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October 2012
Sandusky, rape, and prison reform - part 1 by Greg Brown Rape is not funny, nor unimportant, no matter to whom it happens, or why. The following allegedly humorous but in fact especially mean-spirited and insensitive "comedic" poster has been making the rounds of the 'Net and the real world the past couple months: "Jerry Sandusky is about to go from tight end to wide receiver." It originated on A Man's Point of View — the name of both a website and Facebook page advertising a moderately well-selling volume of tongue-in-cheek masculine "self-help" aphorisms authored by one James Bradley . A young friend of mine, not fully discerning its deeper message, more-or-less
innocently shared the malevolent poster on her Facebook wall. Legions of other Netizens obviously did likewise. Now, the hateful broadside has gone viral amongst virulent Sandusky loathers, generating roughly 1,500 “likes” and an equal number of Shares on Facebook alone. Plus plenty of extraordinarily vin-
dictive comments. The Internet continues to spread cruel gossip, ignorance, character assassination, intolerance, and sexual bigotry with cyberspace-age efficiency. Mindless hatred hasn't been eliminated by human civilization's sweeping technological advances — it's simply been rendered more comprehensively effective. Some Brave New World. Certainly the malicious sentiment expressed in the popular antiSandusky poster does accurately portray many Americans' not-so-secretly wished-for fates for the likes of Jerry Sandusky. But the shockingly high incidence of chronic systemwide prison rape in this purportedly enlightened
modern democracy of ours is of much greater future consequence to its citizens than some thoughtlessly uncharitable punchline (hate speech) routinely delivered by any number of heartless hack comedians would imply. It's easy for even jaded homefront veterans like myself of our country's failed 1960s-1970s egalitarian social revolution to feel outrage at the disturbing sentiments expressed in this poster. I used to believe that people this casually vicious might well have become extinct by now. But negative self-destructive aspects of our traditional American culture, commingled with
see
Prison, pg. 38