The Deacon, my friend of nearly twenty years, called me yesterday to see if I wanted to go to lunch at Wild Mike’s, and, since I was was willing to be distracted from more mundane chores like grocery shopping, buying toilet paper, and the like, I readily agreed. I finished up the pedagogical work I had commenced a few hours before (again, willing to be distracted from what feels alternately like preparation/ praxis and windmill tilting), showered, shaved, and hit the road, listening to a mix that included Bob Marley, Hank Williams III, Johnny Cash, The Delfonics and Erykah Badu, devoutly praying that the recently unleashed in Ohio, Pennsylvania’s finest Lager Yuengling would be awaiting as the frosty accompaniment to the Stupid Hot Garlic and Hot Mike’s Mix I would be consuming. I was glad I had skipped Breakfast.
As I rolled in to The Deacon’s driveway, I found him in his garage, smoking a cigarette, listening to Dan Patrick on ESPN radio. We caught up for a minute on our lives, since I had just seen The Deacon two weeks before as we watch the surprisingly mighty Cincinnati Bengals freight train the hapless Seattle Seahawks, but it was impossible to ignore the harrowing conversation on the radio: Penn State. Coach Sandusky. Forcible Sodomy on a child. Joe Paterno. Who knew what? When?
The Deacon, taking a draw from his cigarette, blurted “Somebody needs to shoot that motherfucker.”
“How do you not stop that if you walk in on it?” I replied, wanting to seem reasonable but enraged by gross predation “I’d kick his ass, puke, and then call the cops. Prison is full of people who can trace where it went horribly wrong to a guy like Sandusky.”
After a mutual silence, punctuated by the horrible droning of soul killing details, almost without any other recourse, I broke: “Hey, I’m starving! Let’s eat!” feeling ashamed that my own horror wanted to badly change the subject…
Except the subject can’t be changed; the failure here is institutional and epically immoral, constituting, in my mind, a clear criminal conspiracy going all the way to the president’s office. Paterno fired? He’s lucky he’s not under indictment.
Lucky to not be under indictment? Not lucky so much as institutionalized, judging by the student body’s reaction…
There is a hubris in being institutionalized to the degree that someone like Joe Paterno is, and to question, let alone, fire someone like Paterno is akin to attacking the institution itself. These students, rather than flip cars or gather in the coach’s yard demanding answers as to why he protected a child rapist, rather than holding a vigil for the victims—poor kids—these children of privilege exploded in anger at the media. How dare these people question Coach? How dare this hard-core reality invade ridiculous torpor of my undergraduate partying? And like the institution, with all its hubris, the students, in all the hubris in being young, dumb and spoiled, want it all to go away. Why didn’t they just shut the fuck up?
Look, I’m not going to make hay out of the wrecked lives of these kids, now young adults, to further a metaphor, but I couldn’t help but think about how people will blame the victims of predation to protect avatars of various institutions. Certainly, watching the GOP debates have been exercises in victim-blaming; from the cheering of hypothetical death of uninsured patients, to the booing of real LGBT soldiers to last night’s audience toddler tantrum of Maria Bartiromo for having the temerity to ask Fred Thompson o’ the Month Herman Cain about a pattern of sexual imposition and his moral fitness to serve, all demonstrate an institutional hubris. How dare you question Herman Cain; as a business man, he loves capitalism. You question Herman Cain, you question America!
The equation goes like this:
A person entrenched within an Institution, and exhibiting the ostensible best virtues of that institute (such as bringing in mounds of cash, keeping the alumni happy, or being a good company person) will exist symbiotically with that institution, so that each become a priori unimpeachable (whether ideologically, historically, power and/or money wise).
e.g. 1: Joe Paterno= Penn State. Joe Paterno=Unimpeachable character, therefore Penn State=Unimpeachable character.
It’s not difficult to see how people get upset when this proposition proves disastrously wrong, but blame the paradigm, not the victims of the paradigm.
e.g.2: Businessman (say, Herman Cain)=Capitalism. Capitalism=unimpeachably good, therefore Business=unimpeachable good.
Which, of course, is predicated upon the following:
e.g. 3: America=Capitalism. America=No need to Apologize for anything, therefore Capitalism=No need to Apologize for anything.
I realize these are not tight, koan-like Wittgensteinian propositions, but they express what seems to be the logic which informs this kind of institutionalization (and yes, before anybody throws the tu quoque card…yeah, this applies to Obama, too, for crissakes). It was inconceivable under Paterno that such a thing could have happened, because he was (ostensibly) such an upright, moral human being. Similarly, as evidenced by the contempt the current crop of GOP candidates and their sycophants have for the Occupations, the unemployed, the homeless and the foreclosed upon, that the institution of capitalism could have failed, because that means that America failed. You saying America ain’t no good, buddy?
So what’s left? We have the shattered lives of these young people. We have the people of this country watching their lives slip from their control, our manifest destinies manifesting corporate serfdom, and the privileged few flipping cars because of the audacity to question the unquestionable. One wonders what could be accomplished if these students used that energy positively, and for the protection of the vulnerable how different things would be. As it is, they seem to be only worried about the justifiable ribbing they will take for their made in Guatemala Penn State Sweat shirt, and how their Saturday is ruined.
Update: Penn State alumni and friend of the blog Susan Bernstein’s, with her husband Steven Cormany’s, letter to the Trustees. Thomas Day sees a generational facet to institutional hubris.
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