Quick note about Penn State

This isn't usually the kind of thing I pay attention to, but X had the tee-vee on yesterday and I caught something that was so sleazy and transparent it pissed me right off. This is why I don't watch television, folks.

Some jerkhole from Penn State was giving a press conference regarding the little problem their beloved football coaches seem to have with sticking their penises in young boys. Generally parents don't expect their snowflakes to come home and have had something more vile and disgusting than school lunches them, so the university has been gutting high-profile coaches and even the college president - so much so that it looks like they're trying to remove a brain tumor with a chainsaw.

One question flew across from a reporter: "What's the most disturbing aspect of this case?"

Answer? "The victims."

Uh, what? What do you mean, victims? Are the children disturbing? Is this some kind of child rape-shame, that they're now the dirty girls and nobody in B-dorm will date them? Does this asshole just hate kids? Sure, the case is disturbing, but it's also disturbing when priests and Republicans do it, so why does this merit some kind of special level of disturbitude?

Now let me preface this with the fact that the college is trying to show lip service to parents everywhere, hammering home the point, "At Penn State, staff will probably not rape you." But here are a few things related to this case that are endemic of how sick we are as a society and are far more disturbing than perverted old fuckheads with decision-making power.

First off, that is absolutely the most self-serving and safe answer possible. And it is tragic - those kids are probably going to be fucked up for life. But again, it is the best attempt to paint Penn State as a kinder, gentler kind of child rapist. You know, the kind that lets the kid keep the candy afterward. From this we can infer that Penn State cares the most about Penn State, and not some kid's sore ass cheeks.

Far more disturbing than what is essentially the Catholic's diddling problem in big shoulder pads and tight little pants (side note: I've always found the traditional dress of football a little gay - I know emo kids whose pants aren't that tight and they don't spend their time throwing themselves onto piles of other sweaty men) are some of the reactions. Supporters of beloved coach Joe Paterno side with him even after the scandal broke, wearing white to a game as opposed to blue.

Blue being the official color of child rape, apparently. Who makes this shit up? Anyway.

Loyalty has always been a kind of funny thing to me. I believe in it, but there have to be limits, and I'd say imparting a child with severe trauma he won't remember until he's 40 is a pretty big one. And I'm sure there aren't many Lions fans offering up their firstborn complete with a sticky note reading, "Go Nuts." So in a way, coming out in support of these ass-hats is saying, "Pork my kid and I'll fucking kill you, but do it to someone else's and we can still get drinks Friday."

It was my assumption that once it broke that you were a pedophile, the entire world turned against you, and if you came out in support of a pedophile as Paterno evidently has done, it just turned fucking faster. I guess that rule only applies to people who don't have glorified Nike-sponsored daycares named after them:

Someone call Alanis Morissette and tell her that this is the definition of irony, not anything in her toe-tappingly stupid fucking song.

There's also a new run of rape jokes flying around Penn State's campus. Now, it is a firm pillar of my entire existence that nothing is sacred, and all aspects of life no matter how disgusting, evil or tragic are ripe for parody, but rape isn't exactly the low-hanging fruit. As Facebook has proven, our prudish, overbearing nanny-state of social mores has forbidden us from publicly making jokes about race, religion, and stuff that generally tends to offend large groups of people, but sexual assault is still hilarious, and offending all women everywhere isn't a problem because they only think they're people anyway.

One must also understand that the human brain works in strange, generally offensive ways. Part of the reason "dark humor" exists is because when Joe Average is confronted with something so terrible his normal, raised-in-suburbia-on-Saturday-morning-cartoons-and-public-school can't comprehend, the mental defense is to laugh. It's why an episode of I Love Lucy where Lucille Ball throws herself down a flight of stairs is side-splitting in the context of physical comedy, but if it were to happen in front of you, you'd probably call the paramedics.

But let's be clear. There is a line as thick as a Buick between this and saying, "Know what's 9 inches and gets me laid? My knife." The former is a little perverted, but if you're willing to see passed the dick jokes you get that it's a play on advertising to children. The latter isn't funny. It isn't even a joke. It's really just a way of saying, "Yeah so, in all seriousness, you'll probably get raped."

I can't really tell if the recent attention rape jokes have been getting is genuine hatred towards women (something that is always present in society, even if it isn't obvious), pretentiousness, stupidity, or something that has always been there and is just now squarely in the media cross-hair. But all of that is beside the point.

Making a joke of something terrible does two good things at once. It makes the issue accessible to all, and allows for discussion by all - something George Carlin mastered better than any other comedian I am aware of. But the brand of humor that is now popular (if it could even be called humor) doesn't do either of those things. At best it's negligible and irresponsible, and at worst it glorifies. This is effectively the response Penn State has when beloved sons get caught putting their sexual organs in The Forbidden Zone.

So Penn State, there are things that are much more disturbing than "the victims" in this case (and I assume it's a very big headache for you that there are victims to begin with, yeah?) It is not often one has a chance to step into the limelight and say something meaningful that literally affects everyone, and you have a chance here, to speak about the culture of entitlement among public figures, of misplaced loyalties and about things that really aren't funny. But instead, you're choosing to do nothing but cover your own massive anuses and talk down to those of us listening like we're a bunch of fucking five-year-olds who need to get out of the kitchen because mom and dad are fighting.