‘We Are All Penn State’ … today at Beyond Chron

While criminal investigations and civil lawsuits begin burying Pennsylvania State University and Joe Paterno, the deposed iconic football coach, over their harboring for at least nine years (and probably 17 or more) of a serial child rapist assistant coach and ex-coach and pillar of the community, I suggest we all turn our attention to the last remaining myth undergirding the JoePa statue in front of Beaver Stadium and sanitizing the JoePa name on the campus library building. I also suggest we don’t stop there as we proceed to bring the Penn State scandal home, where it belongs, to our own schools and communities and mass insanity.

The myth goes like this: As a cautionary tale of the temptations of big-time football, Penn State is especially “ironic.” For, you see, the program over which Paterno ruled for nearly half a century, in polished insularity, was exceptionally “clean.”

BS, PSU.

I wonder how many people reading this piece have heard of a former Nittany Lions defensive end named LaVon Chisley. He is serving a life sentence for murder, which gives fresh meaning to the sour joke, “Penn State? They’re going to wind up in state pen.” In 2006, PSU student Langston Carraway – whose family had invited Chisley to live with them after his life spiraled into drug abuse and Paterno dumped him – was stabbed 93 times by Chisley.

CONTINUED TODAY AT BEYOND CHRON, THE SAN FRANCISCO ONLINE NEWSPAPER:

http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/We_Are_All_Penn_State_9681.html