Like everyone else I am repulsed by the sex scandal at Penn State … and the scandalous responses to it (the long-time non-response, the recent rioting, the looking the other way by leaders who should have been responsible). I have nothing to add to the ongoing analysis of those events, but I will share with you a powerful though possibly idiosyncratic association with an earlier sex scandal they brought to mind: Penn State in all its gory reminds me of the response to Bill Clinton’s sexual misbehavior.
This is not the first time the response to an offensive sex scandal has reminded me of Bill Clinton, and here I am simply going to repeat what I posted back in 2003 (in Rape. Reminds Me Of…), which discussed “the story of the Pennsylvania high school football players who raped, sodomized, and generally assaulted younger teammates (one of whom required surgery) at a summer football camp while their teammates looked on, only to face slap-on-the wrist responses once the incident was publicized.” (Pure coincidence that that was also from Pennsylvania. Isn’t it?)
Adding insult to the assaults, their parents, the cheerleaders, other players, and many good burghers of the town only got bent out of shape when the rest of the football season was cancelled.
This whole obscene scenario reminds me, of course, … of Bill Clinton. No, not his alleged rape of Juanita Broaddrick. [Attention! Even if you don’t click on it, run your cursor over that last hyperlink and look at it. Just the link itself says volumes.] The town’s response to the cancellation of the team’s games reminds me of the response of Clinton’s supporters to his misbehavior.
My favorite analogy at the time of Clinton’s, and our, troubles was to think of Clinton as a small town high school football coach with a good season but bad habits with the underage cheerleaders, habits covered up by another of his bad habits: lying about his behavior in inquiries by the principal, school board, etc.
Coach Clinton’s friends and supporters circle the wagons in defense, arguing that nobody’s perfect and besides, his most vocal critics are moralistic, fundamentalist absolutists who get upset at the prospect of anyone having a good time, even innocently. Why deprive the town and its team of a winning season, they ask, just to satisfy some right wing prudes?
The analogy, of course, is not perfect, but then I never claimed an analogy. What I did claim was an association, and since that resides inside my head I can assure you that it’s real, i.e., that I did in fact make the association with Clinton. In his case, however, the wagon-circling burghers won. Unlike Coach Paterno and President Spanier, Clinton was not fired.
ADDENDUM
I should add that the tendency of partisans to circle the wagons in defense of their own coach under attack is unfortunately bipartisan, as demonstrated recently by some of the good burghers defending Herman Cain. I am not referring to criticism of the mainstream media for going public and piling on in the absence of any real evidence, which I share. But I think Peggy Noonan is right to chastise those in the audience at the last Republican debate who “booed the question and the questioner” when Cain was asked about the charges.
“What the Republicans in the audience were seeing,” Noonan writes,
was a sympathetic guy struggling with grave charges that may or may not be true. (Though yes, in any audience there would be some who react, inside and down deep, as if they run Penn State: Why let a few allegations get in the way of the fun?)
….
What the charges deserve is consideration, attention, deep reporting. What they don’t merit is raucous boos, and an insular spirit of “You’re either with us or against us.”
