More Jokes From the Penn State Trustees

 Penn State trustees on the day they
fired Joe Paterno and Graham Spanier

by Walter Brasch

Whenever I need a couple of laughs, I turn to the bumbling self-aggrandizing antics of the Pennsylvania legislature.

            However, in the past few months, the Penn State Board of Trustees has done the near-impossible; they have provided more laughs than the menagerie in Harrisburg.

            To call either the Legislators or the Trustees “clowns” would demean the hard work of the circus performers who spend significant time to develop and execute comedy routines. There is no evidence the Trustees even have a thought process before they make outrageous and just plain silly statements.

            The latest Trustee joke is that the reason they really fired Joe Paterno abruptly on Nov. 9, 2011, is because of “a failure of leadership.” The Board released what it called a “report,” but which is nothing but a press release of rehashed statements. This “report” claims the Trustees fired Paterno after they read the Grand Jury report that outlined a series of allegations against former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, whose name is now known among more Americans than anyone who ever won a Nobel Prize.

American Patriotism in Hyper-Drive

LEE GREENWOOD  

by Walter Brasch

                                                      

It’s midway between Flag Day and Independence Day.

That means several million copies of full-page flags printed on cheap newsprint, June 14, have been burned, shredded, thrown away, or perhaps recycled. It’s an American tradition.

Flag Day was created by President Wilson in 1916 on the eve of the American entry into World War I. It has since been a day to allow Americans to show how patriotic we have become, and give a running start to celebrating the Revolution by buying banners, fireworks, and charcoal briquettes for the upcoming picnic.

 Within American society is a large class of people who fly flags on 30-foot poles in front of their houses and adorn their cars with flag decals and what they believe are patriotic bumper stickers. They are also quick to let everyone know how patriotic they are, and how much less patriotic the rest of us are. But patriotism is far more than flying flags and shouting about liberty in Tea Party rallies.

Splitting Hairs in a Multi-Cultural School

by Walter Brasch

Sasha Rivera is a 15-year-old sophomore at the Multi-Cultural Academy Charter School (MACS) in Philadelphia.

She’s an honors student who never got into trouble at school, and volunteers at Motivos, a national magazine for Hispanic youth.

She also has blue bangs in her dark brown hair. For that reason, she isn’t attending class.

The Snipers of Jersey Shore

By Walter Brasch

Garder54 calls Kevin June “a real scum.”

LadyDawg4 calls him a “sleazeball.”

Proud2bMom calls him a “liar and a thief.”

Kevin June is the reluctant leader for the 37 families of the Riverdale Mobile Home Village in Jersey Shore, Pa., who were evicted from their homes, most of which they owned and paid a monthly lot fee. Some of the residents lived there for more than three decades. Most of the residents are elderly, disabled, or living slightly above the poverty line. Several are employed; all are struggling to survive in a bad economy.

Pennsylvania Politics Continues to Override Humane Actions

by Walter Brasch

        

                         The deal was worked out with Sean Corr, attorney for the PGC. Corr, says Steve Hindi of SHARK, “was one of the biggest individual donors to the Bucks County Republican Committee [which had] heavily funded Heckler’s election campaign.” Heckler had been a state representative and senator and then a judge of the Bucks County Common Pleas Court. Corr, who was shooting pigeons at the PGC in December 2009, was convicted of harassment for shoving a camera into Hindi’s face; Hindi was not on PGC property at the time of the incident, according to the Doylestown Intelligencer. Corr is currently a part-time solicitor for the county.

Memorial Day 2012: A Lesson Not Yet Learned

by Walter Brasch

        

             Today is Memorial Day, the last day of the three-day weekend. Veterans and community groups will remember those who died in battle and, as they have done for more than a century, will place small flags on graves.

But, for most of America, Memorial Day is a three-day picnic-filled weekend that heralds the start of Summer, just as Labor Day has become a three-day picnic-filled weekend that laments the end of Summer. 

            There will be memorial concerts and parades. The media, shoving aside political and celebrity news, will all have stories. Among those who will be the first to patriotically salute those who died in battle are those who enthusiastically pushed for them to go to war.

            Each of the extended weekends also provides forums for politicians to stand in front of red-white-and-blue bunting to deliver political speeches they hope will make the voters think they care about veterans and the working class—and if it helps their election or re-election campaigns, so much the better.

Memorial Day Special Series, Day 8

I once wanted to be a protest folksinger, going throughout the country to rally the people for social justice, but two things kept me from that. I couldn’t sing and there wasn’t much call for a protest clarinetist.

But there was journalism—which, I sometimes point out, became my profession because I wasn’t good at anything else. Nevertheless, many of the people at the forefront of social change have been journalists; the revolution of the 1960s, with journalists of an alternative media at the forefront, was built upon the base of a revolution two centuries earlier. Sam Adams, Ben Franklin, Tom Paine, and dozens of newspaper editors and writers helped unify a minority of colonists to rise up and create a new nation, founded in liberty and justice. Journalism seemed like a good place to learn more about people, government, and different cultures, while also fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. After all, wasn’t Superman a journalist?

Memorial Day Special Series, Day 7

It was a Saturday afternoon in November. My wife, Rosemary, and I were with a four or five dozen other people in front of a county courthouse to protest what all of us knew would be the upcoming war in Iraq.

It wasn’t the first time we were protesting; it certainly wouldn’t be the last. But this time, our bodies were a lot colder than comfortable; our tempers were a bit shorter than civil.

Many persons driving past honked their car horns in support. But, in this rural county in Pennsylvania there were also dozens who drove past and gave us the finger or shouted obscenities.

Memorial Day Special Series, Day 6

“They had this amateur stage [at Woodstock] away from everything else, and anyone could perform. Bands and poets and jugglers and people who just wanted to have their say. Well, Joan Baez—can you believe it, Joan Baez!—well, she sees that there are people kinda just hangin’, so she does an hour! A whole hour on an amateur stage! Know what else? She didn’t just go up on that stage. She waited her turn. Must have waited an hour, two hours. No one knew she was waiting, I guess, but she waited her turn, just like everyone else. Was almost late for the main stage.”

—Joyce Katzman, Before the First Snow, by Walter M. Brasch

Today, the sixth day of Memorial Day Week, we honor two more of the important voices of the Movement—Joan Baez and Phil Ochs.

Memorial Day Special Series, Day 5

A couple of months ago, a San Francisco newspaper asked my opinion about the differences between the protests during the 1960s and the protests of Occupy Wall Street.

I discussed many difference and similarities, but noted that there are two major differences. First, the protestors of the ’60s seemed to be more joyous, more sprite-like. Abbie Hoffman, Paul Krasner, and others knew the power of humor and satire, and how to use it to make the media and the people actually believe that the Yuppies might lace the Chicago fountains with LSD or, through mental willpower of thousands, levitate the Pentagon.

The other major difference was protest music, something that is missing from much of the current protests. At one time, music was an integral part of the Movement. At one time, writers and journalists, blocked by the walls of the mainstream media, could turn to an alternative press, one that sometimes was published on ditto masters, and to music as a powerful medium to help unite the people.