Players reveal the 40-year secret to Russ Rose's unprecedented success at Penn State

By Vicki L. Friedman
http://www.espn.com/espnw/sports/article/24566214/the-40-year-secret-penn-state-volleyball-coach-russ-rose-success
September 3, 2018


Russ Rose at Beaver Stadium on Saturday

Russ Rose isn't big on hoopla when it's all about him.

On Friday, Penn State recognized its volleyball coach for his 40 years running the program with a luncheon attended by dozens of his former players. On Saturday, the 105,232 in attendance at Beaver Stadium for Penn State football's 45-38 overtime victory over Appalachian State roared in appreciation during a first-quarter break to recognize Rose's accomplishments. After a sweep of Texas A&M at Rec Hall Saturday night, the Nittany Lions hosted an ice cream social with their fans, who took home a commemorative gnome of the legendary coach.

Maybe the winningest coach in Division I volleyball history with 1,251 victories (and counting), seven national championships and 17 Big Ten titles would rather skip the commotion, but this was one of those rare times when nobody listened to him.

"When you think of Penn State, you think of Russ Rose," says Simone Lee, a starter on last year's final four team. "He's built an empire."

The cast of that empire includes 44 All-Americans, four of whom were national players of the year. It also encompasses players like Jen Burdis, a recruited walk-on who accounts for four of the 191 times one of Rose's players has been named All-Academic Big Ten. What's remarkable is the white-haired, bespectacled 64-year-old relates as easily to today's Beyoncé fanatic who is boasting about her next Insta post as he did to the pioneers who sewed the numbers on their uniforms when he took over the program in 1979.

"He's not on Instagram or Twitter. I don't even know if he knows what that is," Lions freshman Gabby Blossom says. "He has better advice than any person I've ever met. He's been around; he's dealt with everything there is to deal with, which makes him easy to talk to. He connects with us better than anybody could ever imagine."

Rose often quips, "Don't go changing," and players past and present insist he hasn't, citing the handwritten letters he writes in a digital age, the cigar he whips out after significant wins and an unbridled candor Nittany Lions of multiple generations embrace.

"Russ isn't like anybody else," says Haleigh Washington, a three-time All-American who graduated last spring. "I'm a decent conversationalist; he's a great conversationalist. He knows how to have a conversation in an authentic way, which is ironic because everyone sees him as this gruff, standoffish kind of guy. ... He's authentic to the people who are in his life and he's authentic to himself."

Lee acknowledges it's not unusual for young players to feel intimidated by the five-time national coach of the year, a Hall-of-Famer who is volleyball's version of Geno Auriemma (who has 11 NCAA women's basketball titles and 1,027 wins). Lee didn't grow up near University Park, where The Berkey Creamery created an ice cream flavor for him, "Russ 'Digs' Roseberry," a blend of strawberry ice cream, two separate raspberry sauces and dark chocolate flakes. But even coming from Wisconsin, Lee knew of the larger-than-life figure. She quickly identified with his straightforward approach, particularly his ability to decipher what motivates her without her having to explain it.

They shared an easygoing dialogue when she would drop in his office -- as well as a love of R&B and hip-hop. "I had this music on and he said, 'Turn this up,' and it was, like, Mary J. Blige," she recalls with a giggle. "I love music, so we get off talking about different artists."

Lee didn't feel as if she was unloading her life story at any point during those sit-downs and yet . . .

"You end up outing yourself without really outing yourself," she says. "You realize he's been at Penn State forever and he has eyes everywhere. If you breathe or fart in class, he's going to find out. Even though he's way older than any of us, he's very good about connecting with each of us differently."

Rose picked up quickly on Lee's tendency to overdramatize the smallest setback.

"I bombed a test," she remembers telling him.

To which he responded, "There's four more," shrugging with an expression similar to one he uses when Penn State trails 0-2 at intermission that's followed by, "We'll win in five."

"Nothing's ever as bad as it seems," Lee says. "That's what I learned from Coach. The sun will come up tomorrow."



In an email age, Rose's first contact with a recruit is often a handwritten note. Nicole Fawcett, who won back-to-back national championships in 2007 and 2008 and was the national player of the year in 2008, remembers running her fingers over the ink.

"I'd get all these letters from coaches and I would look to see if they actually signed the piece of paper," Fawcett says. "Then there's Russ who actually writes us. To this day, we still get a media guide with a personal note inside."

"He still sends my mom a media guide with a note," says Salima Rockwell, a three-time All-American (1992-94) under Rose who later served as his associate head coach. "If it's somebody's birthday, he's hand-writing a note and mailing it himself. I used to say, 'At least let me address the envelopes, Coach!' He wouldn't even hear of it."

Prospective Penn State players aren't fussed or fawned over by Rose. He sticks to a "here's what we got; we'd love to have you" pitch.

"What got me during recruiting was his honesty," says Alisha Glass, a three-time All-American (2007-09) whose career at Penn State included three national championships. "He said, 'I'm not going to beg you and I'm not going to fill you with snuff. I think you're intelligent, and we would love to have you here if this makes sense and this is a place you want to play.' "

Penn State doesn't lose many players to transfers the way some schools do. Although in 2012, starting libero Ali Longo and Darcy Dorton, who had been Big Ten freshman of the year in 2009, left. Longo landed in Hawaii and Dorton at the College of Charleston. At the time, Rose said he was sorry to lose both, "but I don't fight for anyone to stay."

"He likes people who are fun and have perspective," Washington says. "He doesn't recruit people with good character. He recruits characters."

Maybe that's because Rose is one himself, known for his dry wit and sarcastic one-liners that have kept Nittany Lions off balance for years.

He once called over Fawcett during a Penn State-Ohio State match her senior year. "He said I should be given a letterman's jacket from Ohio State because I was playing so well for them," she says with a chuckle.

Terri Zemaitis-Boumans, the 1995 Big Ten player of the year, recalled chatting with boosters after a win and Rose walking up to her and saying, "You sucked," never breaking stride.

"You always know exactly where you stand with Coach," she says. "I don't want fluff; I want the truth even if the truth is in your face. Even if the truth is that I sucked."

Charter flights were unthinkable when Rose assumed the coaching job in 1979 making a salary of $14,000. Back then he drove a 17-passenger van for road trips. Legend has it that in his early days, he would stand outside of Rec Hall and ask any tall female student who walked by to throw a rock to judge her athleticism. Analyzing the toss, he might ask her to consider volleyball, once snagging a student en route to cheerleading tryouts that way.

Then there was the time he pulled a rental van into a garage during a road trip in Utah and realized it wouldn't make the clearance. He hopped out, turning the keys over to one of his players, an engineering major, and declared, "Let's eat."

He has an intense side, too. But that's typically reserved for three-a-day preseason practices in swampy South Gym. In the player-driven environment, the upperclassmen stress the expectations to carry on the tradition that includes the program's first-ever national championship in 1999, an unprecedented run of four straight from 2007-2010 and titles in 2013 and 2014.

"When the doors are closed, when we're in South Gym and nobody is watching, that's when it matters to Coach," says Christa (Harmotto) Dietzen, a four-time all-American (2005-08) and former national team member.

Dietzen still sounds exhausted recounting practices from 2007 -- the beginning of Penn State's four-in-a-row string of championships. "We lost all the time in practice," she says. "Monday to Thursday he would create these situations where it was really hard to win. He'd add his assistant to the scrimmage. ... He'd raise the net higher. He knew the potential of what we could handle, and he'd push the ceiling."

Penn State won an NCAA-record 109 straight matches between 2007 and 2010.

"He knew the potential we had, and if we were winning all the time in practice, I don't think we would have had that success," Dietzen said. "It was mentally grueling."

Not that Rose doesn't toss in some lighthearted banter into the long sessions.

Claudette Otero, who played from 1993-96, regularly contained her thick, brown hair with a sturdy tie. "Her hair tie never stayed in," Rockwell remembers. "Russ was always in a quest to make it fall out. We'd run sideline to sideline, drill after drill. He'd say, 'We're not stopping till it's gone!' "

During games, Rose favors subtlety over histrionics.

"When he stands up during a match and puts the binder over his mouth, you know you're going to hear it," Dietzen says.

She was a freshman when Penn State swept Northwestern over Halloween weekend. Many players had family in town. Rose was disappointed by the effort despite the score. "We had a four-hour practice on Sunday," Dietzen says. "You were mad at the time; once you realized the expectations, then you understood. You settled in.

Lee says once you're part of his program, "you're never actually gone. It's home," and she says Rose is the reason why. She plays for Karch Kiraly on the national team, but Rose, she says, "will always be Coach to me."

Players regularly dial him up seeking coaching or life advice.

"He loves that," says Lori Barberich, a three-time All-American (1982-84) under Rose, and later an assistant who is also his wife of 32 years. "If one of his players calls, he's answering the phone. I thought all coaches did that, but the older I get I talk to players who have no communication with their college coach. For him, coaching is all about relationships and building them. That's what he loves the most about all of this."

Dietzen was touched when Rose attended her wedding in Pittsburgh in June 2014.

Burdis, who is dyslexic and struggled with confidence when she arrived at Penn State in 1993, recently wrote her first book, "The EnduNinja Mindset: 11 Habits for Building a Stronger Mind and Body." She describes it as a thank you to Rose for pushing her to reach heights she never imagined.

"He raised the ceiling for me more than anyone ever had, and I didn't want to let him down," says Burdis, who returned to University Park earlier this year for a book signing.

Rose hasn't spoken of retirement and signed a five-year extension in 2015. His place at the top of the volleyball world won't be challenged any time soon. Retired Hawaii coach Dave Shoji is second in Division I for wins with 1,202. Among active coaches, Florida's Mary Wise's 908 victories rank No. 2 to Rose.

Eight freshmen on the 2018 roster will get their fill of Rose over the next four years. Blossom is ahead on the learning curve because she arrived on campus in January ahead of the others. She was the lone gopher on newspaper duty -- a tradition of freshmen delivering Rose a stack of newspapers by 9 a.m. The instructions call for slipping them under the door if he's not there, but most often he's sitting in his chair inquiring about a grade, class or the shenanigans they got into overnight.

"Just about every day all summer I talked to him about something," Blossom says. "Before you get to know him all you know is he's this big legend in volleyball. But then you sit in his office and realize how much he wants to get to know you, and you realize he's super cool."

Of course, Penn State is a title contender again, ranked sixth at 5-0.

"Coach found his niche," Zemaitis-Boumans says. "There's certain people in life who found what they're meant to be doing, and this is what he's meant to be doing. When I think of how brilliant he is, he could probably be doing anything, but he chose to coach women's college volleyball.

"Thousands of women have been blessed because of his decision to do that."

Trump on the Ground

By Victor Davis Hanson
https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/02/trump-on-the-ground/
September 2, 2018

The fertile fields of the San Joaquin Valley

For months, I’ve been driving on different routes through the vast San Joaquin Valley back and forth from the California coast—and through the usually economically depressed small towns on and near the Highway 99 corridor through the Central Valley. The poverty rate in many valley counties is higher than in West Virginia. It is a world away from Hollywood, Silicon Valley, the Stanford or Caltech campus, Malibu, and Pacific Heights.

In an overregulated, overtaxed state of open borders and sanctuary cities, with the nation’s near highest electricity and gasoline prices, and facing a looming state and local pension unfunded liability of well over $300 billion, one might not expect much of an uptick from the supposed Trump economic revival. California’s calcified strategy, after all, is that global lucre pouring into coastal high-tech and finance will more than balance out the economic damage wrought by state government. Sacramento is a sort of court jester to Menlo Park.

Throughout California’s coastal and mountain forests there are waves of dead trees unharvested after a devastating drought. There are large fields of recoverable gas and oil in lots of places that are not being drilled, as well as valuable ores and metals not being mined, and unmatched farmland deprived of its long ago contracted water rights. The idea of a renaissance in the vast rich interior of the state seems implausible—especially when state government is more interested in banning plastic straws and mandating gender-neutral restrooms than in building dams or roads.

Signs of Hope in Central California

Yet signs for help wanted along highways are now ubiquitous—truckers, welders, fabricators, assemblers. Agriculture worries not just in perennial fashion about the lack of farm harvesters, even at wages of $10.50 to $14 dollars an hour. Now they’re short of forklift drivers, packing house workers, and mechanics.

New housing construction is growing after roughly a decade’s hiatus, at least to the degree carpenters, electricians, and plumbers can be found. Upward mobility is evident. At the local Walmart, the checkers often tell me they’re leaving despite raises—for better paying jobs. I drive home to my farm by a new warehouse that seems under endless construction. I finally ask the neighboring business, why? Answer: they cannot find or keep workers. The same reply comes from a friend redoing his house. Painters and floor workers no sooner start to paint and tile than they are hired away. Many now working have never held a fulltime job.

I do not know what the state’s figures on current public assistance show or could reveal, but when in line at the local grocery stores, I see less use of EBT cards than I did three years ago. Far less common is the shopper who pulls out four or five of them under various names. People have not become more honest. But they are in demand and making more money in a way not true prior in the 21st century. Labor has gained some leverage over the employer. Or rather the private sector is regaining ground on the administrative state. The fact of being needed and wanted makes a worker nearly as happy as increased compensation, this notion that he is not just appreciated, but desperately sought out by an employer far more eager to hire than to fire him.

The sense that the border may be closing, or that even in California ICE still deports criminal illegal aliens, has caused some self-deportation or perhaps slowed down the number of new illegal arrivals. Either way, American citizens, many of them of Mexican or Central American ancestry, have less competition for unskilled jobs and the rise in wages shows it. Employers do not pay more because they like paying more than the minimum wage but because they have no choice. How odd that the purported ogre Trump has ended West Coast sanctimonious talk over jacking up the minimum wage.

Does Trump Get Deserved Credit?

Does this boom translate into growing support for Trump? Not necessarily since it wars with the paradox that Trump is now seen by many as useful, but not as presidential. When one is doing well, he has the luxury of dreaming that it might be better to do poorly under a so-called presidential leader.

The media’s hatred of Trump is not necessarily determinative, but it is a force multiplier of the 24/7 unhinged narrative of the universities, popular culture, and Hollywood. Their shared goal is to make saying that one supports the Trump agenda so socially unpalatable, so culturally Neanderthal, that no sane person wishes to confess his delight with a new economy, foreign policy, and approach to the administrative state.

Amid the conundrum over Trump’s sometimes silly tweets, his 90-minute stand-up comedy routines at rallies, his spats with “fake news,” and the blood feud with the political lobby at CNN, what is lost in the calculation are these facts on the ground far from Washington, where slowly but undeniably life is getting better for the those in entry-level jobs among the forgotten near the bottom—and perhaps much better for the middle and upper-middle classes.

Surely in ethical terms that counts for something, given it was not an accident, and prior presidential efforts either failed or went untried. How odd that those who most despise Trump do what is necessary to ensure that they and their own stay in a refined class mostly barred to those who now are just benefiting from Trump.

At the top, of course, many are making lots of money, or at least believe that they are going to do so, given that new warehouse and plant construction is also ubiquitous. Cars are newer at shopping centers; tractors, too, on farms. I thought traffic to the coast would thin out given that California’s high taxed and special blended gas now nears $4 a gallon. No such luck. The roads are still clogged. Driving into the Los Angeles basin or the South Bay Area on a late Sunday afternoon is a nightmarish slog. Ride a bike on a main thoroughfare in California, and a steady stream of concrete mixers, and trailers with earth moving equipment speed by.

Facts Belie Sentiment

We are supposed to be in a near racial war. But the melting pot of the San Joaquin Valley seems unusually calm, the unity of wanting to make money is trumping the disunity that follows not finding a job.

I am now on a brief annual teaching stint at Hillsdale College in southern Michigan, in one of the poorer areas of the state. Here, too, things strike the stranger as far better than they were five years ago. There are more factory jobs in this greater automotive circumference. The food lines seem shorter, people more confident. There are more roads being paved, houses painted, and stores spruced up.

Abroad, for all the hatred of Donald Trump, there is a quiet, though usually repressed, recognition that the United States is doing what it long should have been doing—leading the world to an economic recovery, despite Trump’s trash-talking tariffs, and going to the mat with China. Critics concede that China is culpable of all sorts of trade violations. They add in the past that nothing much worked to persuade them to follow the global norms of currency, labor, environmental, and safety regulations, as well as copyright and patent laws. And while they abhor tariffs, they nonetheless have no ideas otherwise how to nudge China to follow the rules of global citizenship.

For all the op-eds condemning a polarizing Trump who has wrecked American foreign policy, there are also more silent concessions among many analysts that the team of Mike Pompeo, Jim Mattis, John Bolton, and Nikki Haley is impressive. They are more likely than imagined alternatives to stop any more Iranian nonsense on the seas of the Persian Gulf, or tune out the periodic ultimatums of the Palestinians, or take seriously the nuclear threats of North Korea, or get tough when Putin deserves tough treatment—and they have the will and, increasingly, the means to do what they say. The policy is to be ready for a fight, but neither to prompt nor to welcome one. For Trump, who values ratings and money most of all, wars can quickly lose viewers and cost too much.

In sum, we are witnessing one of the great ironies of the modern age. Minorities who are not Trump supporters are doing better under Trump than any past president, liberal or conservative. Environmentalists who despise him know that America has become more effective than its green European critics in reducing carbon emissions, largely through the breakneck production of natural gas. Diplomats who loathe Trump find their good cop talk and soft power has more resonance once it is backed up by a better military, a better national security team, and an unpredictable commander-in-chief who might just be capable of doing anything at any time to anyone anywhere in the defense of American interests and sovereignty.

NeverTrump legal scholars are perplexed that never has a Republican president appointed so many qualified judges and seen them confirmed so quickly. They wonder how that could be so, without at least one David Souter or Harriet Miers. They despair that it might become true that a president who enlists the best and brightest of the “you can’t dare do that” administrative state and the revolving Washington and New York diplomatic and financial elite, is a president who will be rendered inert.

How can things be getting concretely better than they were during the Obama years when expert opinion insists things are getting worse?

The simple answer is that for half the country Trump’s crudity trumps his cunning on the economy and foreign policy. That irony prompts the essential question of this presidency: could crudity have been the accelerant that pushed his agenda forward? And if so, what does that say about those who led us who were far less crude and far less competent—and far less worried about the consequences of their policies upon those whom they rarely ever saw? Or rather what is crudity when mellifluousness did such damage? And what is morality when a lot of ruin was done by those who claimed by birth, education, reputation, ZIP code, or influence to be so much better than those they hurt?

Bob Dylan - The 1966 Live Recordings: The Untold Story Behind The Recordings

Today's Tune: Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone (live in Newcastle; May 21, 1966)

Review: Bob Dylan’s ‘Live 1962-1966’ collects powerful concert performances

By Wade Tatangelo

http://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20180822/review-bob-dylans-live-1962-1966-collects-powerful-concert-performances

August 22, 2018

From 1962 to ’66, Bob Dylan reigned as one of the most influential figures in popular music. He released such landmark albums as “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” and “Highway 61 Revisited,” in between giving enthralling concert performances at iconic venues like Carnegie Hall in New York City and Royal Albert Hall in London. While Dylan didn’t release a live album until 1974′s “Before the Flood,” his 1960s concerts have been nicely documented since the 1991 launch of the official “Bootleg Series” series. Then, in 2012, Dylan’s record label released the first of several massive, extremely limited edition “50th Anniversary/Copyright Extension” box sets to keep his music from entering the public domain. The newly issued two disc “Live 1962-1966: Rare Performances from The Copyright Collections” does an expert job of cherry picking from those previously issued “copyright extension” sets, as well the immense “Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965-1966″ and the 36-CD box set “1966 Live Recordings.”

“Live 1962-1966” follows Dylan’s rise from Greenwich Village coffeehouse gigs to a whirlwind tour that covered Europe and Australia. Disc one is 16 tracks from ’62 to ’64 with just Dylan accompanying himself on guitar and harmonica. Joan Baez sings with him on a version of “When the Ship Comes In,” a jeremiad laced with biblical references from the March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. While it’s a treat to hear this historic performance as well as early live versions of hits like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are a-Changin,’” “It Ain’t Me Babe” and “Mr. Tambourine Man”; the real gems, for me, at least, are the more obscure songs. For instance, “Seven Curses,” Dylan’s rewrite of the ancient folk song “The Maid Freed from the Gallows,” has never sounded more haunting than on this rendition from a tremendous ’63 Town Hall concert in New York City, which is represented here with five tracks including a most tender “Boots of Spanish Leather” and the potent anti-war song “John Brown.”

Disc two finds Dylan ditching protest music in favor of the surreal imagery found on impressive renditions of such epics as “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” “Gates of Eden,” “Desolation Row” and the album closer “Visions of Johanna” from Belfast, Ireland, in May 1966. The transition from solo acoustic performer to a folk-rocker capable of raising all kinds of hell is represented with a “Maggie’s Farm” from ’65 recorded just over a month following Dylan’s shot-heard-around-the-music-world electric performance of the same song at Newport Folk Festival. Whereas that performance appeared on 2005′s “The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack” from the same ’65 Newport set we do get “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” featuring sinewy lead guitar by Michael Bloomfield. Three electric numbers featuring lead guitarist Robbie Robertson and other future members of The Band are culled from the famed ’66 tour. The “Ballad of a Thin Man” from Edinburgh, Scotland,” has to be one of Dylan’s all-time great vocals, the lunatic lyrics matched by the madman organ playing of Garth Hudson.

While “Live 1962-1966” isn’t exactly essential, it’s a most welcome release for us Dylan fans unable to get our hands on those rare and pricey “50th Anniversary/Copyright Extension” box sets.

Bob Dylan proves he's still got it in Christchurch show

By John Stringer

https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/106655296/bob-dylan-proves-hes-still-got-it-in-christchurch-show

August 29, 2018

(Rome, April 2018)

A smiling and happy Dylan took a sold out Horncastle Arena of adoring New Zealand fans in Christchurch on a tour of re-arranged songs from across his six decades of albums.

At 77, dressed in a silver grey tuxedo jacket, bus conductor pants and a black Western shirt with silver buttons and a bolo tie, and that trademark mussy Dylan mop top, but no hat this time – Dylan still has it.

Singing without any backing vocals, just his five-piece live Band, the man from Duluth, Minnesota, sent us through a rollicking three sets of re-arranged songs without a break over two solid hours.

He sang a set from the early days, the centre of the concert was more recent songs, and ended up with some 60s classics.

READ MORE:
* Bob Dylan's concert phone ban
* The times they are a changin', but Dylan remains (mostly) the same
* Dylan's tour sounds like it's Blowin' in the Wind

Kicking off with Things Have Changed from Wonder Boys (for which he won his Academy Award which was on stage) and It Ain’t Me Babe and Highway 61 Revisited, Dylan took us to a strong new version of Summer Dayswith some high energy southern fiddle. He variously stood or sat playing vigorous or melodic reflective baby grand piano and there was plenty of trademark harmonica. At two points Dylan left the baby grand piano to huge applause and sang centre stage. There was obvious fun with those gangly Dylan stage moves and the hand on the hip.

We got the blues, electric guitar rock, some soul, folk and swinging ballads. Accompanied by rhythm guitar, bass (including a double bass plucked and played with bow), keyboards and fiddle, five switched-out lead guitars and drums, Dylan was confident and his voice strong. He drank from a simple paper cup, which during Roman Kingswas switched out with what looked like a takeaway coffee.

Non-use of hand-held devices, recording or photos and video was strictly enforced. People were encouraged to just enjoy the performance for once instead of distracting everyone with little illuminated screens in their faces. We were 20 metres away and caught every Dylan grimace and nuance. He was really enjoying himself in Christchurch.

Backed by huge red velvet curtains which Dylan bought with him, The Band wore black fedoras and matching tuxedo jackets with silver glitter lapels. Dylan had a matching silver yoke on his Western shirt. The stage was full of retro nostalgia (also brought in) such as: a suspended set of seven vintage trash can-style movie-set spot lights, a ring of eight caged retro industrial lights on stands glowing orange in some songs and to the right of the piano, his academy award and that neo-classical bust of Athena with a bob that he takes everywhere.

Dylan gave us: Tangled Up in Blue, Roman Kings, Like A Rolling Stone, Honest With Me, Make You Feel My Love,Love Sick, Thunder on the Mountain, Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright, among others. Some were unrecognisable new renditions. I didn’t recognise Desolation Row until it was over.

Perhaps the highlight of the evening was a new version of 1979’s Gotta Serve Somebody from Slow Train Coming, but with funny new lyrics: “You mi-ght be a mystic...” something about a “fine-toothed comb” and “hallucinating, you mighta seen a ghost” to “you might not even know, the day of your birth!” which was received with standing applause and Dylan beaming.

He encored at 9:50pm after 110 minutes with a nice Blowin’ In the Wind backed by some lovely fiddle, and finished up with a feisty Ballad of a Thin Man (“Do Ya, Mr Jones?”) from 1965. The audience loved it and Dylan seemed pleased, smiling and grinning throughout.

Setlist:

Things Have Changed
It Ain’t Me Babe
Highway 61 Revisited
Simple Twist Of Fate
Summer Days
When I Paint My Masterpiece
Honest With Me
Tryin’ To Get To Heaven
Make You Feel My Love
Pay In Blood
Tangled Up In Blue
Early Roman Kings
Desolation Row
Love Sick
Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
Thunder On The Mountain
Soon After Midnight
Gotta Serve Somebody
Blowin’ In The Wind [encore]
Ballad Of A Thin Man [encore]

Prelates and Pederasts

By Paul A. Rahe

https://ricochet.com/547522/prelates-and-pederasts/

August 27, 2018

Sixteen years ago, reporters at The Boston Globe conducted an extensive investigation of the sexual abuse of minors by priests in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. Not long thereafter, reporters elsewhere detailed similar abuse in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and the like. The word used in the press to describe what had been going on was pedophilia, which is a misnomer deliberately employed to cover up what journalists then considered and still consider now an inconvenient aspect of the truth.

As a report commissioned by the National Review Board of the American Catholic bishops and issued in 2004 revealed, something like 81 percent of the victims were boys, and very few of them were, in the strictest sense, children. They were nearly all what we euphemistically call young adults. They were male adolescents on the younger side – at the age when boys as they mature can briefly be downright pretty.

What was involved was what its advocates call man-boy love: a sexual relationship between a grown man who serves as a mentor and a boy who is under his care or simply admires or stand in awe of him. The ancient Greeks, who practiced this systematically in the classical period, called this phenomenon pederasty, and I wrote extensively about it 26 years ago in the first part of my hardback book Republics Ancient and Modern (the pertinent chapter can be found in the first volume of the paperback edition).

Father Gerald Fitzgerald

In the course of these investigations, a number of other things came to light. First, a priest named Gerald Fitzgerald – who had in 1947 in New Mexico founded a small religious order named Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete to counsel priests who had difficulty with alcoholism, substance abuse, celibacy, and the like – had for decades been trying to alert the American bishops and officials in the Vatican (including Pope Paul VI) to the fact that priestly pederasty (which, he said, was unheard of before World War II) was within the American Catholic Church a growing problem. And he had persistently tried to persuade the hierarchy to forbid the perpetrators’ supervision of boys and to laicize them – all to no avail.

It also turned out that in 1984, when a scandal of this sort broke out in the diocese of Lafayette, LA, a Dominican priest named Thomas P. O’Doyle — who was a canon lawyer working for the Papal Nuncio in Washington and had seen numerous reports of a similar kind cross his desk – had joined with a Louisiana lawyer named F. Ray Mouton, Jr., and another priest, a psychiatrist named Michael Peterson, who directed a hospital for troubled priests and knew a great deal, to conduct an extensive investigation of clerical misconduct along these lines throughout the United States. The report that these three men produced was sent to every bishop in the country in May 1985, and then it was ignored – and bishop after bishop continued the long-standing practice of covering up the scandals that arose, of paying off the victims and eliciting from them a non-disclosure agreement, and of transferring the perpetrators from one parish to another and even from one diocese to another.

Not long after the scandal first broke and the National Review Board issued its 2004 report, I was a guest at a dinner hosted by a Catholic friend, as was a highly intelligent, young local priest who, everyone knew, would someday become a bishop. By then it was evident to anyone who bothered to read the report that pederasty, not pedophilia, was the problem, and I had long known that there were seminaries in the United States that were essentially cathouses in which all of the cats were male.

When talk turned to the clerical scandal, I suggested that the fatal decision made by the American bishops in 1985 to continue the practice of covering everything up must have come from Rome. If, I argued, every diocese followed the same procedures, the bishops must have received guidance from the center. Could it then be the case, I asked, that this is not a peculiarly American problem; that this is going on elsewhere, all over the world; that Rome is the epicenter; and that the Papal nuncio in Washington or his superiors at the Vatican are complicit? Could it be the case that the colleges in Rome, established for the education of especially promising seminarians from all over the world, were in effect gay bordellos and that promotion into the hierarchy for many a young priest came at a price?

My host knew what I was talking about. He had once been a Jesuit novice, and he had been expelled from the Jesuits by the provincial for complaining about the sexual misconduct going on in the novitiate all around him. What I remember most vividly, however, was the silence of the young priest at the dinner table. He had been talkative. Now he said not a word. He was even then a handsome young man, and he had studied at the North American College at a time when he was no doubt even more striking. As we left, I remember saying to my wife, “He knows more than he is willing to divulge.”

I do not mean to say that he was complicit. I doubt that very much. I do mean to suggest that he had received unwanted attention and that he knew that, if he talked about it, it would put a stop to his clerical career.

Later, of course, it became evident that my suspicions with regard to Rome were justified. In the intervening years, there have been scandals identical to the American scandal in Canada, Australia, Belgium, Bavaria, Ireland, Honduras, Chile, and elsewhere. And, a few years ago, we learned that a host of high-level figures in the Curia were being blackmailed by their male lovers. I am told that Pope Benedict, who had already by that time contracted Parkinson’s Disease, resigned his office in this connection because he knew that there needed to be a purge and he feared that he did not have the physical stamina to carry it out himself. In his memoirs, Pope Benedict touches on the “gay lobby” and confesses to a lack of resoluteness on his own part. As everyone understood at the time, the task of cleaning house was to be left to his successor.

In the interim between Pope Benedict’s papacy and that of his successor, we received another indication of the depth of the problem. In the newspapers of Scotland, we learned that Keith Michael Patrick O’Brien, a cardinal and archbishop who was the Primate of Scotland, had been buggering seminarians and young priests for years and that nothing had been done in response to the complaints that they had submitted to the Papal Nuncio. It was only when they went public in 2013 that the Vatican acted.

Pope Francis with Cardinal Daneels (2nd from right) on the loggia March 13, 2013

Unfortunately, however, Benedict’s successor was Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina – the man who calls himself Pope Francis. As a Belgian cardinal named Gottfried Daneels – who had been removed as an archbishop because he had covered up pederasty on the part of another Belgian cardinal and had come out in support of contraception, divorce, gay marriage, euthanasia, and abortion – revealed in his memoirs, Bergoglio’s candidacy was promoted by the St. Gallen Group, a part of what Catholics call “the Lavender Mafia.” This disgraced figure stood on the balcony with Bergoglio after he was elected Pope; he was chosen to say the prayer at the new Pope’s inauguration; and there was joy in the ranks of those inclined to break the vow of celibacy.

If you want to get a sense of what such people thought, I suggest that you read “The Vatican’s Secret Life,” an article that appeared in Vanity Fair in December 2013. It is an eye-opener. Its author, Michael Joseph Gross, is not scandalized by what he found. He celebrates it; and, tellingly, he never once mentions, even under the guise of pedophilia, the propensity of prominent priests to indulge in pederasty. As Gross observes,

At the Vatican, a significant number of gay prelates and other gay clerics are in positions of great authority. They may not act as a collective but are aware of one another’s existence. And they inhabit a secretive netherworld, because homosexuality is officially condemned. Though the number of gay priests in general, and specifically among the Curia in Rome, is unknown, the proportion is much higher than in the general population. Between 20 and 60 percent of all Catholic priests are gay, according to one estimate cited by Donald B. Cozzens in his well-regarded The Changing Face of the Priesthood. For gay clerics at the Vatican, one fundamental condition of their power, and of their priesthood, is silence, at least in public, about who they really are.

Clerics inhabit this silence in a variety of ways. A few keep their sexuality entirely private and adhere to the vow of celibacy. Many others quietly let themselves be known as gay to a limited degree, to some colleagues, or to some laypeople, or both; sometimes they remain celibate and sometimes they do not. A third way, perhaps the least common but certainly the most visible, involves living a double life. Occasionally such clerics are unmasked, usually by stories in the Italian press. In 2010, for the better part of a month, one straight journalist pretended to be the boyfriend of a gay man who acted as a “honeypot” and entrapped actual gay priests in various sexual situations. (The cardinal vicar of Rome was given the task of investigating. The priests’ fates are unknown.)

There are at least a few gay cardinals, including one whose long-term partner is a well-known minister in a Protestant denomination. There is the notorious monsignor nicknamed “Jessica,” who likes to visit a pontifical university and pass out his business card to 25-year-old novices. (Among the monsignor’s pickup lines: “Do you want to see the bed of John XXIII?”) There’s the supposedly straight man who has a secret life as a gay prostitute in Rome and posts photographs online of the innermost corridors of the Vatican. Whether he received this privileged access from some friend or family member, or from a client, is impossible to say; to see a known rent boy in black leather on a private Vatican balcony does raise an eyebrow.

I recommend that you read the whole article. The author interviewed a great many clerics in Rome, and he makes it clear that they were delighted with the choice of Bergoglio and with his selection of advisers.

They had reason to be delighted. Since his election, Pope Francis has done everything within his power to soften and subvert the Church’s teaching concerning human sexuality. He put the Lavender Mafia in charge of the two Synods on the Family held in 2014 and 2015. They tried to push through their agenda; and, when the assembled bishops balked, they got a tongue-lashing from the Pope, and he inserted in the final report without comment two paragraphs that had not received the requisite two-thirds vote. All of this – including the machinations of the St. Gallen Group and the role played by Cardinal Daneels – is laid out in detail by an English Catholic, who was in Rome during the early year of this papacy, and who writes under the pseudonym Marcantonio Colonna. The title is The Dictator Pope: The Inside Story of the Francis Papacy.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick

In the last few weeks, we have received further evidence of the power of the prelate-pederasts. A grand jury convened in Pennsylvania has revealed that Donald Wuerl, while bishop of Pittsburgh, covered up a priest-run child-porn ring and a host of other abuses cases involving something on the order of 100 priests, using the age-old trick of pay-offs and non-disclosure agreements. But this did not stop him from being named Archbishop of Washington DC and of being made a Cardinal – which is to say, a Prince of the Church. He was not even high on the list of possible nominees submitted by the Papal Nuncio. Someone powerful in the Vatican wanted him promoted, and Pope Francis responded to the news of his guilt not by ordering an investigation into Wuerl’s promotion, but with a dodge – by attributing collective guilty to us all.

This past weekend, the chickens finally came home to roost. We had already learned of the predatory conduct of Theodore McCarrick, Wuerl’s predecessor as Cardinal-Archbishop of Washington. The evidence showed that he had buggered altar boys and seminarians while auxiliary bishop in New York, bishop of Metuchen in New Jersey, and Archbishop of Newark. Formal complaints had been lodged against him as the 1990s and continued to be lodged in later years, but they were ignored, and he was nonetheless promoted. On Saturday night, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who was the Papal Nuncio in Washington from 2011 to 2016, released an eleven-page testament, revealing that Pope Benedict had learned of McCarrick’s conduct, that he had acted against the man in 2009 or 2010 by silencing him, prohibiting him from travel, and forbidding him to say mass in public; that in 2013 he had himself personally warned Pope Francis against McCarrick, spelling out in detail the man’s misdeeds; that Francis had reversed the restrictions imposed on McCarrick by Benedict; that he had taken him as his chief American advisor; and that Francis had ignored the advice of the Papal Nuncio and accepted that of McCarrick in choosing archbishops and bishops for the United States – including Blaise Cupich, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Chicago, and Joseph Tobin, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Newark. Viganò also did something on Saturday night that, as far as I know, no high-ranking prelate has done in more than six hundred years. He called on the Pope to resign.

In the meantime, Monsignor Jean-Francois Lantheaume, former first counsellor at the apostolic nunciature in Washington, DC has emerged to confirm that Viganò‘s predecessor had been instructed to confine McCarrick by Pope Benedict, that he had himself witnessed the confrontation with McCarrick, and that everything else that Viganò himself had said was true. To this, we must add that Viganò named names in the Vatican, specifying which high officials had obstructed the investigation into McCarrick’s conduct.

As all of this suggests, we are now at a turning point. The Lavender Mafia controls the Papacy and the Vatican overall, and Pope Francis is packing the College of Cardinals, who will elect the next Pope, with sympathizers. Pope Francis and his minions have now been exposed, named, and shamed; and there will be a civil war within the Roman Catholic Church. Either Francis leaves and his supporters and clients are purged. Or the Church is conceded to those who for decades have sheltered and promoted the pederasts and those who regard their abuse of minors as a matter indifferent. It is time that those bishops, archbishops, and cardinals who are innocent of such conduct stand up and force a house-cleaning. In the meantime, the laity should speak up loud and clear.

Published in General

Tags: Archbishop Vigano, Donald Wuerl, Lavender Mafia, pederasty, Pope Francis, Theodore McCarrick

WHY IN THE NAME OF GOD IS THE MEDIA PROTECTING POPE FRANCIS?

By Ben Shapiro
https://www.newsweek.com/ben-shapiro-why-name-god-media-protecting-pope-francis-opinion-1098982
August 31, 2018


A shaft of light illuminates Pope Francis as he responds to a question from reporter Anna Matranga of CBS News aboard his flight from Dublin to Rome Aug. 26. Matranga asked the pope about a statement made by Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former apostolic nuncio to the United States, concerning Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

In 2003, The Boston Globe won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on a massive sex abuse cover-up inside the Roman Catholic Church, led by the archdiocese of Boston. The Pulitzer board praised the newspaper’s “courageous, comprehensive coverage of sexual abuse by priests, an effort that pierced secrecy, stirred local, national and international reaction and produced changes in the Roman Catholic Church.” Hollywood made the Oscar-winning movie Spotlight about the effort.

In 2018, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, former Vatican ambassador to the United States, released an 11-page memo alleging that Pope Francis and other top members of the Vatican had reinstated Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to a public position despite credible allegations of sexual abuse of seminarians and minors. The memo rocked the Catholic Church; Pope Francis refused to comment; other sources came forward to back Vigano’s claims.

Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago made the near-unbelievable claim that Pope Francis shouldn’t comment, since he has “a bigger agenda. He’s got to get on with other things, of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the church. We’re not going to go down a rabbit hole on this.”

So, did the press leap to investigate Vigano’s claims? Did they demand answers from Pope Francis? Did we see the same type of courageous, comprehensive coverage of Francis’ activities that we saw from the Globe team circa 2003? Of course not.

Instead, mainstream media outlets went out of their way to portray Vigano as a disgruntled conservative angry at Pope Francis’ progressive interpretation of Catholic doctrine. The New York Times headlined, “Vatican Power Struggle Bursts Into Open as Conservatives Pounce.” Their print headline was even worse: “Francis Takes High Road As Conservatives Pounce, Taking Criticisms Public.”

Yes, according to the Times, the story wasn’t the sitting Pope being credibly accused of a sexual abuse cover-up—it was conservatives attacking him for it. The problem of child molestation and sexual abuse of clergy took a back seat to Francis’ leftist politics, as the Times piece made clear in its first paragraph: “Since the start of his papacy, Francis has infuriated Catholic traditionalists as he tries to nurture a more welcoming church and shift it away from culture war issues, whether abortion or homosexuality. ‘Who am I to judge?’ the pope famously said, when asked about gay priests. Just how angry his political and doctrinal enemies are became clear this weekend…”

It wasn’t just the Times. On Wednesday, Reuters headlined, “Defenders rally around pope, fear conservatives escalating war.” On Thursday, Reuters doubled down with this headline: “Conservative media move to front line of battle to undermine Pope Francis.” The Telegraph (U.K.) reported, “Vatican analysts say the attack appears to be part of a concerted effort by conservatives to oust Pope Francis, who they dislike for his relatively liberal views…”

But why in the name of God is calling on the Vatican not to defend sexual abusers a political issue for the press? Why isn’t this something we can all agree upon? Why aren’t the press asking the pope tough questions, instead of focusing on the supposed motivations of the whistleblowers?

The media’s disgraceful attempts to cover for Francis because of their love for his politics merely exposes the actual malign motivations of many in the media: they were happy to expose misconduct and evil inside the Catholic Church when the pope was a conservative; they’re happy to facilitate a cover-up when the pope is a liberal.

That’s vile. And most Catholics understand that if the members of the media—an overwhelmingly secular group of people—are steadfastly defending a papacy accused of sexual abuse cover-ups, it’s not out of goodwill for the Church generally. It’s out of a belief that traditionalist doctrine must be rooted out at any cost, even including the abuse of minors and the violation of basic canon law.

The media’s coverage of the burgeoning potential cover-up scandal by Pope Francis and his associates doesn’t call conservative Catholics into question. It calls into question members of the media themselves, who seem eager to uncover wrongdoing only when it serves their political interests, and eager to subordinate the interests of the innocent to their political agenda when they must.

Ben Shapiro is editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire and host of The Ben Shapiro Show, available on iTunes and syndicated across America.​