Joe Paterno is dead. Now comes the hypocrisy of the press that Newt Gingrich denounced during his march to victory in South Carolina.
I was listening to Sally Jenkins talk about her time interviewing Joe Pa shortly before he died. She dismissed the pseudo-psychobabble most news and sports commentators suggested was Joe's undoing, namely, remorse and regret for being exiled from his beloved Penn State football coaching chores in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child rape scandal. (I'm not calling it "abuse" or "molestation." Rape is rape and that's what the issue is all about.) Sally was blunt and down to earth. She posited that the chemo killed him. Joe Pa, she said, was a real man and he would not have surrendered to self-pity. He was too strong for that.
Sally is from Fort Worth, Texas stock. Good people are born and raised ...and some leave Fort Worth.
Sally's dad, Dan, wrote one of my favorite books: Semi-Tough. Very irreverent. Very funny. Blunt in its imagery but really on target. People in the North East, polite politically correct people can't take the Jenkins family brand of honesty or humor. They get offended.
Sally was very direct in her description of Paterno. And she described his take on what he did with regard to notice of the Sandusky depravity exactly as I posited in an early blog. He did his duty. He reported it up the ranks. Joe was not a cop. He was not a prosecutor. He was not a jury, nor a judge. He was not a vigilante. He was not a lynch mob. But the press pilloried him for failing to climb aboard a white horse and hang the bastard from the nearest goal post. To the man and woman, the national media pushed and heaved until the ikon known as Joe Paterno was trashed.
Joe Pa anguished over the plight of the violated and, as any true civil libertarian worth his or her salt, refused to trample the rights and reputation of Sandusky over something he did not see and over which no court had ruled. You can't blame him. McCleary who claimed to have intervened during the infamous shower incident involving Sandusky and a youth is hardly the paragon of truth or courage or character. Except for his interview with Sally and most probably with the writer cobbling together a biography on the man, Joe Pa never got to tell his side of the story publicly. The University silenced him.
Joe Pa did his duty. Unfortunately, those above him in the correct positions to put Sandusky where he belonged were less than men. They were a craven lot eager to show off their clean underwear rather than do their duty.
Sally painted a portrait of Joe Paterno as a stellar husband, father, coach, teacher, neighbor and human. His children she characterized as the sort of folk who make great company, friends, citizens. His home was filled with fun, food, family, and friendship. It was the type Italian family we all enjoy ...until that is when a few coins get tossed certain siblings' way.
Now, Sally's host said the lionization of Joe Paterno will begin. It should never have gone on hiatus. But that's the way the Media treats American ikons and heroes. Sometimes the post-mortem praise is just. Sometimes it's just plain hypocrisy. I give you Ted Kennedy.
If you listened to the commentary during his funeral, you'd think the nation just lost and buried a combination of George Washington and Abe Lincoln with a touch of Winston Churchill tossed in. We didn't. Ted was a farce and a fool. He was without doubt one of the worst legislators to ever disgrace Capitol Hill. He was, to someone's credit, smart enough to hire some impressive people whose ideas and initiatives he took for his own. Ted was a liar, a cheat and a coward whose family money kept him from prison or worse. And for those who are a bit light on history, that money came from supplying illegal hooch to the likes of Al Capone and friends during Prohibition. Plenty of people with more research credentials than I suggest in the strongest manner that family ties from those "good old days" played a pivotal role in getting his late brother elected President. Ted was the type national idol the Bible called "false."
So where does Newt fit into this?
He will be dangling at the end of a true media lynch mob rope by this November. Why? Because if he is true to form, he's not going to transform into a bowl of lukewarm flip-flop spit in an effort to get the media to love him. Unfortunately, a bit of honesty among our public figures is all too rare and a commodity the media just can't stomach.
Ask Coach John Thompson, the father, not the son. Big John is hated by any number of people who hear what they want to hear when he speaks...but who fail to hear or understand the words he speaks. I've heard countless invectives hurled his way by thick-skulled folks who claim he can't stand white folk. Forget for the moment that the mother of his children, his wife, is pink of complexion. I guess that's the hue of "white" folk. I wouldn't know. My father's World War II draft papers characterized him as "olive."
Listen carefully to Coach Thompson when he weighs in on social issues. His intellectual foundation is old school, Catholic school when the nuns taught and we listened. He weighs in against stupidity much like the Biblical tale of a young Jesus flogging folks who turned the Temple into an open market. He's dead right in flaming against the DC public schools for abandoning the athletic talent of its students, and of elected officials pocketing tax dollars earmarked for sports programs. And, don't let anyone play the race card in front of him. If your line of argument against a person or condition is based on skin pigment or ethnic derivation, he won't tolerate it from anyone of any color variation. As he so eloquently pointed out when one prize fighter of African descent was called not black enough by another of similar origins, John T simply called the man a racist. The race card is the last resort of the intellectually bankrupt.
So all I've got to say is Dan, Sally, Newt, John T. keep it up. Call 'em like you see 'em. Let our ikons stand tall but don't hesitate to topple the idols no matter how politically sacred.
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