Can one man tweet continuously about the Penn State scandal?

Yes, yes @SportsByBrooks can.  Dudes like Brooks literally LIVE for events like this.  Remember the torrent of stories on his web site during the Cam Newton scandal?  He pretty much got borderline obsessive on that one.

But he’s outdone himself with this Sandusky thing.  The fallout from the mushroom cloud of righteous indignation over his house will settle over California and trigger a riot that will make the one in State College last night look like a pillow fight in comparison.

Seriously, it’s damn near 11:00 PM EST on Thursday, November 10.  We’re on the downward slope of a story that broke this past WEEKEND.  Let’s recap the seismic events have already happened: multiple people have been fired at Penn State, an interim coach has been named, Sandusky is in jail, etc.

Damn near everyone is kind of getting disgusted about being disgusted about Sandusky.  I don’t know about you but I’m  ready to take a step back and revisit this mess at a later time, because I can only wallow in the mire for so long.

But not Brooks, no, definitely not Brooks.  He’s evolved into a perfect trolling machine, spitting out tweet after tweet after tweet about this.  Don’t believe me?  See for yourself, this was just the past 20 minutes:

God, please let Roy Williams stab Tom Izzo in the neck on the deck of that aircraft carrier tomorrow night so Brooks can have something else to obsess over.  I know, I know, I already hear your solution: “Just quit following him, asshole.”

The problem is this…I can’t.  You see, I have this weird Twitter code in that I follow him and he follows me back.  And I won’t give up on a mutual follow.  I know, it’s silly, but if you’re reading this then you probably know I take my Twitter seriously.  So troll on, Brooks, I won’t quit you.

The Penn State sex scandal is a study in self-preservation

In the early morning hours of March 13, 1964, a 28-year old woman named Kitty Genovese was killed outside her apartment in the Kew Gardens section of Queens. Her assailant, some mother fucker named Winston Moseley, raped and stabbed her during an attack that lasted half an hour. At several points during the horrifying ordeal, Genovese cried out for help.

Upwards of a dozen people heard her screams or witnessed parts of the attack but nobody bothered to act until it was much too late. Essentially, the self-preservation instinct of these people outweighed the desire to help another human being in need.

To these folks, getting involved in any meaningful way would have been much too messy:

“What if the son of a bitch comes after me?”
“It will be one hell of a pain in the ass to have to testify in court.”
“That’s just some guy beating up his girlfriend. I don’t want to get involved in other people’s business.”

Unfortunately, history shows us that this was far from being an isolated incident:

A 2-year-old girl who was run over by two vehicles and left lying in the street ignored by bystanders died early Friday morning in a Guangdong hospital, Chinese media reported. She had been in a coma since the incident one week ago.

The plight of the little girl, identified as Xiao Yueyue, ignited an intense round of public soul-searching here on why so many people — 18, according to surveillance video of the scene — could pass by an injured, bleeding toddler in the road without offering to help. Some of the passersby had to steer their motorcycles around her body.

The girl was finally pulled to the side of the road by a old woman who was scavenging through garbage.  (Washington Post)

That whole episode occurred just last month. Why would so many people just ignore a child who lay dying? In the same article Keith Richburg offered an explanation:

Some blamed a past series of incidents in which people who stopped to help elderly strangers who had fallen found themselves accused of wrongdoing and ordered to pay compensation. Others pointed to a pattern of corruption and sense of impunity by top Communist Party and government officials that has made the general population more uncaring and self-centered. (Washington Post)

It would seem that the bystanders in that incident had clearly developed a “I gotta save my ass before I can even think about saving yours” attitude when confronted with someone in distress.  You see, it all comes back to self-preservation.

Which brings me to the awful mess going on at Penn State.  It’s still difficult for me to fathom how one of the most high profile assistant coaches of the last quarter century could be a straight up monster.  But that’s exactly what Jerry Sandusky is.

The details have been splattered everywhere by now.  In 2002, Mike McQueary, then a graduate assistant coach, witnessed Sandusky committing a sexual assault on a young boy in the showers at Penn State’s Lasch Football building. 

At that very moment, McQueary was no different than a neighbor of Kitty Genovese or any bystander who was approaching that injured Chinese toddler.  The boy being assaulted by Sandusky needed help right then and there.

But McQueary didn’t walk into that shower and kick Sandusky in his nut sack.  Hell, he didn’t even call the police.  Instead, McQueary called his father, who told him to get out of the building.  It was the senior McQueary who informed Penn State head coach Joe Paterno the next day what his son had witnessed.

What prevented Mike McQueary from fulfilling what we all feel is a moral obligation to lend immediate aid to a fellow human being who is in distress?  If you guessed it was self-preservation, then you’re exactly right.

At the time, McQueary was the low guy on the Penn State coaching totem pole.  Graduate assistants have to claw their way up to actual coaching positions through long hours of grunt work, all the while living on a pittance.  I can see how a guy in that position, with head coaching aspirations dancing through his head, might view being caught up in a scandal as a potential career killer.

So that’s why I’m convinced that in the back of his mind, McQueary thought that levying that kind of charge on Sandusky might somehow come back to haunt him.  After all, that’s a guy who happens to be Paterno’s lifelong friend.  In his mind, McQueary could see his coaching career coming to an end before it ever started if Paterno had called him a nutbag for making that kind of accusation at Sandusky.

McQueary’s call to his father wasn’t to get advice on how to help that boy who he witnessed being molested.  No, that call was to get advice on how best to cover his own ass in the matter.  To hell with the kid, he had a career to worry about.

And speaking of careers, that’s exactly what Paterno had in mind when he received that information on what Sandusky had been up to in the showers.  Oh sure, he informed Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley and school administrator Gary Schultz of the accusations soon after he received the information himself.  But a call to the police?  That apparently wasn’t an option for JoePa. 

Keeping the matter in house was the way to go because this wasn’t the first time Sandusky had been caught.  He had already been investigated for having engaged in an inappropriate manner with a boy in the football facility’s showers back in 1998.  I’ll let Nate Schweber of the New York Times fill in the details on how that turned out:

A lengthy police report was generated, state prosecutors said. The boy was interviewed. A second potential victim was identified. Child welfare authorities were brought in. Sandusky confessed to showering with one or both of the children. The local district attorney was given material to consider prosecution.

In the end, no prosecution was undertaken. The child welfare agency did not take action. And, according to prosecutors, the commander of the university’s campus police force told his detective, Ronald Schreffler, to close the case.

“Sandusky admitted showering naked with Victim 6, admitted to hugging Victim 6 while in the shower and admitted that it was wrong,” said the report issued last weekend by the Pennsylvania attorney general. “Detective Schreffler advised Sandusky not to shower with any child again and Sandusky said that he would not.”  (New York Times).

Sandusky retired the following year, but Paterno allowed him to stay connected to the program.  That’s how Sandusky was able to get boys from his nonprofit foundation, the Second Mile, into Penn State facilities in 2002.

I’m convinced that if Paterno had called the police after talking to the senior McQueary that the same scenario that played out this week would’ve played out back then: he would’ve ended up being fired.  How would it have unfolded?  Details of Sandusky’s 1998 charge would’ve come to light.  Then people would’ve asked how Paterno could let a pedophile stay connected to the program.  Not long after that his head would’ve eventually rolled.

Paterno knew full well that the backlash from turning in Sandusky himself would’ve brought him down.  All that hard work that he put into building a program that was admired by literally millions of people would’ve been for nothing.  His legacy would’ve lay in shambles.  In the end, we now know he was simply delaying the inevitable. 

Self-preservation drove Mike McQueary to protect a career that was just starting.  The same instinct drove Joe Paterno to protect one he had taken decades to craft.  Meanwhile, kids continued to be raped.  In my mind that makes McQueary and Paterno no different than any of the bystanders who let a Chinese toddler bleed to death.

But let me add one disclaimer: I don’t for one second think that the folks who display such righteous indignation over this scandal are automatically infinitely better human beings than McQueary or Paterno.  There might come a time when each of them will be faced with a self-preservation instinct that runs counter to the desire to provide aid to someone who desperately needs it.  Will the right thing be done in every one of those instances?  Unfortunately, history shows us that it won’t.