——
From And now for something completely different … (February 13, 2012)Random Thoughts at the Dawn of the Year 2012 | February 13, 2012, by Dave McGowan | http://davesweb.cnchost.com/2012.html
* The Center For an Informed America>http://davesweb.cnchost.com/
——
… Personally, I think the GOP should go the Fear Factor route. As some readers are probably aware, a recent episode of the series, which was to have featured contestants drinking donkey semen, was pulled by NBC shortly before it was to air. Rather than let that concept go to waste, and rather than staging yet another pointless debate, why not re-shoot the episode with the four remaining candidates filling in for the original four teams of contestants? Whoever can drink the most donkey semen in the allotted time – or perhaps, given that these are Republican candidates, it could be elephant semen – should be Obama’s challenger in the general election.
.
Speaking of Fear Factor, did anyone else notice how NBC really dodged a bullet by pulling that curiously timed episode? After all, it wasn’t long after that decision was made that news began to break of the arrest of LAUSD teacher Mark Berndt on multiple charges of having spoon-fed, you guessed it, semen to his blindfolded elementary school students, sparking justified outrage from parents across the city and across the country. In the wake of the disturbing revelations, it certainly would not have cast the network in a very positive light to air footage of fame-whores ingesting semen for entertainment.
.
And why, one wonders, did they make such a curiously timed decision? The episode was undoubtedly tasteless (no pun intended), but no one at the network seems to have been concerned when the semen-eating challenge was conceived, filmed, put through post-production, put on the television schedule, etc. So why did it suddenly become a problem, almost as if someone at NBC had advance knowledge of the soon-to-break story?
.
Such weirdness is, of course, par for the course whenever a big pedophile case breaks into the news. And this one is shaping up to be a big one, with a second male teacher, Martin Springer, under arrest and a female teacher’s aide identified in news reports as yet another perpetrator. Parents have been loudly screaming “cover-up,” as well they should, with media reports claiming the cases are unrelated despite the fact that Berndt and Phillips were friends who took their classes on joint field trips, while Berndt and the aide had adjoining classrooms with a common door through which they frequently communicated.
.
As has been widely reported, LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy took the unusual step of replacing the entire staff at the school, a move widely denounced by parents but fully supported, naturally enough, by the local media, who have not been shy about invoking the name “McMartin,” as though planting the seeds for what may yet be cast as another ‘witch hunt.’
———————————————————————————————————–
Mark Berndt
******
Martin Springer
Martin Springer: Second teacher ‘fondled two girls’ at school where … ”They both sexually abused me,” says student. Free on $300000 bond.———————————————————————————————————–
At least no one involved in the case, as of yet, has turned up dead, which can’t be said of former Penn State coach Joe Paterno. I’m certainly not suggesting, of course, that there was anything suspicious about the curiously timed death. I mean, sure, he seemed to be pretty healthy for a man of his age, right up until he was fired a couple months ago for his role in the Jerry Sandusky pedophile scandal, after which we almost immediately learned that he had cancer. But it was, we were told, treatable, so it was a little strange that he dropped dead just weeks later, but shit happens.
.
And sometimes when shit happens, it gets reported before it happens. Like when it was reported in Australia that John Kennedy was assassinated hours before he actually was. Or like when it was reported on British television that the tower known as WTC7 had collapsed not long before it actually did. Or like when a number of media outlets reported Joe Paterno’s death some twelve hours before he actually died.
.
Things like that seem to arouse suspicion in some people, though I’m not sure why. It seems to me that such incidents represent the very best of journalistic achievements. That kind of aggressive reporting, which takes the notion of ‘getting the scoop’ to a whole new level, should be applauded. In fact, it should be rewarded with Pulitzer Prizes.
.
In this particular case, the premature reports were said to be traced back to what was dubbed a ‘hoax’ e-mail sent by a Penn State athletic director. Can something really be considered a hoax though if it proves to be true just twelve hours later?
.
When the Penn State story first broke, a few scattered reports held that the case ran far deeper than Jerry Sandusky – that there were indications that Sandusky had in fact been pimping out the kids under his control to wealthy donors. What appeared to have been uncovered, in other words, was not the depraved acts of a lone pedophile, but rather another Larry King/Franklin-type case involving wealthy and powerful pedophiles preying on the most vulnerable of children.
.
And there were, to be sure, impressive political connections. The recently departed Paterno, for instance, had such names as President Gerald R. Ford and President George H.W. Bush in his personal Rolodex (that would be, needless to say, the same George H.W. Bush who has himself been accused multiple times of being a sadistic pedophile, though the media naturally looks away from such unpleasantness when it occasionally surfaces). And then there is the Rick Santorum connection, the former Pennsylvania senator having been the guy who bestowed a congressional award upon Sandusky, a fact that his mudslinging adversaries have predictably opted not to use against him.
.
Another sign that the Sandusky case runs far deeper than the media would have us believe can be found in the curious story of Ray Frank Gricar, the longtime Pennsylvania District Attorney who opted not to prosecute Sandusky back in 1998. On April 15, 2005, just months before his scheduled retirement, Gricar went missing and has never been heard from since. While his abandoned car was found, his keys, wallet and other personal effects, including his laptop computer, went missing as well. His laptop was ultimately found, but without the hard drive, which was later found destroyed.
.
Gricar was declared legally dead on July 25, 2011, just a few months before the Sandusky case broke into the news. To make the Gricar story just a little more bizarre, Roy Gricar, Ray’s older brother, had gone missing under remarkably similar circumstances back in May 1996. The elder Gricar’s body was recovered from a river and his death was ruled a suicide. Until shortly before his death, Ray Gricar had been working as a private contractor at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.
.
Probably the clearest sign that there is far more to the Sandusky case than has generally been reported was the assignment of former FBI director Louis Freeh to oversee the investigation, which immediately brought to mind the assignment of former CIA director William Colby to investigate the death of Franklin investigator Gary Carradori. Since Freeh’s assignment, predictably enough, the media have largely turned away from the case. But that’s okay – I’m sure it was all just a witch-hunt anyway.
———————————————————————————————————–
Gerald “Jerry” Sandusky
******
Rick Santorum
******
Louis Freeh
——
Board member at Congress for New Urbanism, Central Texas Chapter; Policy Aide at 
<Maggie Solomon, Emily Deakins, and Jodi Bernstein. | Spectra Energy’s Manager of Diversity, EEO, and Compliance.
Shareholder/Attorney at Nathan Sommers Jacobs. Houston, Texas Area.
Festival Marketing Manager at C3 Presents. Austin, Texas Area. 
Director of Commercial Electricity Aggregation. Austin, Texas Area. 
Partner at O’Connell & Soifer LLP. Austin, Texas Area. 
Political “contributor” on ABC and CNN.
Associate at DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary. 
Business Development, Marketing and Non-profit professional with expertise in strategic networking…and singing! Past: Director of Marketing & Community Affairs at 
<-? 
Program Manager of the Social Enterprise at 
Volunteer at Academic Recovery School; Office Manager at Anti – Defamation League. Greater Chicago Area.
Associate Director of Alumni Relations at 
Came from…The Parkinson Council, Development Associate. Greater Philadelphia Area.
Associate Project Director at Anti-Defamation League. Cleveland, Ohio.
Senior Research Analyst at 
Director of Student Programming at Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.
<?>
Past: Press and Media Affairs Intern at Embassy of Jordan.
Age in 2012: 74. 
.jpg)
