I am watching this thing today about the Jerry Sandusky trial, where they were interviewing the President of the university Graham Spanier. What I heard about it is that this guy is being investigated, along with Joe Paterno, in being complicit in the Sandusky molestings. The quote at the end of that link involves the use of the word 'horseplay', in that an incident in 2001 was presented to Spanier as 'horseplay', involving Sandusky and a student in the shower. Spanier's take on it is that, when presented with that word for that situation, he dismissed it at the time as typical locker room shenanigans.
Whatever your take on the Sandusky thing may be, he was convicted of being a dick, which is excellent. My concern here is the continued witch-hunt of everybody else at the school who even knew this guy. I hear shit about the Freeh Report, and his investigation found Paterno may have been looking the other way, and... blah blah the fuck blah, I am not going to recap the whole thing. It is important that people who covered this shit up take some heat as well, but here is the frightening point I would like to make... the President of the University may be indicted over this, because one of his employees was a douchebag.
Think about the ramifications of that. Because you were associated with someone who was a criminal fuckwad, you are now pointed out as a potential criminal. This man Spanier is in his 60's, and he could spend the rest of his life in jail because he knew who Jerry Sandusky was, and employed him. What kind of demented shit do some of my co-workers do in their spare time that I don't know about? What kind of shit does my FAMILY do in their spare time, that I don't know about, but I become guilty by association? How much do you really know someone you work with? He obviously was diddling high school prospects for 4 decades without raising but a few chance eyebrows, would his colleagues have known he was doing that? Would his wife?
I called this post 'Scope of Evil', because that was a termed used to describe Sandusky during the report that I was watching. Now this prick is demonized on par with Adolf Hitler, Sadam Hussein, and Osama Bin Laden. Did Jerry Sandusky know what he was doing was wrong? Did he consider it wrong at the time? When you are doing something, I don't know, like parking in a handicap spot or swatting a Wal Mart greeter on the ass, do you feel 'wrong' for doing it? I feel bad parking in a handicap spot, because I know 'Its The Law'; but that is the only reason for me. I am not thinking about the crippled lady in the golf cart that now has to travel 15 extra feet to get in the store... I'm thinking about corn dogs and whiskey for my afternoon bath! I don't 'feel' evil for not being considerate to the elderly. Handicapped parking is a social convention that, generally speaking, we have all agreed is a good idea. Does it make me "evil" by habitually going against social convention?
Adolph Hitler is the epitome of Bond Villains; the standard in which we hold the term Evil in non-fiction society. Hitler was also an elected official of his party, the National Socialist German Workers Party. Which means, it wasn't Hitlers' ideas and orders that were carried out, but those of the Party that he was a part of. As in, he had THOUSANDS of supporters, human beings like you and me, that thought his ideas were pretty fucking groovy at the time. He wasn't the head of some fringe group like the KKK or the Juggalo's, he was nominated and elected amongst his peers (albeit fucked up peers) to be the leader. The Party seized power, and put Hitler at the top. Now, knowing all the shit that he did, do you think he felt that he was doing something wrong? Could anyone go about their day, every single day, saying 'Man, I'm a fucking evil bastard, every thing I do is fucked up, but I'ma keep doing it, cuz fuck it, right?'
Hitler was in power for around 11 years... Sandusky was apparently poking little boys bums for something like 40. Does that make him evil? Is he more evil, because his wrongness went on for 4 times as long? Did he know he was doing something bad, but kept doing it, over and over again? Or, did he somehow not realize that what he was doing was considered wrong amongst his peers? Could he have gone 40+ years being attracted to tiny butts, and just figured that every one else must also like tiny butts? How could this man have lived this long in modern society, keep doing what he was doing, and not feel bad about it? Then again, WHY is it considered wrong?
Don't go throwing shit at me, like I am defending a Child Molester, because fuck that guy, seriously. Fuck Catholic Priests too, and any body else who bullies people in to doing things. The point here is that, Evil is extraordinarily subjective to the beholder. We make jokes about priests touching boys, yet it keeps going on and keeps going on, and you wonder how these people continue doing this without seeing SOMETHING that indicates that they are doing something wrong. Media all over the planet focuses on things like this. I can see maybe being sheltered, but I certainly can't hide from media stories, as much as I may try. How do these things continue, with people not knowing that they are hurting someone by their actions?
I think about things that I do in the course of the day; making phone calls, writing a shitty blog, posting on facebook, whatever... and wonder what, if anything, that I might be doing that is WRONG or EVIL, that I don't realize is evil. Or, what one of my friends or family may be doing that I know, or don't know, about that is also WRONG or EVIL. This guy Spanier, the rest of his life is already ruined, he's lost his job, his retirement, his reputation, everything; simply because he KNEW a guy, who did some fucked up shit. And you think about lesser evils too, such as Enron and Lehman Brothers and Worldcom. Big, crooked companies that just paid employees, same as the job YOU are currently doing because you are paid to do it. Were ALL of the employees of Lehman Brothers complicit because they were paid to perform the actions that their employers told them to do, in order to earn a paycheck? Is it up to the individual employee at that point to determine what is moral and correct? I like my job quite a bit, and I do think some of the practices are a bit crooked, but I've thought that about every single job I've ever had. I believe that I work for a good and moral and relatively honest company that genuinely has the good will of its customers in mind.
But what if I'm wrong?
The Angry Man
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