By Dennis J. Freeman
Jerry Sandusky still doesn’t get it. Going on national television and admitting he “shouldn’t have showered with those kids” and horsed around with young boys in the nude, shows Sandusky doesn’t get it. All that horseplay butt-naked with vulnerable adolescents for the last 15 years have brought about 40 sexual molestation and child rape charges against the former Penn State assistant coach.
And yet the 67-year-old Sandusky had the arrogance not to give an emphatic no answer to a simple question if he was sexually attracted you young boys. Sandusky gave no sniff of an apology to the alleged victims during his interview. And he probably won’t. This shows he is still clueless about the gravity of his alleged crimes.
It seems that shame and remorsefulness towards the alleged victims are not part of his DNA. But he is not alone. With accusations of sexually assaulting at least eight boys in the last 15 years, Sandusky has plenty of company in the blame game in the what-went-wrong scandal now engulfing one of the most storied football programs in the country.
Penn State assistant coach Mike McQuaeary, who testified to a grand jury that he witnessed Sandusky raping a child in the team’s shower facilities, is high on that list. It also appears that McQueary is on the out-to-lunch mindset after he contradicted himself through a couple of emails that suggest that he stopped Sandusky in his track and reported the incident to police.
Either McQueary is a bold-face liar or he is just as ignorant as Sandusky and the rest of the Penn State gang about the fact that their once-cocoon world has come crashing down all around. Right now it appears McQueary is a flat-out liar because the cops came and out rebuffed what he said.
That would make him both a liar and a coward.
What a loser. According to the grand jury report, the then-28-year-old McQueary saw the child being raped in the showers by Sandusky, tucked his tail between his legs and walked on the young boy to call his daddy. Really? Who does that? What man does that?
And then, according published reports, McQueary, who was a graduate assistant then, was seen weeks later, participating in a golf tournament that was hosted by Sandusky. This was nine years ago. That should tell you all you need to know about McQueary and his character, both as a man and as a person. Now that the truth surrounding this alleged crime is starting to come to light after years of darkness, saying that McQueary has any character at all is not saying too much once you read that damming grand jury report.
The other people who don’t quite get the big picture of this travesty are the people (Penn State alumni) who are supposedly send money to Sandusky to help him pay his legal fees. The people who are supporting this guy are individuals who don’t get it or just don’t give a hoot children being molested. They just want to protect their own. That what makes them look like a bunch of idiots.
This condemnation would also include school officials who are now trying to cover their backsides by launching a placated investigation of their own once the media hammer dropped on Sandusky’s alleged sexual conduct with at-risk minors that came from the charity program (The Second Mile) he started.
These folks don’t get it either. Neither does the student body who decided to go into riot mode after coach Joe Paterno was shown the door. The word moron doesn’t even give those clowns justice. They don’t get it.
Those folks who call themselves operating in the integrity of Penn State University still don’t get it. Heck, for that matter, it seems as if most of the people who live in this self-absorbed, delusional world called Happy Valley don’t get it, either. Perhaps they never will.
First and foremost, Penn State is a football town. The school is universally known as Linebacker U. Under the guidance of ousted head football coach Joe Paterno, the university’s football program evolved into one of the best in the nation on an annual basis. That’s out of the window now. What really matters now is salvaging whatever reputation and credibility the school may have left with the young people it is charged to lead.
Dennis is the editor and publisher of News4usonline. He covers the NFL, NBA, MLB, racial and social justice, civil rights, and HBCUs. Dennis earned a journalism degree from “The Mecca” aka Howard University. “I write on what I am passionate about.”