Thanks to Gidget Commando over at RQ’s place for this. Charles Pierce: The Brutal Truth about Penn State
There’s nothing that can happen to the university, or to the people sunk up to their eyeballs in this incredible moral quagmire, that’s worse than what happened to the children who got raped at Penn State. Good Lord, people, get up off your knees and get over yourselves.
There is something to be said, however, for looking at how it happened. Which is not the same thing as trying to figure out how it “could” have happened. The wonder is that it doesn’t happen more often.
(How many football coaches out there work with “at-risk” kids? How many shoes are there still to drop? Unfair? Ask one Bernard Law, once cardinal archbishop of Boston, if you can pry him out of his current position at the Basilica of Our Lady of the Clean Getaway in Rome.)
It happens because institutions lie. And today, our major institutions lie because of a culture in which loyalty to “the company,” and protection of “the brand” — that noxious business-school shibboleth that turns employees into brainlocked elements of sales and marketing campaigns — trumps conventional morality, traditional ethics, civil liberties, and even adherence to the rule of law. It is better to protect “the brand” than it is to protect free speech, the right to privacy, or even to protect children.
Go read it all.
It was actually Gidget Commando who posted that. But I always love the link love.
I am a dork.
The verse Pearce quoted also came to my mind when I heard about the pre-game prayer. This one rang even more strongly:
1.Matthew 6:5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.”
BTW, that also applies to Tim “OMG! If my mom had aborted me, we would have tragically lost a QUARTERACK!” Tebow.