But Most of Us Are Not Brave

The corn fields and soy bean farms and old GM factories that landscape the place I call home are part of a region that has often been referred to as Big Ten country. I call Nikes et. al. gym shoes, used to drink Faygo pop (no, not soda), and still have a decent-looking jump shot because when the purest shooter ever comes from your state, basketball is as part of childhood as removing training wheels from a bicycle. Although Indiana’s chosen sports-related religion is basketball, I matriculated through a university known as the Cradle of Quarterbacks (and Astronauts); it never ever reached the status of Linebacker U., but having lived amongst those who even still worship a god named Bob Knight, I know what it is like to witness sullied and ungraceful exits, the crumbling of a myth.

Bob Knight threw chairs during heated basketball games against in-state rivals; advised women who could not escape their sexual assaulter to just “lay back and enjoy it”; used a bullwhip on a couple of basketball players (one of whom was black). Those shenanigans never got The General fired. See, it was a kinder, gentler, much less politically correct time. And Hoosiers are serious about their basketball gods, about the wholesome way they believe they play the game. Knight ran a clean program. His players graduated. He coached Indiana high school legends named Alford and Bailey. Last names did not appear on the back of IU jerseys because that would engender (too much) individual attention for what is inherently a team sport. All that off-court stuff was just overblown media crap, commentary by those who did not understand how the purity of the motion offense, that Knight’s coaching style represented what it means to be from Indiana: hardworking, disciplined, conservative, anonymous for the betterment of the team. Doing things the right way.

And so, when some punk got Knight dismissed for making a stink about what was a comparative technicality on Knight’s lengthy resume of objectionable behavior, people were furious. It was an overreaction, they thought. Part of a conspiracy, they said. But times, they had a-changed. And Knight’s antics could not be tolerated once the cultural milieu had shifted. The new millennium could not hold such strict and violent characters. Knight refused to resign, so he was dismissed. On the night of his firing, students protested and burned then Indiana University president Myles Brand in effigy.

I wonder how the students who participated feel about their actions now.

Now Knight’s behavior, even his rape comment, are not even in the same stratosphere of what happened at Penn State. What happened at Penn State over the period of a decade is deplorable. The institution’s attempt to cover up Jerry Sandusky’s sexual abuse of young boys is beyond morally objectionable. Every participant involved in attempting to make these crimes go away quietly in an effort to preserve the university’s image and maintain the football program’s reputation as a clean one that does things “the right way” was rightfully removed from his position, including legendary coach, Joe “Joe Pa” Paterno. Absolutely no one involved did enough. Paterno did not deploy his considerable power to protect any other potential Sandusky victims nor seek justice for those already abused.

It seems that at the very least Penn State needed a Myles Brand.

To be sure, what happened at Penn State is not about Joe Pa or football. We need not lose sight of the real victims of Jerry Sandusky’s crimes. The sport, however, is an integral part of the story, at least. Football is one of America’s favorite rituals. That professional games are played on Sunday seems most apposite. Still others choose to worship on Saturday, with Penn State football their chosen denomination. And Joe Pa was their minister. Like Knight, Joe Pa is a legend. In fact, he’s an even bigger one. And although Paterno was fired not because of what he did, but because he didn’t do enough, the similarities between the response to his firing and Knight’s are perhaps instructive.

Charles Barkley likes to talk about sports being a fantasy, a distraction from (the ennui of) our everyday lives. But the sports figures and teams we choose to support do more than briefly placate us on a weekend afternoon. We live vicariously through them. They represent us. They satisfy our nationalist impulses (Raider Nation, anyone?). And so when those legends who represent us to the public fall it seems that we leave our best selves at home in defense of something that is really indefensible. Call it pride.

Students rioting because the legendary Joe Pa has been fired for his inaction, because he will not be allowed to retire after the season as he wanted have completely missed the point. Football, our American past time, is not that important. There is no need to stand in support of Joe Pa. His legend is tarnished, but he will be fine. He does not need support. And if one is #OccupyingPennState on his behalf, then one has horrible logic.

I wonder how the students who participated will feel about their actions ten years from now.

But those students, like us, hold on to myths and legends. Because those legends give us vicarious access to power and adoration we can not obtain in our regular, anonymous lives. Because sometimes it’s just too hard to stomach reality. Because we don’t want to believe that we never knew that something horrible was happening in our midst. Because we believed that those who represented us were doing things the right way.

But these legends are people, and people don’t always do things the right way–even when the right way is to make a very clear moral decision. Since the news, many have sat in front of computers typing on Twitter and Facebook, in front of microphones shouting to be heard about how wrong Paterno and McQueary (the graduate student who caught Sandusky abusing a child and did not stop the event) were for not doing the right thing. We can shake our heads at rioting students. We can talk about the blood on their hands. How wrong they are. It’s so easy to do from our position.

But I confess, I listened to Mike Golic rant on the radio about McQueary’s testimiony, and I wondered if I would have been as brave as Golic claimed he would have been had he been McQueary. It’s so easy to delineate ourselves courageous when we talk about what we would (have) do(ne). But I hear about all the bad shit that happens in the world, about how all the witnesses to that bad shit didn’t do anything and wonder if I could ever be brave.

I’m pretty sure that I would not have turned over a car or lit a candle to honor the legacy of Joe Pa. That has just never been my style. But I cannot guarantee that my 20-something-self would have done the right thing, that I would have unequivocally articulated something like the antithesis of preserving the myth of a football legend when more serious matters are at hand. I can’t guarantee that I’d do the right thing right now. And, no matter what the Facebook statuses say, I’m not sure most people can either.

Morrison’s “Recitatif.” Lord of the Flies. Jackson’s “The Lottery.” There are myriad literary examples of human beings not performing morally under (not so) dire circumstances. We rarely fill our moral obligations to each other when stakes are low. I have little faith we’d perform better if they rose. And as natural as it seems to critique McQueary’s reaction to witnessing such a traumatic event, I cannot say that I would have done any better. Perhaps I doubt myself too much. I hope I do. But (the threat of) power corrupts and makes such cowards of so many of us. And history is full of events that would have changed drastically had someone been brave enough to do things the right way. We read the aforementioned stories and other literary instances as examples, as warnings of refusing to stand up and make the correct moral decision. Yet no matter how memorable the English teacher, it seems we fail to apply those fictional lessons to life. And we forget the vulnerability of those memorable fictional characters when we cast stones at those who fail to act bravely and pretend that we all have unflappable courage. How our distance from such atrocities makes us theoretical superheroes.

The discourse of myths and legacies is soaked with power and domination. They are master narratives that, if we align ourselves with them, we can access vicariously. When that access is revoked unexpectedly, we are reminded of our own vulnerability, and attempt to reconnect with that power through irrational gestures and vilifying those who remind us that when faced with great difficulty we are often not our best, moral selves. But we already know this. We simply choose not to remember. In the same way we ignore those other, anonymous children in our communities whose vulnerability is being exploited right now. Instead, we attempt to refasten our grips on a theoretical power by chastising those whose actions remind us that we’ve never really been brave.