#500

When I began this project, it took me more than a year to reach one hundred entries. My rate of posting has increased dramatically, not because I have more to say but because I have had the opportunity to allow others to speak with greater frequency. The commemoration of the numerous quotes shared here has become something of a personal tradition, and so, on this my five hundredth post, I offer you once again my favorite ten quotes from the numerous insights shared in previous ninety-nine posts.

10) The absurdity of the news is a recurrent theme here, and the past six months has offered no respite from the onslaught of ridiculous news stories. The election stands out as a year long tribute to this insanity, from which numerous quotes might be drawn. Yet, it was this understated, now forgotten story of a couple suing over a baseball injury:

A New Jersey woman who was struck in the face with a baseball at a Little League game is suing the young catcher who threw it.

Elizabeth Lloyd is seeking more than $150,000 in damages to cover medical costs...Catcher Matthew Migliaccio was 11 years old at the time and was warming up a pitcher.

9) Not all sports news was so amusing or so obscure. Since the last top ten, the drama at Penn State has continued to unfold in ways that I continue to find indefensible. The NCAA handed down what were supposed to be program destroying sanctions (never mind that the Nittany Lions have marched proudly on to have a respectable season), but the Paterno family continues in the level-headed tradition of its now deceased patriarch:

The point of due process is to protect against this sort of reflexive action. Joe Paterno was never interviewed by the University or the Freeh Group. His counsel has not been able to interview key witnesses as they are represented by counsel related to ongoing litigation. We have had no access to the records reviewed by the Freeh group. The NCAA never contacted our family or our legal counsel. And the fact that several parties have pending trials that could produce evidence and testimony relevant to this matter has been totally discounted.

Unfortunately all of these facts have been ignored by the NCAA, the Freeh Group and the University.

8) Many of the quotes shared here relate to issues of war and peace, indicating my distinct preference for the latter. To an already extensive catalog, I was able to recently add the collective wisdom of several Nobel laureates protesting, of all things, a reality show that trained celebrities in the art of war:

Real war is down in the dirt deadly...Trying to somehow sanitize war by likening it to an athletic competition further calls into question the morality and ethics of linking the military anywhere with the entertainment industry in barely veiled efforts to make war and its multitudinous costs more palatable to the public.

7) Historians, as a rule, affect me less profoundly than do theologians, philosophers, and ethicists. Eugene Genovese is an astounding exception to this rule. Much to my dismay, he died not so long ago, but he has left us with a tremendous body of work that will continue to live on and continue to stimulate. This quote was offered as a sample as we said goodbye to Gene Genovese:

Southern conservatism has always traced the evils of the modern world to the ascendency of the profit motive and material acquisitiveness...to an idolatrous cult of economic growth and scientific and technological progress; and to the destructive exploitation of nature. Thus, down to our day, southern conservatives have opposed finance capitalism and have regarded socialism as the logical outcome of the capitalist centralization of economic and state power...

What goes largely unnoticed is that, on much of the American Right, the conservative critique of modernity has largely given way to a free-market liberalism the ideal of which shares much with the radical Left’s version of egalitarianism.

6) Germany, it was discovered recently, could benefit from a greater sensitivity to history. Ignoring the obvious perception it would create, a German judge effectively outlawed religious circumcision. As an advocate for the responsibility of parents to make medical (and religious) decisions on behalf of children, I was delighted when the American Academy of Pediatrics weighed in on the issue:

"It's not a verdict from on high," said policy co-author Dr. Andrew Freedman. "There's not a one-size-fits-all-answer." But from a medical standpoint, circumcision's benefits in reducing risk of disease outweigh its small risks, said Freedman, a pediatric urologist in Los Angeles..."The benefits of newborn male circumcision justify access to this procedure for those families who choose it."

5) Meanwhile, there was real religious strife going on in the world:

We will not encourage our people to carry arms against anybody whatsoever the situation may be. For those that are behind Boko Haram, you come to us with AK47, bombs, charms and other dangerous weapons, but we come to you in the name of God.

I want to assure Christians in Nigeria that Christ has always been with his people. He will never give victory to those persecuting Christians and the Church. Whoever is trying to exterminate Christians and Christianity from Nigeria is neither pleasing God nor his people.

4) Having prophetically (and oh so modestly) argued that the solution to the education crisis in America was to pay teachers less, the atavistic Chicago teachers went on strike and proved themselves better fear-mongers than educators, tragically unaware of their own disastrous behavior:

"The mayor and his hedge fund allies are going to replace our democratically controlled public schools with privately run charter schools. This will have disastrous results," union president Karen Lewis wrote in an opinion column in the Chicago Sun-Times on Saturday.

3) In the run up to the election, we explored the nature of the news and freedom of the press, including this insight from a letter sent to George Washington:

Judicious and well-timed publications have great efficacy in ripening the judgment of men in this quarter of the Continent.

2) Even as my academic focus, and consequently my focus here, shifts from the Orthodox Church to indigenous American Christianity, I can never forget my first academic love. Here is a teaser for a particularly amusing bit of satire that I was directed to:

Hipster Christians, I'm going to help you out. I see you are grasping at something, trying to find the ironic Church of your dreams, where men can grow beards of foolish proportions and women can dress like their grannies' grannies, a place where scarves are worn in every unfashionable fashion imaginable, a place where people do shots and eat hummus at community gatherings, enjoy rooms filled with a fog of incense and prefer to read books that pre-date industrialisation.

I would like to direct your attention to "The Orthodox Church."

1) But, of course, the best news recently...the best news always...was cow news:

Would protection against the deadly human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) make you willing to give up your vegan lifestyle? New research from Australia’s Melbourne University suggests that a type of treated cow’s milk could provide the world’s first HIV vaccine.

And now, let us rush headlong together into many more hours wasted merrily in reflection and sardonic commentary.

That'll Teach You to Play by the Rules, Penn State

The verdict is in, the dust has settled, and, guess what, people are outraged. And why shouldn't they be? After all, the recent sanctions handed down by the NCAA are just one more in a string of knee-jerk reactions from the public on the final great unifying force for Americans, sex abuse scandals.

The punishment begins with a sixty million dollar fine. This and this alone seems like an appropriate punishment, and the number could have been much higher. That sum, equal to only one year of Penn State football revenue, will come exclusively from the athletics fund and will be used exclusively to fund sex abuse charities across the country. There is a logical connection here between the sexual abuse which was, to some extent, permitted by some members of the institution and the consequence for that complicity. From there, the NCAA added a loss of athletic scholarships and a four year post season ban, which is non-sensical but expected. Perhaps it may have some value as a deterrent, assuming, of course, that there are institutions out there who actually care more about the integrity of their football program than about pedophiles in their midst as so many fast-tongued commentators are implying about Penn State.

The real source of unrest, both mine and the Penn State community's, is the nullification of fourteen years of wins. The NCAA, in their inscrutable wisdom, decided that they would begin with the first abuse allegation and just erase the history of Penn State football from then until the present. Explain to me, who does that serve? Certainly not the victims, unlike the sixty million dollars about to flood abuse charities. And who does it punish? Not Sandusky, who has the tender affection of his fellow prisoners to look forward to as punishment. Not anyone in the administration who may have been complicit, since they have all been indicted, forced out, or fired.

It actually is pretty obvious who the revision of history is meant to penalize. None other than Joe Paterno, who, in losing those wins, has forever lost his place as the winningest coach in major college football. If you'll pardon the indelicacy, I'd like to congratulate the NCAA on coming as close as imaginable to literally using their authority to beat a dead horse. For my part, I agree with the Paterno family, that JoePa continues to be presumed guilty until proven innocent:

The point of due process is to protect against this sort of reflexive action. Joe Paterno was never interviewed by the University or the Freeh Group. His counsel has not been able to interview key witnesses as they are represented by counsel related to ongoing litigation. We have had no access to the records reviewed by the Freeh group. The NCAA never contacted our family or our legal counsel. And the fact that several parties have pending trials that could produce evidence and testimony relevant to this matter has been totally discounted.

Unfortunately all of these facts have been ignored by the NCAA, the Freeh Group and the University.

But let's say that Paterno is every bit as guilty as the most rabid conspiracy theorist believes him to be. You tear down his statue. You un-paint his halo. You--which is to say, Nike, Brown, the Big Ten, and so many more--blot out his name. Now you re-write history just to strip him of his records. What is this obsession with punishing the dead? He's dead! Dead and buried. It makes it very difficult to take all this self-righteous scapegoating very seriously when the scapegoat has already been slaughtered. The fact that an organization the magnitude of the NCAA has felt the need to jump on the bandwagon and actively repudiate Joe Paterno in the sternest way it knows how shows just how little courage and conviction remains in the world.

Stripping Penn State of those wins serves no purpose, except to satisfy the obligatory indignation of the corporations and the masses to whom they peddle their wares. It certainly doesn't actually bother the dearly departed Paterno (though it seems a trifle cruel to his entirely innocent family who have to suffer through the public flogging of his corpse). Instead, it sends a message to past and future players of Penn State, that their efforts on the field, the victories they achieve by the sweat of their brow, the brutality they subject their bodies to, are all in the hands of a fickle overlord who, at any moment, may wave a wand and erase them. "This is not a football related issue. We didn't cheat at football and they shouldn't take our wins," observed a Penn State freshman. That simple, off-the-cuff logic has all the rational force necessary to overturn the NCAA calculated decision.

Nevermind that football doesn't really matter. Nevermind the pious but empty cries for "justice" that thinly mask bloodlust. The principle at stake here is fairness and a rational ordering of society. This ruling proudly announces the message that you can do everything right, play by all the rules (as the players did), and you can still be punished. Punished for someone else's crime. Punished to satiate a media fueled public outrage. Punished retroactively and without recourse to appeal. That, to me, is a greater catalyst for evil than leniency. After all, if they can come for you anyway, why be good to begin with?

Trustees Continue to Rationalize Paterno Firing

The Penn State board of trustees are at it again, reverse-engineering excuses for firing Joe Paterno in the frenzied weeks following the Sandusky sex abuse scandal. Following the tried-and-true policy of shoot first, ask questions later, the powers that be chose to dismiss Paterno unceremoniously over the phone in the middle of the season rather than allowing him to retire a few months later (or even giving him the simple courtesy of firing him in person). When we last heard from the board of trustees, they explained to an expectant public that the firing had taken place because they did not feel that Paterno could effectively carry on as coach in the midst of the scandal. "Paterno could not be expected to continue to effectively perform his duties and that it was in the best interests of the University to make an immediate change in his status."

An outraged but reasonable public and an abysmal conclusion to the football season (8-1 before Paterno's dismissal; 1-3 after) combined to make that kind of rationalization insufficient. Now the board of trustees is taking a more aggressive tack, claiming that Paterno's fulfillment of his legal duties actually amounted to a failure on his part, demonstrating the remarkable ease with which the living are willing to speak ill of the dead. "We determined that his decision to do his minimum legal duty and not to do more to follow up constituted a failure of leadership by Coach Paterno." In other words, that Paterno did what was required of him and did not have the benefit of hindsight to indicate that he would be required to do more, represented the leadership deficiencies in a man who had been a leader in the entire State College community for decades.

According to trustee Keith Eckel, “Many people have indicated that they did not understand, and this is our last attempt to try to make it as clear as possible.” Curiously, many people still don't understand even this last attempt; if this is as clear as it is possible to make the motivation, that says something about the clarity of the trustees thinking, both at the time and as they try to reconstruct a viable excuse in retrospect. Paterno's lawyer, Wick Sollers, is among those who think that this newest explanation only makes clearer the true, rather than the professed, motivation for Paterno's firing: "to deflect criticism of their leadership by trying to focus the blame on Joe Paterno. This is not fair to Joe’s legacy; it is not consistent with the facts; and it does not serve the best interests of the University...The Board’s latest statement reaffirms that they did not conduct a thorough investigation of their own and engaged in a rush to judgment." Sollers is unsure why the board "believes it is necessary and appropriate to explain—for the fourth or fifth time—why they fired Joe Paterno so suddenly and unjustifiably on Nov. 9, 2011."

Maybe it would benefit everyone to return to the moment of Paterno's untimely demise (the one before his ultimate untimely demise) and consider what the board had to say about its motives then. "'I’m not sure I can tell you specifically,' board vice chair John Surma replied when asked at a packed news conference why Paterno had to be fired immediately. 'In our view, we thought change now was necessary.'" There you have it, the unvarnished truth. The board had no idea why they needed to dismiss Paterno without investigation, without cause, and without the coolness of reasoning that even a moment's delay may have prompted. They felt it needed to be done, because they felt the rising heat of controversy and felt compelled to make a burnt offering of the choicest calf. Everything that came after that has been an effort to self-justify in the cold light of hindsight.

The sick irony, sickest of all ironies, is that from the grave Paterno is proving a model of leadership for the board. When he looked back on his actions with the benefit of full knowledge and found them wanting, he admitted his shortcomings like a man and expressed regret. Would that the board could emulate that kind of leadership.

Joe Paterno Has Died

After having one of the most trying years imaginable, legendary sports icon Joe Paterno has died. I hold the Penn State board of trustees personally responsible. Sure, you may say that is an irrational, knee-jerk overreaction, but who are they to judge?

"Answers" Given in JoePa Firing

Finally, in the wake of an angry town hall meeting, the powers-that-be in the Joe Paterno firing have offered (what they considered to be) answers to the pressing questions on our minds:

According to the statement, after Paterno announced Nov. 9 he would retire at the conclusion of the 2011 season, the board decided that "given the nature of the serious allegations ... and the extraordinary circumstances then facing the University, ... Paterno could not be expected to continue to effectively perform his duties and that it was in the best interests of the University to make an immediate change in his status."

"Therefore, the Board acted to remove Coach Paterno from his position as Head Football Coach effective as of that date," read the statement issued by board chairman Steve Garban and vice chairman John Surma.

Let's pretend for a moment that the above is even a defensible cause for dismissal. The "answer" is still unsatisfying on so many levels. Why did you dismiss him over the phone? Why have you consciously distanced yourself from his image? Why is Joe Paterno merchandise no longer being sold by Penn State retailers? Also--and we can stop our pretending now--what on earth would make anyone think that an interim would "effectively perform his duties" any better than Joe Paterno could, especially since the authorities specifically said that Paterno was not an object of the investigation? It seems we are destined to be less and less satisfied the more and more information we get.

Innocent Until Proven Proximate

The name "JoePa" used to evoke feelings of warmth and nostalgia, almost of filial affection for the man who stood as the grandfather figure for all college athletics. Now, it seems to warrant nothing but scorn. Consider one particularly heinous example from Dan Bernstein, a writer for CBS Chicago. Upon reading a letter of support for Penn State and Paterno signed by hundreds of former Penn State athletes, Bernstein had this interpretation of their motives: "Apparently because you don’t mind child-rape. And because Paterno is almost dead, thankfully." Fortunately, there are still some who are willing to take a more reasoned approach to examining the Penn State scandal, Paterno's role in it, and the coach's legacy to the university and the sport now that, having turned 85, he is plagued by more trivial matters like pelvic fractures and cancer. Even better, there appears to be evidence to support a more measured assessment of JoePa's "guilt." Thomas L. Day--a graduate of 2003 Penn State University, a native of State College, Pa., and a former student and volunteer in the Second Mile program--is by no means a JoePa fanatic, but he thinks it is important to get one thing straight:

Read these words carefully: Joe Paterno, in March of 2002, after being told by a graduate assistant coach that he had witnessed longtime defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky allegedly raping a young boy in the football team's facility the night before, notified the police. In fact, Paterno discussed what he learned with the man, Gary Schultz, who had administrative control of the Penn State police.

The point people are missing is that the Penn State police are different than most campus police forces. They are a real police force. They carry guns. They aren't rent-a-cops. They have jurisdiction over the campus, which includes the Penn State football offices.

In 1953, Penn State President Milton Eisenhower (brother of Dwight D.) changed the name of the campus to "University Park," and created a separate unincorporated community within the campus. When Paterno notified Schultz of what he had been told, he was notifying an appropriate authority.

Day's article is not the kind of unqualified exoneration that one might expect from a JoePa devotee. Day believes that Paterno should have been fired--not because he did anything wrong but because, in spite of doing things right, other people nearby did bad things. That is, of course, my less-than-detached restatement of his argument. Day preferred to word it like this: "When something goes horribly wrong under the purview of leaders, the leaders should be held accountable, even though they may not be directly at fault. This is something many Penn Staters have failed to understand." Maybe, like myself, "Penn Staters" have a funny aversion to the innocent being punished for the crimes of the guilty. Or maybe they have grave objections to the way the desperate, scrambling, self-conscious powers-that-be decided to execute (and that word is so pointedly appropriate) their plan to rid themselves of JoePa, or to the low, personal PR potshots that have been taken, such as removing his name from the Big Ten trophy or refusing to sell JoePa merchandise in campus stores. Regardless, Day does make a point to give a balanced assessment of what actually happened (as far as we know) and to evaluate Paterno's behavior with a more measured demeanor than, for example, Jemele Hill. Wrote Day:

The truth is that there isn't much more Joe Paterno could have done to prevent the alleged assaults that happened after March of 2002. I have no doubt that there are points along the eight-year timeline of this scandal where Paterno could have, and should have, acted differently -- Paterno himself has acknowledged as such. But nobody bats 1.000 in these situations...

The question is did Joe Paterno act in good faith, especially in March of 2002? Yes, Joe Paterno did. Paterno's actions were generally in line with how most reasonable people would act if put in the same situation. Paterno could not have made a citizen's arrest. At some point in 2002, Paterno was likely told that there would be no further action against Sandusky; after that point, Paterno appears to have ended association with his longtime friend and assistant.

So why the far flung institutional, media, and public pillorying of a man who six months ago received nothing but universal quasi-religious reverence from all of the above? Day asks the same question to conclude his article: "Before we say goodbye to Paterno, let's rationally reassess his legacy, and explore why exactly we rushed to an uninformed judgment of this man." For my part, I hope we reassess quickly, or else we may not have time, as a society, to apologize to the cancer-ridden octogenarian for stripping everything away from him--his career, his legacy, and, most importantly, a national love and respect--all, it would appear, because he is guilty by mere proximity to a crime.

The End of an Era

Goodbye, JoePa.

The big question that keeps running through my mind is "why?" What did JoePa do to deserve a perfunctory phone call bringing an even more perfunctory end to the most storied career in college football history? After all, he did what was legally required of him, which is precisely why there are no charges against him. He is a football coach and not a detective. When an allegation came across his desk--one of what we should imagine were countless accusations, suppositions, and rumors to be reported to him over 46 years--he reported it to the people whose job it was to launch an investigation. Could he have done more? Of course. Hindsight has a beautiful clarity to it. (Imagine if Sandusky were innocent and JoePa had led a crusade slandering a civic leader and founder of a charitable organization. Would we be any less judgmental then, armed as we are with afterthought?) The fact that JoePa himself recognizes, in retrospect, that he could have done more and offered as a voluntary penance his own retirement ought to have been enough. The difference would have been allowing a man who has revolutionized the public image of your university (so that people even care if there is a scandal there) and dedicated more than half of his life to developing and mentoring college athletes to coach four more games.

That apparently seemed like too magnanimous a path to the board of trustees. Why? What was JoePa's crime?

“I’m not sure I can tell you specifically,” board vice chair John Surma replied when asked at a packed news conference why Paterno had to be fired immediately. “In our view, we thought change now was necessary.”

Well that's a little vague. Perhaps they could clarify for us why they felt the need to eschew all courtesy and professionalism and destroy a four decade career over the phone.

Asked why he was fired over the phone, Surma said, “We were unable to find a way to do that in person without causing further distraction.”

So, in short, they remove the greatest fixture in college sports, ultimately confound the university's fundraising ability, athletic ability, and character, and incite mob violence, and their reasoning for doing it was "I don't know" and for doing it the way they did "It seemed convenient."

It all leaves me feeling a little unsatisfied. The victims have not been healed, the perpetrators have not been punished, and Happy Valley is no happier. I hope, in addition, that the board of trustees have trouble sleeping tonight.