The tragedy of Joe Paterno

By Frosty Wooldridge

This past week, one of the icons of college football fell hard, fell deep and fell forever in the eyes of the American public.  He fell from something that occurred outside his boundaries, but within his responsibilities.   Joe Paterno led great teams at Penn State also known as “Linebacker U”, but he didn’t stop his pedophile assistant coach Sandusky from raping 10 year old boys in the college shower rooms.

It reminds me of Macbeth’s famous line, “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools, the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)

Sexual molestation of children continues as a routine aspect of life in America.  With the Internet porn sites and fatherless families, molestation accelerates beyond anyone’s imagination or comprehension.

Gays, straights and other characters play on the fears and insecurities of children.  Fathers rape their 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 year old daughters.  Men cheat on their wives with regularity as well as women cheat on their husbands.

As much as it pains me, my brother and I were molested by our 5^th and 6^th grade teachers, both homosexuals.  Thankfully, we stopped them from doing their damage beyond initial advances.  In college, a number of homosexuals preyed on my brother and me.  We rebuffed them because we were too big to handle.

Across this nation, straight and homosexual (gays) men prey on children.  It’s a matter of new adventures for their sexual proclivities.

Joe Paterno didn’t report the attack, or at least didn’t follow up on the attack by Sandusky, so Paterno forever, after 46 years of coaching, takes the long dive to ruination. 

But it calls into question our civilization or humanity’s culpability.  With so much child rape and molestation, what drives it, what causes it, what allows it and why has it proceeded at such high levels in this seemingly moral society?

If you look out across media land, television land and advertising—you may observe a hint at the hypersexual focus on breasts, on suggestive shows, on “Sex in the City”,  “Desperate Housewives” and on sexual innuendoes that dominate television shows.  When you understand that Americans watch 15 years (in eight hour stretches as reported on NPR) of television in their lifetimes rather than going outside and participating in sports or other life-giving activties—you can see what they do with their pent up hyper-sexual drive.

Additionally, we have lost as a nation any sense of moral and ethical behavior.  Millions of teens become pregnant before marriage and without any form of self-support.  Unwed mothers have become the norm.  If you think such children having children can rear a child to be moral and ethical in their choices and actions, you have another reality check to accomplish.

What can we do as a society to bring about more self respect, more personal responsibility, more understanding of moral and ethical behavior?

Instead of our hyper-war activities where we carry on 10 year wars and spend trillions of dollars, we might spend money on our schools, libraries and jobs for the poor that give self respect along with a decent home and community.  We might engage in rearing our children with sports, community responsibilities and healthy personal behaviors fostered by fathers and mothers.  We might attempt to teach husband and wife relationships in our schools to give our young some kind of understanding of what it means to become a productive human being in our civilization.

Will we embark on such a path? 

It’s really up to leaders, parents and communities to take action on the local level.  If not, we will continue to lead the world in hyper-sexual media sensation and watch as more and more victims suffer the results.

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