Sunday Magazine
As the culture of widespread and organized progressive protest returns to the United States in 2011, it's worth noting that the broader wave of public peace protests in the 1960s very much had their start in the state of Iowa. The Des Moines Register's Kyle Munson has the story today of the "Grinnell 14," college students that traveled to Washington in 1961 to protest atmospheric nuclear testing, and whose members included now-well-known actor Peter Coyote.Here's Coyote on YouTube talking about the lasting impact of the '60s "counterculture."
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Former NFL fullback Jon Ritchie has known Jerry Sandusky most of his life and is speaking publicly now about the scandal at Penn State. He's doing so as honestly and perceptively as anybody else I've heard in the sports media. His explanation as to why he probably, like Mike McQueary, wouldn't have acted in the moment to stop the rape of a young boy is as honest as honest gets.
Ritchie's descriptions (beginning at the 8:00 mark of the link, though you should watch it all) about what would be his initial disbelief and confusion over what he has seen really lay false the claims of so many observers this week that they would "beat (Sandusky) to a pulp", or the like, if they found themselves in the same situation as McQueary. As Ritchie goes on to say, this does not excuse the follow-up silence and cover-up by McQueary and his superiors, but it also ticks me off to hear so many people posturing and blustering that they would become immediately physical in that moment in the locker room in defense of the child. Simply put, I don't believe them. Sad as it is, as many as 90% of child sexual abuse cases in this country go unreported, and this is a topic that everyone has to internalize to some degree. The sexual abuse of a child is still referred to often as an "unspeakable" crime, but "unspeakable" is one thing it should never be. Our conversations about it are vital, and increased awareness is always the silver lining when instances of child abuse become public.
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Time to drop some science on you, which I so rarely do: Your brain knows more than you think it does. From Discover, "If you spend an afternoon trying to teach [patients with anterograde amnesia] the video game Tetris, they will tell you the next day that they have no recollection of the experience, that they have never seen this game before—and, most likely, that they have no idea who you are, either. But if you look at their performance on the game the next day, you’ll find that they have improved exactly as much as nonamnesiacs. Implicitly their brains have learned the game: The knowledge is simply not accessible to their consciousness."
That's it. No jokes. Only highly-respected scientific research.
posted by CM @ 4:02 PM
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