Herman, Jo Pa and Us

Yes, we have cable connections at our beds.  Most guys have TV’s:  clear plastic, 13 inch color sets (remotes are prohibited) that cost over $200.00 but can be purchased in catalogs for $70.00 (electronics are covered by the exclusive contract DOC has with Keefe.  Inmates – just as with commissary, phone calls, and CDs – pay exorbitant mark ups for “personal property”.  And most guys do their time watching TV – a lot of it.

Sports, as you can imagine, dominates TV watching in here (closely followed by BET and Univision (the Spanish network that specializes in beautiful women 24/7).  This past week all eyes were focused on two huge scandals and news and sports converged into a perfect storm of opinions.  Herman Cain, black Republican candidate for President, has been dogged over allegations brought by four white women that years ago he sexually harassed them.  As that story swirled around the building with debates over the veracity of the accusers’ stories and underlying racial component to it, the tragedy that has become Penn State broke.

Penn State:  Football, Jo Pa and pedophilia.  Newscasters flocking to “Happy Valley” to “report” (I use that word tongue in cheek) every scurrilous detail.  With self-righteous indignation, talking heads tell the viewers exactly what the proper moral response should have been from Joe Paterno, the athletic director, the grad assistant and everyone else involved.

And the news reporters:  what must Edward R. Murrow be thinking?  They report as “breaking news” every lurid tidbit they can find.  Each mention of “anal penetration” brings another spike in their Network’s Neilsen rating.  And the notion of innocent until proven guilty?  “Screw that.  We can speculate why Sandusky wasn’t offered a head coaching job anywhere. “

Meanwhile, as their grandfatherly head coach is forced out, Penn State students gather and chant, “Jo Pa” until the cameras show up and the night mixes with alcohol and anger and cars are turned over and windows broken.  All the while we sit in our prison dorm and watch and argue.

Herman Cain.  You want black inmates to feel sympathy for a Republican, run the stories the way they’ve come out about Cain.  The entire episode smacks of the century old fears that black men are hypersexual.  The fact that the black man in question is a conservative Republican only adds to the feeding frenzy.

Penn State.  Regular inmates hate sex offenders, especially pedophiles.  Though this – and all compounds – have their share of them, they survive in prison under the constant fear their crimes will be found out.  If my crime and education carry special status with respect and admiration, theirs is at the opposite end of the spectrum.  At higher level facilities child sex offenders are routinely raped, beaten and murdered.  They spend their bids in “pc” – protective custody – for fear of what the general prison population would do to them.

Here, they are taunted (“diaper sniper”, “clown hands”), pushed around and robbed.  A year ago I wrote a blog detailing my ambivalence dealing with sex offenders.  How, I wondered, do I meet my Christian duty to be merciful with my disgust over a man who would find sexual release with a child?  I reached an uneasy equilibrium, a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach that allowed me to treat each man the same, to not pass judgment.  And then came Penn State. 

Is Sandusky guilty?  I don’t know.  Should Joe Paterno morally have done more?  I don’t know all the details.  I know this – in a frenzy to get ratings our “Fourth Estate” has sold their souls and we collectively encourage it each time we buy into the “breaking news” of the day mantra.

I know one other thing.  The New Testament Book of James (my favorite Book in the Bible) details in five chapters Christian discipleship.  It is not an easy path.  As I listened to the debates in here unfold about Herman Cain, Penn State and Joe Paterno; one admonition from James kept replaying in my mind:  “mercy triumphs over judgment.”  Wise words if ever there were any.

And for all those who “know” precisely what Herman Cain did and what Joe Paterno should have done Rudyard Kipling said it best:

“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

to serve your turn long after they are gone
And so hold on when there nothing in you
except the will which says to them:  Hold on.”