it's played in my head hundred of times - but would i have been a terrible person if i had known something and kept quiet? would i have been a hero if i had stepped in?
it's easy to answer "Yes" and "Yes" to both of those questions. it's not that simple though. when i finally found out about the incident, i wedged myself into a state of denial. i was angry at the accused for doing what they did and i was angry at myself for not seeing any warning signs (although, once again, i'm not entirely sure that i would have done anything had it happened). i wanted to act like it didn't happen, that such a crime couldn't have happened in my house. i wanted to believe that someone who i knew pretty well was incapable of doing something that awful. even though the accused admitted to the crime, i refused to believe it. this just was not possible.
so it took about a year from me to come around on a molestation case that crippled my family. and i don't know what i would have done had i witnessed anything. and both the victim and the perpetrator were members of my family. i don't think that i am a horrible person (maybe i am) and i don't think that 17-year-old Danny was a terrible person either (maybe he was) but the morale of this story is that i am not going to pass judgment on an old man who was in a similar situation and technically did more than i did.
you'll notice that during my denial stage, i didn't say much about the victim. that is the one thing that i won't forgive myself for. in my denial stage, i forgot about the victim. that was my greatest error and i think that was the media's error this week.
too much attention was focused on Joe Paterno and what he did and didn't do. i know one thing, he didn't molest any of those kids.
it's too easy to jump on these hot button issues but i was amazed by how many of my friends were hitching a ride on the "Fire Joe Paterno" bandwagon. i am also positive that some of these enraged people couldn't tell me who Jerry Sandusky is. and that's a problem since Sandusky is allegedly the guy who was molesting all these kids.
any anger that i have in this situation (and i'll be honest, it's not a lot. nobody wants to hear about something this awful but this really doesn't impact my life and i'm not going to act like it does) doesn't lie with Joe Paterno, it lies with Jerry Sandusky. and the empathy that these rioting Penn State students (and the idiocy of these riots is a subject that can be saved for another blog) should be saved for those victims, not some grown man whose firing was debatable.
i think our priorities got mixed up in this one. it's easy to be mad at Paterno because he's the biggest name attached to this scandal. it's easy to be mad to those who fired Paterno because you don't agree with the decision. however, for whatever reason, it hasn't been easy for the country and those in the media to be mad at this alleged child-molesting assistant coach and it's not easy for some Penn State fans to direct their empathy toward a bunch of helpless victims.
and nearly 10 years after i went through a similar situation, that is still sad.
Michael, play us out.
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