http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Chion/Colin%20McEnroe%20Show%2011-11-2011.mp3
Newsflash -- on this show Garrison Keillor threw cold water on his much-publicized earlier statements that he would retire from PHC in 2013.
You can hear him say, on the audio here: :"I’m starting to doubt that myself. I’ve been thinking about it, thinking: what else would I do? And I can’t come up with anything….If I didn’t do it I would wind up in a tiny walk-up apartment with a couple of cats."
The Penn State story is a Rosetta Stone for American attitudes. There are some obvious parallels between this story of squelching sex abuse charges and what went on in the Roman Catholic church, and the two institutions, Big Football and Catholicism, have some obvious similarities.
In neither one of them is there much meaningful input from women. All-male power structures have a way of missing things.
And in each case, there's a pervasive belief in something bigger and more important than the usual conventions of law and society. One Penn State student told the press, "Of course we're going to riot. What do they expect when they tell us at 10 o'clock that they fired our football coach?"
Of course? Are all bigtime college sports programs so fixated on their success that other values get pushed aside? Is this something that could have happened anywhere? Or is there something weird about Penn State? That and more on today's Nose.
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