The relentless march of cluelessness

Maybe they'll all get it, someday. Maybe. When they play the Winter Classic on the River Styx, perhaps.

Maybe then the wider world will get that "no" does, in fact mean "no" ... and that she wasn't asking for it, going up to his room so late Dressed Like That ... and that she didn't report it not because it didn't happen but because she was A) ashamed; B) needed the job; C) trying to convince herself it really didn't happen.

Maybe the wider world will listen then, instead of going through the motions of doing so. Maybe it will pay more than lip service to the idea that sexual assault is, in fact, something to be taken seriously. Maybe the wider world actually will take it seriously instead of saying just enough to take the heat off -- because, after all, the accuser is a mere student-athlete, and the accused is a Widely Respected Person In His Field.

And you know what else?

Maybe -- maybe -- the bureaucrats charged with making things right will not grow resentful of having to do so, and make brainless pronouncements about how the bureaucrats' victims kind of enjoy the notoriety of being victims.

Which brings us to John Engler up there at Michigan State, who suggested pretty much that the other day, and was forced to resign as MSU's interim president because of it.

And so it goes, and so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say. How many times does the Blob have to say "These people just don't get it," because, well, these people just don't get it? Worlds will collide and eons spin past and the sun will go supernova, and there will still be a multitude of John Englers not getting it.

Penn State begets Baylor begets Michigan State, all trying to one-up each other in the race for the cluelessness national championship. The Blob would like to believe what happened at those places is not as institutional as it appears, the inevitable result of collisions between moneyed interests (i.e., big-time college athletics) and anything that threatens those interests. But it certainly looks that way.

To be sure, the institutions all say (and occasionally do)  the right things after the fact. The trick is to get them to do it before the warrants and the lawsuits and the TV cameras descend on their campuses. The trick is to get them to actually take seriously what they all say they take seriously -- again, only after the fact.

The Blob is not optimistic about that happening any time soon. Because if the #MeToo movement represents a seismic shift in the sexual assault landscape, the pushback has been both inevitable and  predictable.

Witness the vilification, from the White House on down, of Brett Kavanaugh's primary accuser, the same old narratives being trotted out in the same old vicious way. Witness Engler's comments and, before them, the bitter whining of his predecessor, Lou Anna Simon -- who, upon her well-deserved exit, tried to paint herself as some sort of victim  after years of enabling a sexual predator.

Let's face it. We live in #MeToo nation, but we also live in a nation where a razor ad encouraging men to be their best selves is somehow regarded as "controversial." And only because it ignited the same old tired blowback from the same old tired suspects.

I'd hate to think John Engler is more in tune with the national zeitgeist than the courageous gymnasts who came forward to bring down Larry Nassar. But sometimes I wonder.