Every time I hear people talk about the Penn State sex abuse scandal, they throw everyone else under the bus, but defend Paterno tooth-and-nail. "Oh, he can't be guilty of anything. He's Joe-Pa. He's an institution." They spew on and on, reminding us of his record and the decades of good football that he's given us and what a legend he is. So, what about the sex abuse that was going on? "Oh, yeah, that. He reported it to his higher-ups. Like, what else was he supposed to do?" Oh, I don't know, call a fucking cop? Just throwing that out as an idea, you know, brainstorming here. Maybe, instead of thinking of his team's reputation, he should have thought about a little boy, naked and crying, being used as a sex toy by a vile old man. Just in case you weren't paying attention, that's the important thing here.
Are people really so enamored with his high-water-wearing ass that they're gonna fall back on the chain-of-command in a collegiate athletics department? He told his boss? I got some straws here if you wanna grasp at them, too. If Sandusky was stealing towels from the locker room or downloading porn on Penn State's network, yeah, tell the boss. He was diddling elementary school kids in the locker room. Call the fucking cops! Better yet, beat him bloody with a sawed-off axe handle and then call the fucking cops!
As for McQueary, how do you explain your behavior, or lack thereof, to the children that were hurt? "Hey, dude. Man, that really sucks that some old perv pinned you against the wall and corn-holed you before you were old enough to have hair on your nuts. That musta hurt. Damn. I saw him do it, by the way, but I'm not into violence so I didn't stop him or nothing. I did tell my boss, though, and I think he told his boss, too, or something. Whatever. So, everything's cool. Right? Go Lions!"
Everyone involved, including the vaunted Joe Paterno, sat on their hands, plain and simple. They played football while Sandusky played with little boys. Yet, because of our pathological need for gridiron glory, we canonize that sawed-off little coke-bottle-glasses-wearing nitwit as some kind of grand ol' patriarch because he was good at winning games. Meanwhile, he was letting little kids get raped by some disease masquerading as a human being. "Fail" is appallingly insufficient at a time like this.
For you football fans, for you beer-swilling, team-color-torso-painting, rah-rah-rah jackoffs that swarm the bleachers like lemmings looking for a cliff, for you armchair quarterbacks that nestle your asses into your recliners and fawn over your widescreens like you just TiVo'ed God in HD, I'm gonna let you in on a little secret, right here, right now...
...here it goes...
...brace yourselves...
Football is a game.
That's it. Go back and read it again if it didn't sink into your lite-beer-and-testosterone-addled brains. It is a game. Nothing more. A bunch of overgrown kids playing with a ball. "No, it's about achievement and glory and--" Bullshit. It's a game. It's about scoring points. What the fuck is a point? Can you buy food with a point? Can it change your tire if you get a flat? Will it get rid of this nagging headache of mine? A wanna see a point. Gimmie a picture. A wanna see a bunch of points. Serve me up a big, steaming bowl of points so that I can take a bite and feel the achievement and glory swirling around in my big fat belly. Can't do it, can you? So, what the fuck is a point? Nothing. It is pointless (pun intended with extreme prejudice). Football is a game. Anyone who makes it out to be more than that has more issues than I do.
So, fuck Joe-Pa. Fuck McQueary. Fuck everyone who knew what that disgusting pig Sandusky was doing and did nothing. Fuck everyone who put the importance of a stupid, pointless fucking game over the welfare of a little kid. And, for those of you who "bleed blue-and-white," do me a favor: bleed out.
