What is happening at Penn State is not a tragedy for Penn State.From Athenae at First Draft. Read the rest at the link.
It's not a tragedy for Joe Paterno, or Graham Spanier, or any one of a thousand students whose school just became a national punch line.
It's not a tragedy for alumni who will have to answer questions for a week or two from prurient and stupid work colleagues.
It's not a tragedy for football fans, or for student athletes.
This is a tragedy for the children raped by Jerry Sandusky, and that is IT.
Well said. Thank you, Athenae.
Thanks for the link, Mimi. She is dead-on.
ReplyDeleteThe Penn State business, and the zero-tolerance response of the University's trustees to the scandal, will do much to destroy the culture of indifference that has, until very recently, effectively shielded and protected the Roman Catholic bishops of the US from the consequence of their sins of omission and commission relative to child abuse. The shock waves from the incident may also very well cook the Presiding Bishop's goose.
ReplyDeleteIn her column in Tuesday's New York Times, Maureen Dowd writes "Like the Roman Catholic Church, Penn State is an arrogant institution hiding behind its mystique. And sports, as my former fellow sports columnist at The Washington Star, David Israel, says, is “an insular world that protects its own, and operates outside of societal norms as long as victories and cash continue to flow bountifully.” Penn State rakes in $70 million a year from its football program."
The PB still has a chance to tell the story, all of it. She would do well to follow Jim Naughton's advice:
ReplyDeleteIn Crisis Communications 101 (a course that exists entirely in my head) one is taught rules for governing the release of bad news: tell it yourself, tell it all, and tell it quickly. These rules apply with special force to organizations whose moral credibility is their stock in trade. I don’t know that the presiding bishop has bad news to deliver, but either way, she would be well advised to put the facts of the Parry case before us.
Of course the time for 'tell it quickly' is past and gone, but 'tell it yourself' and 'tell it all' are still possible.