"...Kneeling...Huddling Up....Six of One...."

When it comes to plot devices, I've never been much for pathos.

Bathos, not so much either.

Irony, though?

Now we're talkin'.

Maybe it's that irony, at its heart, is really a delightful mixture of poignancy and sarcasm.

Two qualities whose combination have always been as tasty to me as peanut butter and chocolate.

My awareness, and appreciation, of the ironic has been at Defcon 4 the last couple of days as I ponder the Penn State scandal.

Probably because it is, for me, only the irony of it that sets the event apart from your garden variety societal aberration.

Let's face it, were it not for the celebrity value of Joe Paterno and the Nittany Lions, this admittedly heinous episode would be just another admittedly heinous episode relegated to a few column inches beneath, or perhaps above, the fold depending, of course, on the size of the community where the admittedly heinous episode occurred.

That celebrity value, though, lifts this particular aberrant activity up and out of the white noise of the commonplace.

And, at the same time, kicks it to a near record level of my favorite quality concoction.

The ironic.

No person in their right mind, mental or moral, can, for a single second, not be appalled and/or outraged at the sexual abuse of children.

Under any circumstance.

But the fact that hundreds, if not thousands, of seemingly normal people (the key phrase there being "seemingly normal")feel compelled to take to the streets to protest the action taken against "their" football team indicates that, somewhere along the way, core values have not only gotten skewered, they've gone right dead center through the looking glass.

And therein, I'd offer you, is where the irony comes washing over the seawall.

For how many of those fervent fans who are angry at the firing of a football coach who, at the very least, was the officer on deck while sexual atrocities were being inflicted on children, would consider, and call, themselves good, God fearing, church going upright citizens.

About a standing room only stadiums worth, bet the farm.

And as those same fans substitute cries of despair at the damage done to those children with cries of despair at the toppling of their hometown hero, it is easy to believe, sadly, that their feelings about that hometown hero transcends hero worship, turning out to be, in fact, the worshiping of an idol.

Good church going folks.

Who read their Bibles.

Passages like "thou shalt not kill".

"Thou shalt not steal"

And the one that has my irony alarm working overtime.

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

The sexual assault of children is, by any possible measure, a sickness of tragic proportion.

Cries of anger at the firing of a football coach who was, at best, negligent in his guardianship of a basic moral standard is, by any possible measure, a sickness, as well.

A sickness, one might argue, of Biblical proportions.

How's that for ironic?