No real disagreement ....

Since I comment on Jack Kelly every week, I feel compelled to say something about this week's column. But this week Kelly is talking about the Penn State mess, and the failure of leaders there to act. It seems he is basing his column on a sermon given by (what I assume is) his pastor. And frankly, I don't have any major disagreement with what Kelly says in his column.

To me, the only discussion that makes sense is whether McQureary should have physically defended the boy that particular night and then called the cops, or only called cops, University or town. Of course, as we know he did neither, and nobody thinks what he did was adequate. Frankly Joe Paterno should have never been involved, but since he was, he is fair game for what he failed to do as well, as is the athletic director and the University President. As Kelly says, the powerful protected each other and I will add another entity they tried to protect, the all powerful football program. Of course, because of McQreary's, Paterno's and Curley's failusre to act they end up dragging the football program into the scandal.

Kelly takes pains to say that Sandusky and this fellow Bernie Fine are not victims but victimizers. I might be inclined to say the two are somewhat victims, but agree that mostly they are victimizers and that what they did to those boys was far worse than any pain they themselves have experienced. They are the textbook definition of one type of criminal, someone who knows right from wrong but gives into what they know is an illegal sexual impulse.

I remember an interesting discussion/argument between two co-workers (which I involved myself in on the periphery). One is a male Muslim and the other a woman (Christian, I am not sure whether Catholic or Protestant). The woman was complaining about Muslin treatment of women, and the Muslim brought up how the ancient Greek adult males interacted with young boys. The Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss surveyed as many cultures as he could find and found that the one (and only) taboo he could find across all cultures is incest. Despite that fact, no one in the history of America would make an argument that adult males interacting sexually with male children is in any way acceptable. I have no doubt that Sandusky and Fine knew that, and should have sought therapy or some type of counseling instead of acting on their impulses.

I think we call all agree on (at least) that.