The scandal happening at Penn State is beyond description.

For years, it appears, university and university athletics officials were aware—not dimly, but positively aware—that defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was raping children, but opted to do nothing about it.

Sandusky has been arrested, of course, and at least 16 more victims are coming forward. Meanwhile, in a just and rightful move, the school’s athletic director and vice-president for business and finance are also being charged with lying during the investigation because it is clear they knew what was going on and did nothing. More arrests may be forthcoming.

Joe Paterno’s position as head coach is very much in danger; while he is not (so far) being charged with anything, the board of directors are leaning towards his dismissal: this year saw Paterno go from a career high, record-book milestone to falling in disgrace.

The Czar thinks Paterno is dog meat: and not just his career, but as a person. By all accounts, Paterno was made aware of the ongoing attacks by a violent predator, and merely referred them to the university.

This is insane. This is worse than a guy seeing a kid hit by a car, and then telling someone nearby that he refers them to call 911 while going back into the house to read a magazine. It’s worse because Paterno continued to work with the guy on a near daily basis and didn’t obviously care too much about it.

Don’t believe it? Here’s Paterno last night, saying that “it’s a tough life when people do certain things to you, but anyway….” Absolutely no sense of outrage, betrayal, or shock, but a casual dismissal that the victims will probably just get over it. Child rape is evidently all a part of growing up to Paterno.

Naturally, people are lining up to complain about collegiate sports, and that this is all part of the money-making fraternity with its code of silence, but this is all rhetorical blah-blah. The reality is worse, and it is reflected in the VP’s resignation and charge or perjury: this is a problem with academia overall.

The graduate assistant who personally witnessed one horrific attack notified campus authorities (presumably campus police), who arrived and determined it was Jerry Sandusky. The campus not only did not arrest Sandusky, they evidently let him go and referred the matter up the food chain, as if Sandusky was caught vandalizing univeristy property.

After a bit of hand-wringing by folks well above the atheltic department, the decision was to do nothing. Not cover it up, apparently, because it seems that most of the senior people around the univeristy knew and heard about it.

They just did nothing, and hoped it would go away. Why? Because they didn’t know what to do. Everything had to be someone else’s problem.

And this is where academia went wrong. In a stunning leap of logic, the Czar points out that this is what is fueling the Occupy protestors’ displaced sense of self-idiocy: the one group the protestors should be mad at, Higher Education, has no dim awareness of culpability. After all, who told the kids that they would do all right in life with a ton of debt and a master’s of fine arts in Puppetry? Who told the kids that economic responsibility does not start with self, but comes from violent protest and radical threats? Whose job was it to point out the continual failings of Marxism, but omitted reality from the class?

The next area of collapse in liberalism will be in academia, because these seemingly unrelated events are very much joined: American Higher Education has now stepped over into dysfunctionality. It has injected so much moral relativism into its culture that it has written off any sense of responsibility for its students, instructors, and staffs.

Everything is someone else’s problem. And heck, the victims will get over it, according to Paterno. He knows this because he spends every game sitting up in a booth behind dark windows watching from afar.

For the record, the winningest coach in FBS history is a sick, heartless bastard. He has earned the Czar’s contempt because he knowingly harbored a monster for years.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.