{"id":527,"date":"2011-11-18T10:43:38","date_gmt":"2011-11-18T16:43:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/?p=527"},"modified":"2011-11-18T10:43:38","modified_gmt":"2011-11-18T16:43:38","slug":"more-on-the-good-people-of-pennsylvania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/more-on-the-good-people-of-pennsylvania-527.htm","title":{"rendered":"More on the Good People of Pennsylvania"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n

On the field and before the television \u00a0Penn State<\/a> fans and team behaved themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

On Saturday, as the clock struck noon at Beaver Stadium, both the good and the bad sides of Penn State were on display. Inside the towering football cathedral\u2014where more than 100,000 Nittany Lions worshippers gathered for the first game of the post-Paterno era\u2014a row of shirtless guys with letters painted on their chests spelled out the words \u201cFor the Kids.\u201d At midfield prior to kickoff, Penn State and Nebraska players converged for a moment of silence and prayer for the young boys former PSU defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky is accused of raping and molesting over the course of a decade, perhaps much longer. Tears flowed from the crowd and the TV cameras transmitted what seemed like genuine sadness and compassion, even remorse, to the rest of the country.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But outside, away from the TV cameras:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Thirty-four-year-old John Matko, a 2000 Penn State graduate, stood in the middle of the closed-off street as thousands of PSU fans\u2014many clad in some version of a \u201cWe Love Joe\u201d T-shirt\u2014milled around, many gawking at him. Matko held two hand-scrawled signs. One bore the Albert Einstein quote, \u201cThe world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil but because of those who look on and do nothing.\u201d The other demanded PSU \u201chonor the abused kids by canceling this game and the season NOW.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Students, alumni and others\u2014and not just a handful of \u201crotten eggs\u201d but literally several hundred people over the course of half an hour\u2014spit on Matko, dumped beer on him, shoved middle fingers in his face, called him a \u201cfucking pussy,\u201d \u201cfaggot,\u201d and a \u201cpiece of shit,\u201d and yelled at him to \u201cget the fuck out of here.\u201d They slapped and punched his signs, occasionally knocking them to the ground. Each time, Matko slowly bent down and picked them up. One guy got inches from Matko\u2019s face and barked \u201cWe Are!\u201d as his buddies laughed. It was like a public flogging, and through it all Matko remained silent and just took it. \u201cI knew I was gonna be outnumbered today, but I didn\u2019t know quite how much,\u201d Matko said. \u201cI was part of this community and I know how narrow-minded everybody is around here, and they still don\u2019t get it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And\u00a0people\u00a0who it s so hard for\u00a0sexual\u00a0abuse victims to\u00a0come\u00a0forward.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Paterno wasn’t the one who got screwed: it was\u00a0the\u00a0victims.<\/p>\n

\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the field and before the television \u00a0Penn State fans and team behaved themselves. On Saturday, as the clock struck noon at Beaver Stadium, both the good and the bad sides of Penn State were on display. Inside the towering football cathedral\u2014where more than 100,000 Nittany Lions worshippers gathered for the first game of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[579,580,1120],"class_list":["post-527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sexual-abuse","tag-matko","tag-penn-state","tag-sexual-abuse","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}