McQueary and Mobs

There is nothing more foolish, nothing more given to outrage than a useless mob.  --Herodotus

Students learn of the firing of former coach Joe Paterno and what is described on the news as a “small riot” breaks out.  I hear and wonder exactly what is a “small” riot?

 The footage showed what looked like a telephone booth (or was it a van?) overturned, a student atop a light pole and a group of students shouting and perhaps chanting.  It was nighttime.

The reported chants were “We want Joe back” and “One more game!”

And now it is reported that Assistant Coach Mike McQueary will not be on the field on Saturday for Penn State’s game, due to threats against McQueary, who was reportedly an eye-witness to one of the sodomy episodes at the center of the scandal at the school.

So here’s my question for the day, with a few givens:

1. GIVEN that Mike Mcqueary’s response of not intervening to save the child he saw being brutalized with his own eyes would not have been your response

2. GIVEN that you would have definitely intervened then and there

3. GIVEN that real people, children at that, were really hurt in real and lasting ways, at least some in a place (a college campus locker room) where they should have been safe and protected, but were not

Given all these things, and any other suppositions we care to make, how are the death threats against McQueary different than the behavior of the students rioting in the night with their foolish chant, One more game?

Aren’t both the reaction of the mob?

The punditry have given us the correct level of moral outrage, but did we really need that?  Do we really need anyone to tell us that this was wrong?  We know it was wrong, all of it.

But what we, the collective expression of opinion and will of the nation, do with this knowledge is the challenge.

We can, as we usually do and seem to be doing now, simply express our outrage, as if the mere expression of offense is taking action.

Or again, we can look to our own mirrors.  There are some hard and bitter truths to be found there:

1. Children in every neighborhood in every village, town and city in this country and around the world are exploited by adults while other adults look on and do nothing.

2. For every one of us who really would have stepped in in that locker room, there are probably ten who would have turned and walked away.  It happens every day.

3. Being disconnected from each other in any genuine sense of community (what philosophers call post-modernism [fn]) means that we have no sense of duty to the other, because we have no sense of the humanity of the other.  It is not surprising that we walk away.  It is sad, heartbreaking even, but not surprising.

If all we have to give the children who were exploited and abused is our outrage, it is little enough.  And they need so much more from us.  Perhaps a good starting place would be to stay off the streets and simply sit for a time with the enormity of it all.  For it is in the still small voice that Truth comes.

And Truth would remind us that all of us have walked away from somebody who needed us . . . all of us have let people down . . . and all of us can become better than we have been. . . better people, better family members, better citizens.

Threatening to kill Mike McQueary is no virtue.  It does not undo what was done.  And contrary to what we may tell ourselves, our outrage does not establish us as morally superior.

There is a place for outrage . . . it is and can be the impetus for change, individual and societal.

But remaining stuck in a perpetual state of outrage is unhealthy and ultimately is worse than doing nothing, because it gives us the illusion that we are acting for change when in fact we are doing nothing at all.

Moreover, our outrage, when given vent in the form of violence (and threats are themselves a form of violence) merely demonstrates than we are really no different at all.

If all we have to offer the children are our threats and our anger, we have failed.  We have failed them.  We have failed ourselves. And we have failed our God.

God’s call is to justice, not spleen venting.

And worst of all, perhaps, by giving vent, what we are actually doing is making this about us rather than about the true victims.

Where are the prayer vigils?

Where are the calls to friends who have suffered similarly asking if they’re all right?  For surely, any such news is a shock to those who have walked that horrible walk themselves.

Where are our tears?

And for outrage, where is our shock and dismay at the self-inflicted organization of our own destruction in the form of established power systems that cannot help but do what they did by virtue of their very nature?

More simply said, how dare we be surprised?

How dare we, who create demi-gods of our sports figures and give them immense power and wealth and acclaim and protection from lesser sins, be surprised that they took us at our word when it came to the greater ones that we did not want to know?

For let us remember, rules and laws were in place telling each one of those involved within the educational system what they were to do in such an event.  The problem is that they didn’t follow the rules.  But they seldom do.  And most days, we could care less.

Child sexual exploitation is not so much about sex as it is about power.  When we finally grasp that truth, it becomes clear how we are all complicit

And this isn’t touchy-feely do-gooder liberal gibberish.  This is hard truth.

When we set up systems with rules but then tell those within the system that they are exempt from the rules, we can’t be surprised that they believe us.

When we get angry with rule enforcers for consequences to the car-buying, money-lavishing behaviors in amateur sports; when we propose to ‘solve’ this problem not by stopping the practice but by legalizing it; when we value those of the institution or system not for their learning (the supposed purpose of colleges, after all) but for their money-making ability; when we wink and nod at grade fixing and criminal behavior by our sports ‘warriors’, we cannot, with any integrity, be surprised.

We have had our time of outrage.  It’s time to move on to the hard work, the hard work of being accountable to each other, the hard work of rethinking systems of power, the hard work of caring enough about each other to hold each other accountable before the horrors rather than after, the hard work of being citizens, people who live not alone but in community.

______

Fn.  With the denial of an objective reality and an objective Truth, postmoderns have been denied a sense of self and have developed a fascination with power.  Postmodernism and You.  The loss of self and the concomitant increased focus on power makes the mob a likely outcome in a time of crisis.  That, of course, is not new (although it can be seen as evidence of a society devolving rather than evolving).  What might be new, is our tendency to give meaning to the trivial, as in rioting to give Joe Paterno one more coaching opportunity.  It would be hard to imagine anything less important given the disclosures of the day.

Joe, Joe, What Did You Know?

I’m not much of a sports fan, but even I know Joe Paterno, the grandfather of college football, whose very name evokes his long-standing image of being the kind of coach you’d like your kids to have.

You know . . . paterno, sounding so much of paternal, or fatherly. But it turns out Paterno is a place name for a town with ancient roots in Sicily and that the name paterno comes from the Greek paeter, meaning fortress.

Given recent events, it is the image of the fortress rather than the protecting father that comes to mind.

The repeat of Mr. Paterno’s name in the title above is the cadence of the biblical lament . . . the signal of pain so deep that the words seeking to express the pain must be repeated. And it is pain that the nation is experiencing. . . the pain of disappointment and shock and disbelief . . . the pain of betrayal . . . the pain of looking in the mirror and not liking what we see.

Reflecting on the depth of pain expressed on the national stage, I am struck by the fortress image.

What causes otherwise good, kind, and even noble human beings to run and hide from ugly truths, particularly about people we like or revere?

Why is it so easy for some of us to believe the worst and for others so virtually impossible to believe anything but?

Why can we not take people as they are, sometimes noble and sometimes incredibly stupid, ignorant, frightened, and just plain wrong?

In June of this year, David McRaney posted an article on his blog You Are Not So Smart, a piece titled The Backfire Effect, the thesis of which is: When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.

In other words, contrary facts make us believe what we believe more rather than less.

Or stated even more simply, don’t bother me with the facts.

McRaney makes a strong case. I hope he’s wrong, which may simply be evidence of my own backfiring effect.

I hope McRaney is wrong, but his theory is the only explanation I have for the response of some to give Herman Cain more money and support in the face of not only allegations, but also two legal settlements of sexual harassment claims against him and for students marching in support of Joe Paterno in the face of his concealment, passive or active, of allegations of child sexual abuse by a colleague and subordinate.  Whether we like Mr. Paterno or not, under the circumstances, an honoring parade hardly seems appropriate.

Avoiding a rush to judgment is one thing; insisting that these things simply could not be true and attacking those making the allegations is quite another.

The truth the Backfire Effect seems to be getting at is this: it is easier to simply hold to our beliefs rather than to reexamine them. It is more comfortable to continue to believe that we are right rather than accept that our judgment might have been wrong. It feels more honorable to claim honor for those who do not deserve it rather than acknowledge that they and we are broken and sometimes simply cannot be trusted.

In 12-Step programs, the word for the phenomena is denial, the refusal to believe or accept that something is true because the believing and accepting would require some unwanted action on our parts.

In spiritual terms, the same word might apply. Denial protects us from having to do the hard work of being human together, of having to look at ourselves and each other with the divine love that would hold us accountable, knowing that that very accountability is itself an expression of great love.

By hiding in our national tendency to denial, it seems to me that we do ourselves, as well as others, a great disservice. And we get the questions that need asking wrong. The question to ask ourselves about Herman Cain is not, I submit, whether he did or did not sexually harass female colleagues. The question is whether someone who has settled two claims of sexual harassment (because that is the fact) is someone I want to be my president. Sexual harassment is the term we use for behavior that, when it moves from the verbal to the physical, is criminal. We can dress it up any way we like, but that’s what it is. 

In the situation of Joe Paterno, the question is not whether he is a good football coach or even a generally good and likeable man. The answer to both seems to be yes. But that is beside the point. The question is whether an employee of a college can continue to remain in his position after failing to notify legal authorities of allegations of child sexual abuse on the part of another employee of the institution. That answer is equally clear: no.

Isn’t it time we took seriously our duty to Truth to name things as they are? Isn’t it time we come out of the false paeter fortress of our own construction and into the arms of wisdom, knowledge, truth-telling, and courage that we might deal with the destruction we do singly and together?

Isn’t it well past time that we ask ourselves how it is that we have built a society together in which people believe themselves to be good and honorable while concealing the exploitation of children and settling claims that they sexually exploit those who work for them? 

Neither of these episodes represent good and honorable behavior.

Isn’t now the time to simply sit with the enormity of those realities and come to some answers about who we are and who we wish to be?

Isn’t it time?