Showing posts with label abuse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label abuse. Show all posts

Friday, May 29, 2020

Minnesota copbots' algorithm needs tweaking


Let me get this straight: A mob burns down half a Minneapolis city block, including a police station, and . . . nothing. 

But a CNN crew, standing where the cops said it could do a live shot, gets arrested while on the air.


This after the reporter told the state police copbots they'd move wherever the cops wished. Handcuffs. No explanations for the arrests.

PERHAPS THE crew's mistake was that it didn't burn shit down. Then the CNN journalists would be golden.

Welcome to Amerika. Now, why are mobs smashing in storefronts and burning down police precincts again?

Obviously, there are many paths to mindless thugishness. Indiscriminately burning down your city as part of a mob is only one of them.

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Gates of Hell 1, Catholic Church 0


The Catholic Church -- the institutional church, at least -- in this country is finished. The gates of hell, we are assured by scripture, will not prevail against the church everywhere, but they have here.

I say this after reading a "little" story from Pennsylvania uncovered in today's grand jury report on the spiritual, ethical and legal cesspool that is the Catholic Church there. The entire document is here. Maybe you have the stomach to tackle it in its immensity -- I do not.

But this one snippet from a massive global scandal and sacrilege is instructive. A huge story begins to just become a jumble of factoids and statistics, but the horror is best appreciated in looking at just one thing.

JUST ONE destroyed life. Sorry, make that two . . . because abortion. Just one mutilated soul. Just one sociopathic prelate.

This, from Diocese of Scranton in the 1980s, is just one in an unbelievably long parade of horror from just one American state since World War II. Here is the account from the local newspaper today, the Times Leader:

You can be assured that what the grand jury -- various grand juries over recent years -- uncovered in Pennsylvania will likewise pop up out of the clerical swamp in every diocese from sea to shining sea.

You also can be assured that most of our shepherds are wolves in chasubles and mitres.

I feel as if I should have more to say about this, something eloquent, profound and original. I don't.

Perhaps it's the cynicism I've clung to for the last 16 years as a coping mechanism. It's not ideal, but it seems to work for me and keeps me somewhere within Christianity instead of screaming "F*ck you!" as I storm out the door into . . . what? Nothingness?

Yeah, probably nothingness. And then the pointy-hatted motherf*ckers could notch yet another lost soul onto their liturgical staffs.

And yes, I just said "pointy-hatted motherf*ckers." The great scandal of American clericalist Catholicism is that all the "right" faithful will be a lot more scandalized by my phraseology than by priests raping young boys and girls, homosexual brothels disguised as Catholic seminaries and "princes of the church" aiding and abetting all of the above.

If you are offended, go say a rosary for my damnable soul . . . on the grave of an abuse victim who killed himself or herself after the misplaced shame and the unceasing torment became too much to bear.


Some of us will remain Catholic in the wake of this filth. I don't know which -- the jury's still out for most of us, I suspect. But I do know this: Whichever way we find to keep the faith, such as it is and assuming we do, it will not be the way we have kept it in the past. At all.

The collapse of the institutional church will follow the collapse of the hierarchy's reputation and credibility, a process begun in earnest in 2002 and finally completed today with the Pennsylvania grand jury's scathing 900-page report. The collapse of that credibility flowed out of the collapse of episcopal integrity, the visible sign of God-knows-how-many collapsed episcopal souls.

May God have precisely as much mercy on them as they showed their flocks.

Monday, November 03, 2014

Whatever happened to shame?


shame noun \ˈshām\

: a feeling of guilt, regret, or sadness that you have because you know you have done something wrong

: ability to feel guilt, regret, or embarrassment

: dishonor or disgrace
Shame is a good thing.

Shame is what keeps us from being monsters. It's the thing that puts in touch with our fallen nature, with the reality that we're not OK. Not all the time.

Blessed is the society where shame is possible, where standards are in place that form a context for shame -- for what is shameful and what is virtuous. Shame, properly understood and properly enforced, is the thing that allows us to get over ourselves.
 

A society without shame is a land of sociopaths. A society without shame is one of monsters. A society without shame is in desperate need of reformation -- or, if reform is not possible, destruction -- for the well being of the rest of humanity.

Western culture is fast losing any sense of shame. It is on the edge of the abyss and its cultural "elites" are hellbent on pushing it over the edge, given it has decreed there are is no good or bad, only diverse choices that are appropriate for the almighty individual. Personal autonomy trumps all -- except, of course, those things that People We Don't Like advocate -- and it's those who deem themselves too enlightened for shame that get to captain the S.S. Anything Goes upon the Sea of Moral Relativism.


IT IS in such a society that "voice of her generation" Lena Dunham can admit in print that she, at age 7, explored her little sister's vagina, that she later did "anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl" so her sister would let her kiss her on the lips for five seconds or just "relax on me" and do so without an inkling of shame. Admit such behavior as if she were copping to raiding the cookie jar or throwing spitballs in class.

It is also in such a society that you can be cavalier about such and then be outraged when others . . . aren't.


"The right wing news story that I molested my little sister isn't just LOL- it's really f***ing upsetting and disgusting," Dunham emoted via her Twitter account. She was just getting warmed up.

"And by the way, if you were a little kid and never looked at another little kid's vagina, well, congrats to you," she added amid her Internet "rage spiral." By the way, congrats to me. And my family might not have been as patently weird as Dunham's, but it was right up there.
Still, to dismiss Lena Dunham as an insulated and spoiled child of Manhattan’s ruling class is to misunderstand her story entirely. If there is such a thing as actually abusing a child through excessive generosity and overindulgence, then Lena Dunham’s parents are child abusers. Her father, Carroll Dunham, is a painter noted for his primitive brand of highbrow pornography, his canvases anchored by puffy neon-pink labia; her photographer mother filled the family home with nude pictures of herself, “legs spread defiantly.” Self-styled radicals from old money, they were not the sort of people inclined to enforce even the most lax of boundaries. And they were, in their daughter’s telling, enablers of some very disturbing behavior that would be considered child abuse in many jurisdictions — Lena Dunham’s sexual abuse, specifically, of her younger sister, Grace, the sort of thing that gets children taken away from non-millionaire families without Andover pedigrees and Manhattanite social connections.
WELL, I CAN certainly understand where Dunham's unfamiliarity with shame came from.

What I can't understand is why people so insist on taking all their cultural cues from weirdos they don't know like Dunham and any number of other freak shows in our celebrity obsessed society instead of those good, unfamous people they do know. Then again, evil is a mystery.

What eventually becomes of cultures that worship evil and deify notorious freak shows merely because they're famous freak shows is less of a mystery: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

Hoss, we in trouble deep. It's harvest time.

Thursday, January 09, 2014

Because Satan never sleeps


This is horrible.

This is sick.

This is so not safe for work.

This is so, so very wrong -- depraved. No, depraved doesn't quite cover it. There are no words strong enough to denounce what's been done here.

But it is what it is. The Omaha Police Officers Association has reposted a Facebook video from a local "thug" that basically shows how to raise your kid to be a gangsta. This is part of a grand racist plot by the Man to keep the people down and portray every black male as a public menace -- obviously!  

Somebody cap they ass!

RACISM. Hate. That must be it. What else could it be? Snark Upper Middle-Class White Hipsters Like Gawker said. And so did some African-American pundits and groups, finding that condemning some Omaha cops who illuminated the cultural cancer at the heart of the black underclass -- specifically, the criminal black underclass -- was a much better use of their time and energy than actually doing something about the cultural cancer at the heart of the black underclass.

This is because it would be hasty to assume that a diaper-clad toddler who is called a bitch, a "ho" and a pussy, is told "Fuck you!" and "Suck my dick!" then learns to parrot the same for the camera -- with an extra added middle-finger gesture thrown in -- will grow up to be highly dysfunctional, and probably criminally so. It's always hasty to assume the obvious.

Just because you're raised to be a foul-mouthed, moronic thug is no indicator that you might turn out to be a foul-mouthed, moronic thug. The "logical outcome" is a racist construct unjustly propagated by the Omaha Police Officers Association to keep the black man down.

Oh, no! We must not insist that two plus two equals four! For shame!


LISTEN, Omaha cops' hands aren't clean in the world of local race relations. That's been well documented over the years. Nevertheless, a battalion of Bull Connors could not oppress African-Americans as effectively as the toxic culture that's turned inner cities into war zones, too many men into monsters, too many fathers into vanishing acts and too many mothers into "baby mamas."

And the critical mass of deformed human beings produced by that culture already has cast aspersions upon every black male in America -- already has stereotyped a whole race long before the Omaha police union supposedly got around to it. Ignoring the asteroid that just wiped out the 'hood won't undo the smoking crater in the middle of town.

The black underclass won't magically turn into the black middle class if we just avert our gaze. You can't treat an illness if you cannot acknowledge its existence. You cannot address a problem which must not be named.


Sometimes, the obvious is what it is. And sometimes, that what we can't acknowledge is a problem may or may not ultimately be white people's historical fault is, at this point, rather beside the point.


Besides, toxic cultures aren't race-specific. If we ignore this "canary in the coal mine," we all will achieve the perfect equality that exists in oblivion.
Soon.



UPDATE: Child Protective Services found the kid, found the human excrement "raising" him . . . and came down like a ton of bricks. They've taken the toddler and three other children into protective custody. 

Obviously, this is because Nebraskans are racist hicks unable to embrace the proper theology, geometry and ideology of their moral betters at Gawker Media.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Andy Taylor is dead, and I'm feeling nervous


It's becoming an annual event, and it needs an official name.

How about the (Fill-in the blank) Annual Omaha Police Excessive-Force Festival. Below is a bit of the World-Herald article on the latest in what's become a long line of incidents where local cops seemed hellbent on escalating a minor deal into a WWE smackdown.

Oh. . . . Seven words: Twelve cop cars for a parking dispute.
Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer on Friday temporarily reassigned an officer involved in the arrest of three men whose relatives allege the use of excessive force by police.

Schmaderer, who also ordered an internal investigation, and other police officials watched a video of the arrest posted on YouTube, according to a police statement issued Friday.

The video shows officers near 33rd and Seward Streets just before 5:30 p.m. Thursday.

Officers were there to investigate a parking complaint. The incident quickly escalated, with about a dozen police vehicles responding. It ended with the arrest of three brothers.

Police and a family member gave different accounts of what happened.

Officers said they were impounding vehicles with expired license plates when Octavious Johnson, 28, pulled up at a high rate of speed in front of the officers.

Johnson was “argumentative and aggressive'' and had to be wrestled to the ground by an officer to be arrested, according to a police report.

The video shows another officer assisted in subduing and handcuffing Johnson. Later, it appears that one officer strikes Johnson three times.

Officers also can be heard on the video yelling at a second man on the sidewalk.
 
After that man — Juaquez Johnson, Octavious's 23-year-old brother — went inside a nearby house, several officers raced after him. Officers came back outside with him and the third brother, Demetrius Johnson, 22.

The police report indicates the officers who initially responded were Matthew Worm, Dyea Rowland and Bradley Canterbury, though the specific role each played was not clear. None was placed on administrative leave. One of the officers was reassigned until the investigation concludes, a police spokeswoman said. She declined to identify the officer.

Sharon Johnson, the men's aunt, told The World-Herald that Juaquez Johnson had been filming the incident as it unfolded and was told by police to stop. He ran inside the house to get away from them, and they followed to get the video, she said.

Juaquez Johnson didn't post the video on YouTube. The video posted there was shot by a neighbor from an upstairs window across the street.

Sharon Johnson, 45, who uses a wheelchair, said as one officer ran onto the front porch he knocked into her. She said the wheelchair fell backward, and she hit her head.

“My legs were up in the air, and my head hit the ground,” Johnson said. She said the family planned to file a formal complaint with the Police Department.
OF COURSE, we don't know exactly what happened here. And, of course the local police union wants everybody to hold their horses . . . and withhold judgment.

"The most responsible course of action at this point is patience," was the word from the Omaha Police Officers Association. "Let the investigation run its course." This came at the end of a blog post pointing out that incriminating videos sometimes mislead.

Obviously, we also know the video looks bad for the cops. And, if you watch the whole thing, what one big-mouthed cop says might be more incriminating than what we actually see: "Why were you hiding behind your frickin' mom? Why were you hiding behind your frickin' mom? Why did I have to jump over a frickin' old lady to get to you?"

This kind of thing, unfortunately, has become a regular deal for Omaha cops.

We know that the Omaha police have in the past been awfully quick to beat the hell out of -- or shoot -- people first and then ask questions later. Search for the names Vivian Strong or Marvin Ammons. North Omaha burned after a cop shot Strong, a 14-year-old girl, in 1969. It got kind of dicey nearly 30 years later after police shot Ammons for, as it turned out, having a cell phone in  his hand.

We also know that Omaha police officers have been fired -- or worse -- on a more-or-less regular basis for excessive force or after allegations of criminal activity. And we know that the police union only is satisfied with "letting the investigation run its course" if the chief finds that the officers in question were as pure as the driven snow.



INVESTIGATIONS that run their course and result in an officer's sacking for cause are "politically motivated" and the union will move heaven and earth to overturn them. So pardon my skepticism, and pardon my belief that there's more than a even chance that what looked bad on video was as bad -- or worse -- in person.

A lack of public trust in a police force -- no matter how justified or unjustified it might be -- comes from somewhere. I suggest that Omaha police look within themselves and consider just why that might be.

Thursday, September 06, 2012

Catholicism today


You may wonder why I've not been all over last week's deal where a national Catholic newspaper published an interview with the Rev. Benedict Groeschel in which the Franciscan friar, psychologist and popular EWTN host called Jerry Sandusky a "poor guy" and said that, sometimes, a kid will seduce a poor, poor priest in the throes of a nervous breakdown.

Because we all just know kids want it and, besides, poor Father just can't help himself.

And you also may like to know why I didn't call bullshit on Groeschel and his order stating that he "misspoke" because he's old, sick and just not that sharp anymore, and that he really didn't mean to "blame the victim." Even though what he said in the National Catholic Register interview -- during which Groeschel wasn't challenged on his contentions, and which blithely ran online . . . until it didn't -- was the same thing he's been saying for years.

Saying amid angry attacks on the "satanic" mainstream press for even covering the Catholic sex-abuse story to start with. Saying to abuse victims themselves.

Yes, you may be wondering why I didn't call bullshit on that in this cyberspace.


LIKEWISE,
you may be wondering why I didn't point out that the Register's uncritical, incurious interview wasn't terribly surprising, being that Groeschel was a marquee personality for the Eternal Word Television Network, and that EWTN is owner of the newspaper. Or why I didn't express my bemusement at why EWTN, in announcing Groeschel's "retirement" from television Monday, noted the friar's advanced age and illness, that his comments to the Register were a sign of that . . . but didn't mention it never had a problem with such sentiments when he was a decade younger.

You may be wondering why I didn't Hank Aaron that one right out of the ol' ballpark.

And what about Bishop Robert Finn getting convicted of not reporting a child-pornographer priest to the authorities? Nice example of Christian propriety the prelate of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., was setting for the flock, eh?

I bet that if I had been all over that one today, I would have said the judge was wrong for not throwing him in the pen for a year.

Yeah, I probably would have. But I'm not going there . . . or there . . . or there. Frankly, I'm weary unto spiritual death of it all. I'm weary of the arid slog that is this church that's so compromised and confused.

If I wade into that tar pit, I'm going to convince myself that a "hapless bench of bishops" and a cultish, boring-ass Catholic cable network matter a hell of a lot more than they do in the spiritual scheme of things. If I give 'em all what's coming to 'em, I'm going to think I matter a hell of a lot more than I do in the scheme of things, and I'll end up telling the Catholic Church to kiss my righteous ass.

There's one small problem with that, though.

I got nowhere else to go.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Precocious preteen sucks worse than Roseanne


Parents who let an 11-year-old girl call herself a "singer-songwriter" and traipse through the Texas coffeehouse and showcase circuit need to have their heads examined.

Parents who let an 11-year-old white girl with an OK voice run around oversinging oversung Christina Aguilera and Beyoncé songs in public probably need to be horsewhipped.

And parents old enough to know better who let an 11-year-old girl who isn't do this to the national anthem at a major-league soccer game --
on television, no less -- need killin', to put it in their native Texan.


CONGRATULATIONS, asshats. There's now a rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner worse than Roseanne Barr's. It's your daughter's.

You were happy to bask in the reflected glow of your little darling's prepubescent musical specialness. So you put her out there. And put her out there. And put her out there some more, because the fruit of mama's womb turned out to be a singer-songwriter!

I mean, if her website says it, it must be true!

And then you put her out there, before tens of thousands in a stadium and many more than that on TV. What could go wrong with an 11-year-old white girl trying to outdo Whitney Houston's version of a song that to most singers is what invading Afghanistan is to most empires?

Because, by God, people are gonna remember Harper Gruzins from Coppell, Texas!


Well, you got that right. The national anthem done in the style of Tibetan throat singing would have been less memorable . . . and more palatable.

Sadly for you, there's no reflected glory to bathe yourselves in. Worse for Harper, there's no shortage of Texas-size ridicule for a precocious preteen to bear all by her Lone Star self.

Somebody git a rope!


HAT TIP: Rod Dreher.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Well, duh!

Yeah. Um hmm.

It's confession time for Rick Reilly. If confessing the obvious is a confession at all.

Yeah, him and the entire American sports "journalism" establishment. Him and whoever is behind the team "features" aired during game-day broadcasts.

"Forgive us, Father, for we've fed the beast, constructing inspiring "narratives" out of -- if not whole cloth -- at least out of the fertile imaginations of university sports-information directors and PR staffs."

The acclaimed sportswriter came clean on
ESPN.com about a week and a half ago, right after the Freeh Report set the record straight about what "doing things the right way" really meant at Penn State.

Whoopie.

What a fool I was.

In 1986, I spent a week in State College, Pa., researching a 10-page Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year piece on Joe Paterno.

It was supposed to be a secret, but one night the phone in my hotel room rang. It was a Penn State professor, calling out of the blue.

"Are you here to take part in hagiography?" he said.

"What's hagiography?" I asked.

"The study of saints," he said. "You're going to be just like the rest, aren't you? You're going to make Paterno out to be a saint. You don't know him. He'll do anything to win. What you media are doing is dangerous."

Jealous egghead, I figured.

What an idiot I was.
THESE TWO THINGS are clear, and always have been whenever we didn't have our fingers in our ears while screaming "Neener! Neener! Cancelcancelcancel!"

One, we like to hear what we want to hear. Two, the big business of major-college athletics loves lies almost as well as it does money -- lies grease the skids for "narrative" and narrative is what sells a product nowadays. Things can get ugly when reporters don't stick to the official narrative, which almost always causes them to fall back into line.

In other words,
"What you media are doing is dangerous."

Sunday, July 22, 2012

'Diese Schandtaten: Eure Schuld!'
('These Atrocities: Your Fault!')


Ever been on a plantation tour in the South and heard all about the lost glories of the Old South -- that idyllic life the planter class enjoyed prior to the martial unpleasantness that brought it all to naught?

Were you amazed at how little you hear on some of these tours about the slaves upon whose backs was built this life of privilege and beauty for the few . . . the proud . . . the wealthy and white?

Ever turned on the TV and seen one of those stories about post-Soviet life in Russia, where you always see some raggedy protest by old pensioners with hammer-and-sickle flags and pictures of Lenin and Stalin, lamenting the passing of the dictatorship of the proletariat and all its attendant glories?

Were you amazed at how the gulags and captive nations never quite fit into the narrative of nostalgia for Soviet greatness?

Yeah. Me, too.


THIS
REMINDS me of all that. And the warped, warped culture of idolatry and denial surrounding Penn State football and pervading State College, Pa., needs to follow the Old South and the Soviet Union into the ash bin of history.
Cloresa Turner drove to central Pennsylvania from Virginia to see the statue of veteran Penn State football coach Joe Paterno.

When she arrived in State College on Sunday and saw that it was gone from its place outside the university stadium, she clasped her hand over her mouth.

"He's done so much for this university. It's sad," said Turner, of Martinsville, Va. "To wipe it all away is like he meant nothing."

Construction vehicles and police arrived shortly after dawn Sunday, barricading the street and sidewalks near the statue, erecting a chain-link fence and then concealing the 7-foot-tall statue with a blue tarp. Workers used jackhammers to free the statue and a forklift to lower it onto a flat-bed truck that rolled into a stadium garage bay as some of the 100 to 150 students and other onlookers chanted, "We are Penn State."


(snip)

The Paterno family issued a statement saying the statue's removal "does not serve the victims of Jerry Sandusky's horrible crimes or help heal the Penn State community." The family, which has vowed its own investigation, called the report by former FBI director Louis Freeh the "incomplete and unofficial" equivalent of a charging document by a prosecutor and said the only way to help the victims "is to uncover the full truth."
NO, THEY'RE not s****ing you.

It's not an act for the tourists like proud faux Confederates re-enacting Pickett's Charge
or drunken Kappa Alphas getting their Ashley Wilkes on in hopes of making some Southern belle swoon like Scarlett. This is the kind of true-believer devotion to Baal that gave us the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws, because Reconstruction wasn't thorough enough and didn't last nearly long enough.

"Look away, look away, look away . . ." JoePa fans.
Some who came out to watch the statue's removal were angry that it had been done with so little notice that many missed it - "It was under cloak of darkness," said Diane Byerly, 63, of Harrisburg - and worried that stiff sanctions from the NCAA would punish the innocent while possibly destroying businesses that rely on the commerce from the tens of thousands who flood State College on game days.

"I think there's ways you can punish the parties involved without affecting all of State College," said Richard Hill, a 1967 graduate from West Chester.

Chris Stathes, 40, a lifelong Penn State football fan who has a daughter at the school and manages two State College breakfast eateries, said shutting down the program would devastate area businesses.

"Football season, that's our moment. From the time we open our doors in the morning until kickoff, there's a line out the door," he said.

Philip Frum, 24, who works on research projects for Penn State, said he hoped the statue would be erected elsewhere, such as at a nearby Penn State sports museum.

"This statue was a symbol of all the good things he's done for the university,"
Frum said. Any NCAA penalty that shuts down the football program "will be just as bad as taking down the statue," he said.
LinkOH . . . I hope it's much, much worse.

A culture that throws its children into the flaming pyre for the sake of Baal -- also known as "our peculiar institution," "the dictatorship of the proletariat" and big-time college football -- deserves every bit of divine wrath it calls down upon itself. It needs to be obliterated for the sake of the world . . . and for the sake of those under its thrall.

In Germany after World War II, we had a name for a similar effort. "Denazification," we called it.

Today, let the "de-Paternofication" of the Pennsylvania State University begin.


UPDATE: The Philadelphia Daily News just posted this story. Good grief.

Where is the Red Army when you really need it? What's next, tales of Penn State faithful barricaded in their man caves with the little woman, a 9 mm Luger and a couple of cyanide capsules?

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Bowing down before the Nittany Lion


Let's get one thing straight right now.

The entire sport, culture and establishment of American college football is not worth the innocence of a single child.

Fans, coaches and administrators at Penn State thought -- and likely still think -- otherwise. That is why Jerry Sandusky was allowed to keep on raping young boys for years and years after pretty much every coach and administrator at the university knew he was the worst sort of degenerate -- the felonious pinnacle of pedophilic perversion.

If the man were in Texas, he easily would fall under the banner of "needs killin'."

Anywhere else, I would hope that, at a minimum, not one person would think that the son of a bitch should ever again see the light of day. It's a no-brainer.

Let me amend that. It's a no-brainer everywhere but State College, Pa. In State College, Pa., the former defensive coordinator of the Nittany Lions was allowed to befriend, groom and sodomize underprivileged and at-risk boys for at least 13 years after people at Penn State first realized there was a problem --
and a big one -- with Jerry Sandusky.

THIS WAS all in the name of preserving the good name of Penn State football. Of preserving the big, big business of Penn State football.

Ultimately, the indifference and the cover-up caught up with Coach Joe Paterno, President Graham Spanier, Athletic Director Tim Curley and senior vice president for finance and business Gary Schultz. And when the university board of trustees fired Paterno, effectively closing the stable door after all the horses had made a run for it, thousands of Penn State students responded by rioting in downtown State College.

And it was out of fear of the mob that the board balked at reneging on the lucrative "go away quietly" package it had negotiated (as all hell was beginning to break loose) with Paterno -- who now, after the Grim Reaper caught up with him, too, stands before the highest court of all. Turns out that people don't take it well when their false gods and warped culture come under attack, no matter how justly.

SO NOW the NCAA gets the ball on downs. And in this interview Monday night with PBS talk host Tavis Smiley, NCAA President Mark Emmert refused to rule out the "death penalty" for Nittany Lion football.
Emmert said he's "never seen anything as egregious as this in terms of just overall conduct and behavior inside a university." He added, "What the appropriate penalties are, if there are determinations of violations, we'll have to decide."

The last time the NCAA shut down a football program with the so-called "death penalty" was in the 1980s, when SMU was forced to drop the sport because of extra benefits violations.

"This is completely different than an impermissible benefits scandal like [what] happened at SMU, or anything else we've dealt with," Emmert explained. "This is as systemic a cultural problem as it is a football problem. There have been people that said this wasn't a football scandal.

"Well, it was more than a football scandal, much more than a football scandal. It was that but much more. And we'll have to figure out exactly what the right penalties are. I don't know that past precedent makes particularly good sense in this case, because it's really an unprecedented problem."

OR, AS ONE
sports-law expert put it last week, “Let’s face it, a football coach raped kids and he did so facilitated allegedly by another football coach and athletic officials, and some of the crimes occurred in the Penn State showers. I think that’s sufficient nexus to the team.”

Given that, I was glad to hear the death penalty for Penn State is on the table. God willing, it soon will be off of the table and into effect.

As a rule, false gods need to be sent packing. When the worship of college football and the corruption of the big money made off of it leads to university officials tolerating child sexual abuse by someone associated with the football program -- as the by-then retired Sandusky obviously still was -- that particular false god needs to be killed, its graven image melted down and the ground it once stood upon plied with salt.

I DON'T give a damn that people will lose their jobs. I don't give a damn that motels and hotels in State College will lose money. I don't give a damn that players will have to scramble to find new teams.

No job, no business and no full-ride scholarship for any "student athlete" -- and the fact I felt compelled to put that in quotes is part and parcel of the corrupting influence of this particular false god in all too many cases -- is worth the innocence of a single child.

Penn State football can go to hell. And all the people who fed the monster, who bowed before the false god that it became, need to spend a few years of quality time with the Real One, making amends and doing penance.

I don't know whether or not Jerry Sandusky "needs killin'." But Penn State football sure as hell does.

Just do it.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

No one needs to fly this badly


That's one question answered, a million or so to go.

OK. So . . . huh?

It's like this: Let me tell you about what I want to know and what I just found out. Actually, come to think of it, let me do a 180 on my approach here. That first thing about going over what I want to know isn
't going to work.

To avoid taking up
waaaaaaay too much of your time -- and likely the rest of my life -- I'll just tell you the question of mine just answered. Here it is:
Q. "What happens to all of the most brain-dead and morally retarded non-political, non-incarcerated pieces of human excrement in the United States of America?"

A. They all become airport screeners for the TSA.
Before today, I only suspected this was the case. Then The Daily provided the last bit of evidence that erased all doubt.
Four months after the Transportation Security Administration launched a program to help airline passengers with disabilities, a New York family found out just how little “TSA Cares.”

Traveling from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Florida, the Frank family was yanked out of line as it boarded the plane in a dispute over how 7-year-old Dina had been screened. The little girl, who has cerebral palsy, walks with crutches and leg braces.

“They make our lives completely difficult,” said her father, Dr. Joshua Frank, a Long Island pediatrician. “She’s not a threat to national security.”

Flying is always difficult for the family, but this week was particularly dreadful, Frank and his wife, Marcy, said.

With her crutches and orthotics, Dina cannot walk through metal detectors and instead is patted down by security agents. The girl, who is also developmentally disabled, is often frightened by the procedure, her father said.

Marcy Frank usually asks the agents to introduce themselves to her daughter, but those on duty on Monday were exceptionally aggressive, Joshua Frank said, and he began to videotape them with his iPhone.

“And the woman started screaming at me and cursing me and threatening me,” he said.

Eventually, a supervisor decided it was sufficient to inspect Dina’s crutches and allowed the family to leave for the gate.

They were there for an hour before the agents reappeared with a manager to tell them that proper protocol had not been followed, and that Dina had to be screened after all, the Franks said. After initially offering to pat her down at the gate, they insisted she return to the security area, Joshua Frank said.

I CAN'T SAY
enough bad things about those who engage in cruelty toward the old, the sick, the disabled . . . and children.

When you have someone engaging in cavalier cruelty toward a disabled child, you have someone who deserves a beating. Right there. Right now.

When you have someone doing that in the name of the federal government -- and when putting a decisive end to the rough manhandling of your child means you would go to a federal prison for a long time -- you have a situation that calls for administering the beating to the government that gives such goons such unfettered authority.


UNTIL
that day comes -- if that day comes -- when our authoritarian security state shapes up and flies right, I don't think you need to fly that badly. Better to walk (or row . . . or swim) than to submit to being treated as if you were what those goonish TSA agents are.

Monday, January 23, 2012

The tragedy of Joe Paterno


Joe Paterno is dead, and his tragedy is complete.


Now all that is left to do is attempt not to speak too ill of the dead, and for some to urge us to remember the good of the fired Penn State football legend's life -- not just the inaction that doomed God knows how many young people to a fate scarcely better than death. Or perhaps worse than death, I cannot say for certain.

As it turned out, negligence, shame and humiliation turned out to be the final chapter in the story of JoePa's life. In the movies, even Darth Vader got the opportunity to redeem himself in the end. The old coach did not.

In the unblinking eye of history, his legacy will forever rest somewhere on the Dark Side. For every million dollars he gave to Penn State, for every heartfelt tribute by a former player, for any number of lives he impacted for the good -- for all these things there will be the damning counterweight of young lives wrecked and childhood innocence stolen because the most powerful man in State College, Pa., behaved as a befuddled coward when it really mattered.


THE MYTH of virtue and greatness crumbled into ignominy, and then a disgraced old man died.

In
Star Wars, the dark lord got one last chance to make a crooked path straight and forsake the shadows for the light. Darth Vader got one last chance to argue for posterity -- for himself and through his actions -- that the sum of his sins did not exceed the good that remained. That, ultimately, Anakin Skywalker could not be subsumed.

That's Hollywood for you.

Real life often isn't so kind, even to a football legend. Joe Paterno never got to make a crooked reputation straight once more. It is left to his surrogates to beg history for mercy on his behalf.

Let us be careful with every chapter of our lives. We never know which will be the last.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Because we hate that damn heretical reporting


Yes. Yes, I do.


That's good to know. I can use all the friends I can get.


Because that @#$%&*! Southern Baptist reporting is about
to drive me up the wall. And the ATHEIST reporting?
Poo yi yi, cher! It gon' give me some vapors, yeah!

And dem communiss lib'rul Catholic reporters! Dey
keep trying to put da bishop in jail for tryin' to hep'
dat nice priest who likes dem chirren porn too much.

What we need's a paper dat rips heretics
like them, not real Catholics like us.


I gon' do that, dahlin'! What's you telemaphone numbers,
baby? 1-800-MO-POPEY? Ooh, I can remembers that!

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

I don't understand. Not anymore.


The trouble with us Catholics is that we're willing to sell our souls to Eros' pervy cousin so we can keep buying the party line -- so we can keep believing in a God we kind of understand who speaks to us through weaselly little men we can't trust.

I realize it wasn't overly auspicious when Jesus picked a fly-off-the-handle dullard as the first pope, a guy who would go on to deny Him three times when the chips were down. Of course, I also realize that, with Peter, at least there was room for growth.

He turned out pretty OK in the end.


That more of Peter's successor popes and bishops haven't exhibited equal growth potential have contributed to an ongoing crisis of authority in the church. "Do as I say, not as I do" is a better ethos, I suppose, than "do what thou wilt," but it only takes one so far -- especially when one believes, as Catholics are taught, that salvation runs through the church.
13
When Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"
14
They replied, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
15
He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"
16
Simon Peter said in reply, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."
17
Jesus said to him in reply, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
18
And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
19
I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
OF COURSE, in 1517, it became a little hard to take when yet another crooked Borgia pope wielded the keys to the kingdom with a capitalistic flair including not only the sale of indulgences, but also the keys to the kingdom itself. It had to be rather like acceding to the belief that salvation ran through the Corleone family.

When the Reformation blew up in the church's face, things got so bad that Catholics actually had to clean up their own soiled sanctuary. It was too late, of course, but better late than never in the eyes of the God we kind of understand, one supposes.

In our own time, the God we kind of understand tells us that salvation runs not through the Corleone family (yay!) but instead through the National Man-Boy Love Association (crap!).

Of course, that's not what the God we kind of understand actually says through His district managers -- indeed, they will swear up and down that everything's on the up-and-up -- but we're well familiar with the whole "do as I say" deal. Besides, every day we have hammered into our weary brains the sights and sounds of the dirty deeds done by those weaselly little men we can't trust.

JUDGING by appearances, the God we kind of understand is fine with that. Well, at least the prosecutor in Clay County, Mo., must be. The Kansas City Star reports he just gave the weaselly little bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph a "get out of jail cheap" card:
Bishop Robert Finn today avoided facing a criminal misdemeanor indictment in his handling of a priest facing child pornography charges by agreeing to enter into a diversion program with the Clay County prosecutor.

Authorities have pledged not to prosecute Finn, the leader of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, if he lives up to the terms of a five-year diversion agreement.

Clay County Prosecutor Daniel L. White also said that a grand jury indicted the Rev. Shawn F. Ratigan on three counts of possessing child pornography. The new indictment supersedes a state criminal complaint that charged Ratigan on May 19. Ratigan, 46, also faces a 13-count federal indictment of possessing, producing and attempting to produce child pornography. He remains in federal custody.

The Clay County indictment alleges that Ratigan possessed three images of child pornography on a computer on May 13. White said each of those counts is a Class C felony, punishable by up to seven years in prison and fines of up to $5,000.

Finn’s agreement with Clay County requires him to meet face-to-face each month with White for the next five years to discuss any allegations of child sex abuse levied against clergy or diocesan staff within the diocese’s Clay County facilities. Finn also is to describe what steps the diocese has taken to address the allegations. White would then decide whether to encourage police to investigate any allegations.

Finn also agreed to visit all Clay County parishes to outline new programs the diocese is implementing to protect children. In those meetings, Finn will be accompanied by the diocesan ombudsman and its newly appointed director of child and youth protection.

ON THE other hand, Finn's treatment at the hands of the Clay County prosecutor is far harsher than anything he faces from the long arm of the Lord. The one we understand, because He's been explained so thoroughly to us these days by weaselly little men.

No, so far as I know, what Finn faces from his Catholic Church superiors would be . . . nothing.

I hope I'm wrong, but somehow I doubt that.

That would be close to the extent of what I know about anything anymore -- particularly my church. I do know this: I am sick of being repeatedly sickened by the institution that's supposed to help me get to heaven.

I also know this: I no longer believe in the God we kind of understand. The God who reminds one, more than anything, of the Mighty Oz. Pay no attention to that pederast-protecting bishop behind the curtain.

What I want to believe in is the God we don't understand at all.

Flannery O'Connor once wrote that a god we understood would be less than ourselves. Minimalist bishops -- those whitewashed sepulchers who helped get us into this mess -- understand that one quite well. To hell with it, and them.

I want that other one. I want the God who flummoxes me, yet gives me life.

I want my church to want Him, too. And I want "shepherds" like Robert Finn to get the hell out of His way.

Monday, November 14, 2011

This pretty much covers it


You says you don't learn anything from TV?

Why, just this past weekend on Saturday Night Live, we learned that even Satan has his limits.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

He seemed like a real nice guy

Coach Paterno will go down in history as one of the greatest men. Most of you know him as a great football coach. I've had the privilege and honor to work for him, spend time with him. He's had such a dynamic impact on so many, so many — I'll say it again — so many people and players' lives.

-- Tom Bradley,
Penn State interim coach


President Clinton was so darling to me, and as loyal and faithful a man as you can find. I remember he was so sweet about a blue dress I used to have. Before it was evidence. He said I was so pretty in it. He was always considerate of others that way.

-- Monica Lewinsky,
former White House intern


Richard Nixon was always concerned about the law. Also, he was such a faithful and religious man. He was always talking about God and Jesus. I remember how it'd just pop out of the depths of his soul -- like, he was always telling me "Jesus Christ, Henry!" Or, "Goddamn it to hell!" He was always eager to see more divine justice in the world.

Once, in the Oval Office close to that unfortunate day, he even begged me to pray with him. Such a spiritual and holy man, he was.


-- Henry Kissinger,
former secretary of state


Dolphie is a great, great man. He makes the trains run on time . . . and the autobahn! It's to die for.

Der Führer is such und sweethearten, auch! He always tells me, "Eva, Sie werden
nie haff to worry at alles about beink senten to den Konzentrationslagern. We will be together for as long as we live."

Und he likes puppies, auch.


-- Eva Braun,
Reichsmistress
(March 1945)