If you want to talk class warfare I think you can look no further than the recent turns in the media with the Penn State scandal laden Sandusky making the news show rounds, and 60 Minutes interviews Bernie Madoff’s family. This is how rich white people take care of their problems. They are allowed a “benefit of the doubt”, they are allowed a podium with which to proclaim nonsense. The word “alleged” is heavily used as well, in the case of Sandusky. Really? Someone witnessed the man raping a boy, allegedly, but he proclaims in the media that he’s not a pedophile. Sure he showered with children, hugged them, and touched their legs, but it wasn’t sexual. Okay, I guess I you aren’t a pedophile, you’re just a creepy old man who’s inappropriate at the very least with children, allegedly.

Where is this societal empathy for the moral gray areas of pedophilia? For example the 17 year old boy dating the 16 year old girl. He turns 18 and suddenly consenting sex partners becomes molestation and rape, if the parents choose to press charges. He’s carted off to jail, and his entire life is ruined. He is never afforded the benefit of the doubt, especially when it comes to registering as a sex offender. The consenting partner isn’t taken in to consideration, since she’s a victim, her word is shaky at best. Where’s the allegedly there? Where’s the benefit of the doubt for some of these sticky, pardon the pun, situations? We are quick, and justifiably so, at demonizing all inappropriate behaviors with children. So much so that I, as a grown man, am fearful of engaging with children on any level. Even a smile, wave or laughing at their antics in a public space could be mistaken for bad intentions, especially in this day and age of hyper stranger danger.

Yet with the staggering amount of evidence showing Sandusky to be the , allegedly, utmost sick bastard, he’s allowed to defend himself. If his allegations are so bad that it has the shaken the foundation of a popular public university, and the ripple effect to everything Sandusky touches, how can the general public tolerate the media’s attitude at giving this man any sort of airtime to say anything!

The 60 Minutes waste of time, entitled “Bernie Madoff’s Family Speaks Out” attempted to put a clown suit on the public at large. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that I don’t give a shit about what “devastation”, “heartache” and other first world bullshit this family suffered from Bernie Maddoff’s shenanigans. The fact that it drove his wife to attempt suicide and fail doesn’t do anything for me, and I am simply astonished she didn’t try harder or succeed, as again, no one should really give a shit. Your husband ruined the lives of countless people, and he is now being served due justice, and 60 Minutes dares to shove this in our face and say “Look, this rich person has feelings too!”.

This, if anything, proves as a justifiable fact that the corporate media is no longer out to serve the public or the greater good. Humanizing criminals and failing to do anything journalistic in the face of some of the most unbelievable criminality in our economic system, let alone our public universities that serve our youth, is astounding! How the nightly news can explain in great detail what Emma Stone had for lunch today, yet never explain how banks can foreclose on houses they don’t even own, or have no clue if they even own it, should be added to the grievances the public should have against what’s being put in front of it.

To tie this in to the bread and butter of this blog: punditry bashing: enough with the wedge issue fake outs. Cal Thomas’ recent article surmises that the Penn State debacle is wholly our fault because we tolerate homosexuals and general moral decay. He even says:

“The message at Penn Sate was that we live in a culture that forbids almost nothing. Jerry Sandusky apparently believed that and crossed one of the few reaming lines of morality in our culture. But even that line might soon be erased if the pressure groups and their campaign contributions grow large enough.”

Guess what Mr. Thomas, that's not even on the table and, alleged pedophilia is still, as of today and the foreseeable future, seen as something horrible…to everyone! It’s akin to the lizard brain argument that if we allow same sex marriage, suddenly everyone’s going to think it’s okay to marry an animal. While I could give them credit for maybe being prophetic of future moral decay, I hardy doubt that overnight we as a society will suddenly find animal sodomy appropriate behavior.

Have people so easily forgotten the young lives shattered by Sandusky and his alleged actions? Mr. Thomas' article is just a version of the same monied class circling their wagons around one of their own.

The idea that all our social mores have been under attack since the hippies in the 60’s as Mr. Thomas posits, is utter nonsense. Of course, the argument could be made that our society is becoming increasingly hedonistic. But this is also born from the fact that America is a Puritanical society. Not center right, not Christian, not born of anything other than we our fundamentally shamed of sexuality of any sort, yet revel in barbarism and violence against ourselves and others. It’s woven in to the subconscious of America, regardless of where we stand on anything.

I take great pride in the fact that for the most part we no longer view homosexuality as a mental illness. I am ashamed that lizard brain people, like Mr. Thomas, have a forum in which to portend that they are speaking for a majority, when they are not. They are the last vessels of a fever dream, born in the Cold War machinations of ignorance and bore fruit in every single entity labeled the enemy since. They are theological creatures that need to be persecuted by everything. They will always have an enemy in the popular culture.

It’s maddening the smug attitude of these people, who since they perceive themselves as submitting to a ineffable higher power, are never in the wrong. To even try to get them to be reasonable is out of the question. However, if you look at history you can see how much on the wrong side of it they have been. The fact that we have to wait them out is absurd.

As with all things, some ideas that worked in the past, should stay in the past. Progress and failure are more character building than maintaining a status quo. If the right wing and evangelicals have a problem with homosexuality and science now, what about in the future when we’re replacing body parts with electronics? What about artificial intelligence, bipedal robots? They’ve already tried to put the kibosh on cloning and stem cell research, which would reap untold benefits. To marginalize human progress for the sake of maintaining lizard brain theology is only going to make progress harder, but it will happen, no matter what.

A lot of this is fanciful science fiction. Luckily a lot of the regressive punditry is old white men that will soon die off and stop heeding progress. Just as there were probably some old ass apes that refused to stand up and walk around on two legs and fashion weapons for killing larger game, or building fires and finding resourceful shelter. We as a society will always leave the regressive behind and move forward, we just have to shake the branches.

That doesn’t mean we will become mindless rampaging lunatics who have lost all sense of humanity.