Penn State open thread *UPDATED*
Bookworm on Nov 10 2011 at 9:57 am | Filed under: Herman Cain, Open Threads
For those of you who have things you want to say about the goings-on at Penn State (the sexual abuse, the cover-up, the firings, and the riots), have at it.
My take is that it’s worth contrasting this appalling sexual abuse with the claims against Cain. I know that a greater wrong doesn’t cancel a lesser one, but it should make any rational person look twice at the woman now claiming Cain’s monstrous crime was that he gave off a vibe.
UPDATE: Here are three articles from today’s Investor’s Business Daily, all discussing different aspects of the allegations against Herman Cain. I think this is an appropriate place for these articles, because of the nice contrast between Cain, a victim of modern anti-male, anti-corporate harassment laws, and Sandusky, an actual child rapist. Again, Cain might have been a boor, but so far there’s not much else.
Will someone tell us what Herman Cain did?
David Axelrod’s pattern of sexual misbehavior
No-fly zone over Clinton, JFK sexcapades
UPDATE II: Greg, at Rhymes With Right, introduced me to a post that sums it up as perfectly as any could:
These things should be simple:
1. When, as an adult, you come come across another adult raping a small child, you should a) do everything in your power to rescue that child from the rapist, b) call the police the moment it is practicable.
2. If your adult son calls you to tell you that he just saw another adult raping a small child, but then left that small child with the rapist, and then asks you what he should do, you should a) tell him to get off the phone with you and call the police immediately, b) call the police yourself and make a report, c) at the appropriate time in the future ask your adult son why the fuck he did not try to save that kid.
[snip]
You know, there’s a part of me who looks at the actions of each of non-raping grown men in the “Pennsylvania State University small-child-allegedly-being-raped-by-a-grown-man-who-is-part-of-the-football-hierarchy” scandal and can understand why those men could rationalize a) not immediately acting in the interests of a small child being raped, b) not immediately going to the police, c) doing only the minimum legal requirements in the situation, d) acting to keep from exposing their organization to a scandal. But here’s the thing: that part of me? The part that understands these actions? That part of me is a fucking coward. And so by their actions — and by their inactions — were these men.
Read the rest here (and, really, do read the rest).
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I’d like to hear what people think about Joe Paterno’s firing.
If you don’t know anything about the charges against Sandusky (the former Paterno asst coach), they are horrifying, involving repeated accounts of oral and anal sexual activity with young boys aged about 10-12. If you wish, scroll down to page 6 of this pdf of the grand jury report and read of Victim #2:
http://i.cdn.turner.com/dr/teg/tsg/release/sites/default/files/assets/sanduskygrangjury.pdf
The assistant coach who witnessed this took it to Joe Pa. Joe Pa did not contact the police; he took it to his athletic director, reported it correctly to him, and then washed his hands of the matter. He soon afterwards told Sandusky he was no longer in the running to be his replacement as head coach; he also was involved in making sure Sandusky could no longer use Penn State facilities for private activities with the young boys from that charity organization.
The AD reported the problem, but did NOT report the anal intercourse. He made it sound like vague “concerns” over “inappropriate behavior”. As a result of this deliberate suppression of information, the AD is now, today, in serious legal trouble.
Should JoePa have been fired because he reported it up his “chain of command” and then washed his hands of the matter? He’s an old school guy and it’s clear the molestation charge made him severely uncomfortable and he really wanted nothing to do with it. Should he have uncovered his own superior’s deliberate whitewashing of it to the police? Should JoePa have involved himself in the police investigation? Is he morally responsible for any further molestations in the ten years that have passed since then due to his negligence?
His AD deserves all the punishment they can throw at him. What the AD did is to me exactly the same as what Catholic Church superiors did in the horrifying cases of Catholic priest abuse of young boys – hide it, cover it up, move the molester off to the side into the shadows.
I don’t think JoePa did anything wrong. He’s been fired, immediately, as head coach, with only a couple of games left on what was to be his final season.
What do you all think? Was reporting the rape to his superior, and knowing that the superior did get the police involved, enough, or should he have done much more?
Book, I was just thinking how will it be before the tin foil hat club comes up with the idea that the Cain campaign pushed the Porn State issue to the front to show what a real sex scandal looks like.
This scandal is bad all around. Maybe it will highlight that fact that more abuse occurs in schools than in the Catholic Church. Both are equally harmful to the victims and what we see is that when a reputation is at stake coverups follow regardless. However the Catholics don’t seem to be overturning news vans in support of their abusers…
“What do you all think? Was reporting the rape to his superior, and knowing that the superior did get the police involved, enough, or should he have done much more?”
If it was your boy would you not have wanted him to go to the police? In criminal things such as this the chain of command is out the window.
MacG,
I haven’t read anything that’s given me the details of his conversation with his AD. Suppose it went like this?
Paterno, after describing all the details: “I wanted to alert you about these specifics before we call in the police.”
AD: “Yeah, yeah, thank you, ok. Tell you what. I will take it from here. I will notify the police and tell them what’s happened.”
Paterno: “Should I be there, or my assistant? Should we provide statements?”
AD: “I’m sure the police will do all the correct steps, Joe. You know how this works. I will take care of this. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.” (Dismisses him. Later he tells Paterno he called the police in and provided “the information in his statement”, which of course he actually did not.)
I don’t even know that the police talked to the boy! Why not? I don’t think the parents knew anything about this.
Perhaps the AD’s lying statement was so vague (the charge is that he provided false and misleading information in the police statement) that they instantly dismissed it as not worth following up on. I can’t tell.
>>In criminal things such as this the chain of command is out the window.>>
Maybe. I’m still accumulating info. As I understand it, he did what he was supposed to do according to the requirements that had been established in such a case. And he took action to ensure that in his area of influence, it couldn’t happen again. He had no idea who the boy was, and wasn’t in a position to institute an investigation himself. He expected his superiors – to whom he had reported the possible incident – to do so.
Apparently they didn’t. It seems to me that those who were responsible for establishing the actions that were required of him are the ones who have ultimate responsibility. Their standards weren’t adequate. It seems cowardly to me that they hold him responsible for the failure of their policies.
Remember that he didn’t see the abuse himself – he was informed of it. What if the informer lied – or exaggerated…maybe wanted Sandusky’s position or some such? When Paterno didn’t get results, why didn’t the informer go higher or to the police? Why is he not held responsible? He’s the one with the actual facts.
I don’t know…as usual…not enough info.
At this point, given the info we have, and given Paterno’s statement that he is resigning as of the end of this season, I think they made a mistake. He was not the accused perpetrator – in which case, their actions would have been a good first step.
I suspect they were catering to PC rather than trying to actually accomplish anything. Washing their hands, in effect.
>> I don’t think the parents knew anything about this.>>
Discussing this with my husband – asked why there were young boys there in the first place. Apparently “they” (Paterno? The school?) had a special athletic program there for young “at risk” boys.
So – even if the parents knew…would they care?
Talk about “at risk”.
Is the program still ongoing?
What changes are they make in their standards for actions to be taken in the future, given a similar situation?
The (then) graduate assistant who witnessed an adult male sodomizing a 10-year old in the showers did not even attempt to stop it — he tiptoed away and called his Daddy on the phone, then went in the next day and told JoePa.
This man is now the receivers coach for Penn State, and he should ALSO be fired summarily. MacG is absolutely correct about this – doing the legal minimum (and they may not have done that, if the usual requirements for reporting by school personnel extends to university employees) is NOT sufficient.
If it were me, I’d haul all of these guys to the center of the field and have a ceremony like the military one where they strip the epaulets and insignia off the uniform and send the miscreant away in shame. The trouble is that there appears to be very little honor among Penn State fans – at least the vocal ones. Rallying in “support” of a man who chose the “reputation of the institution” over the protection of children is despicable.
But, that’s just me…….
Greetings:
It doesn’t seem to me that former Coach Paterno got much in the way of “due process”. After such a long term of employment, the Board of Trustees has a meeting and just fires him! Where was the coach and perhaps an attorney or two. Especially in light of his offered resignation at the end of the season. Seems strange to me. A more than slight odor of Duke lacrosse seems to be wafting through. Punishment first, then a trial anyone ??? Isn’t the University an organ of the state government ???
For Christ’s sake, he’s an old man but then to vultures, any old corpse will do. What is it with this feudalism of these illiberally indoctrinated institutions, with their own police forces ??? When I worked for the Navy as a civilian, there was a concept called “protecting the rice bowl” which referred to protecting the organization’s responsibilities from incursions by others. It sure seems to me that Coach Paterno is being jettisoned in order to limit the damage to the University and its rulers.
The original report from the graduate assistant was in 2002.
Essentially, the university told the perp that he wasn’t to come on campus anymore or spend time in the athletic department. No checks were instituted, no locks or passwords were changed – and the guy has been a regular on the premises for the last 10 years….using the weight rooms as recently as a week or two ago, by some reports.
Sorry….even being 74, 75, 76, 77, etc. years old does not excuse JoePa from his moral (and possibly legal) responsibility to protect children from predators. The predator was still A. running the foundation for at-risk youth, and B. showing up around the facilities (even if he no longer brought children with him) for almost 10 YEARS, despite the fact that the University had banned him…..and JoePa did nothing. What could he have been thinking?
Of course, if they do not do AT LEAST as much to the receivers coach who did his own legal minimum, but no more, then I will have some severe criticism for the Board of Trustees…..but until now — Bravo!
I’ve always been a believer in personal responsibility, so it’s hard to accept spreading blame around, which seems to be what people reflexively do in this sad day and age. (You know, if I shoot somebody, it’s my fault. It’s not Taurus, S & W, or Ruger’s fault; it’s mine. Nor is the fault of Fiocchi, CCI, Remington or Winchester – it’s still mine.)
If there’s a procedure at Penn State for dealing with something like this, I don’t know what it is – nor do, I suspect, any of the rest of us. I do know that Joe Paterno has a rather military turn of mind: his underlings report to him, and he reports to his superiors. What happens after those reports are made is not the concern of either those who report to him, or of him – once he makes his report up the ladder. (No comment as to whether that’s right, wrong, or indifferent. I simply note it’s the way it is.)
So, as much as we know is: Paterno receives a report about Sandusky’s extracurricular activities from his assistant coach, who evidently “witnessed” it. (Which raises the question: what’s the matter with his brain? Not to be aggressively unfriendly or anything, but if I actually see an episode of something like that, said episode will be stopped, right then. But again – that’s a personal choice, and that’s just me; there is no obligation for the assistant coach to break off any part of Sandusky.) So the assistant has done his job: reported to his boss. Having made the report, he salutes, he exits. He’s finished. (He’s the AB, and he’s just told the watch commander the hull is holed. Done – that’s all he has to do.) His boss is Joe Paterno. Paterno goes and reports to his boss. His boss did – or didn’t – do whatever he did – or didn’t – do with it. Is that Paterno’s fault? (He’s the watch commander, he told the XO there’s a problem. That’s it – he’s done. He doesn’t even really have the right to ask the XO what he plans to do about it. That’s not his concern.)
I don’t know if that’s exactly how it works, but that is a fair simulacrum of how Paterno thinks. Handling problems, that’s what higher authority is for. You report the problem, higher authority brings authority to bear. I don’t know if Paterno had the power to fire Sandusky or not, but I suspect not. It seems from what he did do – tell Sandusky he’d never be head coach, and he couldn’t use Penn State facilities – that the ability to dismiss was not his. He went as far as he could go: “you got no future here,” but he didn’t get to pull the trigger. (Or I suspect he’d have done it – that would have been an easier conversation to have.)
I find it difficult to see where Paterno’s at fault. (The ship sank because the XO didn’t tell the captain the hull was holed – we blame this on the watch commander?) I think it’s obvious he didn’t have the ability to fire Sandusky himself, he did what was available to him.
The only thing you might fault him for is not going to the police. (You might fault him for it – I don’t.) Going to the cops is not a ritual act – despite what the cops think – and he put the problem in the lap of the guy who has a sign on his door that says: “deposit problems here” – the Athletic Director. That’s as high as Paterno’s reach extends. He has to make some assumptions in life – we all do – and among his are that the guy at the top of the tree will do what’s proper.
The guy at the top of that particular tree, the Athletic Director, evidently didn’t do what was proper, or do much of anything at all. I have a bit of difficulty seeing that as Paterno’s fault. I’m not sure it’s the university president’s fault either – in fact I’m quite sure it’s not. But – like Joe Hazelwood, sound asleep in his cabin when second mate Cousens rammed the Exxon Valdez onto the Bligh Reef, he’s the captain. Even when snoring he’s responsible. So he goes. (This is stupid, of course, but it is the tradition: the captain’s the captain, it all lands on his head.)
I think Paterno did what was proper, and what he should have done. He told his boss, his boss told the cops. Precisely what his boss told the cops – that it wasn’t in sufficient detail or whatever – is not Paterno’s responsibility.
@11B40, jj: Little boys were being anally raped on the premises!! The guy you are defending did his duty, as you see it, and then watched for 10 YEARS as the perpetrator – banned from campus and the athletic department – continued to show up as if nothing had happened. Except apparently he no longer brought kids with him to rape in the showers. And this is all we require of those who are to set the example of responsible adulthood to our young people…..? Really? I mean…….really?
To say that the Board of Trustees are attempting to “protect their rice bowl” by firing these moral (and perhaps legal, don’t forget – I don’t know federal or PA state law on this) monsters seems like a sick joke to me. It was JoePa, the AD, the VP and the President who sacrificed unknown numbers of young boys to a guy they KNEW was raping kids – in order, apparently, to “protect the reputation of the University”.
Sorry….not acceptable behavior, and the Trustees recognize it, and good for them. They (and I) refuse to make legalistic excuses for employees who do not uphold the highest and best traditions of their institution. (Of course, if we find out that they’ve known all along about this and are only NOW doing something, then I would make a clean sweep of the Board as well. But, I have no information about that – so far, it looks like when they found out what had happened, they acted….unlike all these other freaks.)
Perhaps you can tell that I feel rather strongly about this!!
I have to agree with Earl that the burden goes up when it’s anal rape in front of an eye witness.
I’d like to think that if I was the one who witnessed what happened to Victim 2 — assuming that it was obvious to me, as it seems to have been for the witness back then, that Victim 2 was indeed a child — I would have interfered so immediately that Sandusky would have been much the worse for wear. There are some crimes that impose on us obligations that fall outside bureaucratic procedure. Manifest rape, especially child rape, is one of those crimes. Whether one has a professional responsibility to act, one has a moral responsibility.
Of course, saying I’d do the right thing and then actually doing the right thing . . . well, that’s always easier said than done. People don’t like to make waves, people like to make excuses, people experience analysis paralysis, etc. “Am I overracting?” “Is the witness credible?” “Is this really my responsibility?” “But he’s such a nice guy!” “Nah! That can’t be true.” “Can we get him off the street without destroying our sports mission?”
And on and on, until moral decency vanishes in a morass of analysis, questions, fears, selfishness, and self-delusion.
Human foibles aside, Sandusky should have been arrested then and there. And I’d like to think it would have been this type of arrest (and, yes, I know the article was doctored but, as doctored, it makes the right point).
No, Earl – I think he did his duty as he saw it. You don’t, but it’s difficult to fault anyone for doing that.
As far as “setting the example of responsible adulthood” for other people’s kids, well – that’s a long list of people who don’t do that. You’re going to have to cut the population down considerably to get it to those who do that. (Or even think they should: I personally don’t particularly see that it’s my job to be a role model or example for anybody else’s kid. I’ll behave well, and be exquisitely mannered, and if a kid wants to emulate that, fine – but it’s the parent’s job to be the role model and example for their kid – not mine. But here again, we don’t much like individual responsibility these days, so it takes a village, not a parent.)
Child molesters are mostly not monsters, they’re ill. Their pathology has turned some of them into monsters, but that’s the internal conflict stemming from the fact most of them hate what they are. Even the creeps aren’t happy being creeps. I’ve worked with a few while interning, when you cut through it they’re generally sad people. For the most part they don’t much like themselves, or the way they are, either. And you realize after going through it with a few of them: there’s nothing to be done. It’s not a voluntary, or controlled, or controllable, behavior. There are really only two things you can do with them when caught.: kill them; or lock them away from the rest of humanity forever – and forever means forever. You aren’t going to fix it: it isn’t fixable. It’s a wiring problem, and we don’t know how to open this particular hood and rewire it.
All of which is off the point of the issue we’re talking about – sorry. I wander, sometimes. I think Paterno did what he thought he was supposed to do. At this point we know a lot of rumors, I don’t think the story’s out yet. Hell, why didn’t the Center County DA prosecute Sandusky the first time he was arrested in 1998 for child-rape? Got me – I don’t know. He was supposed to be a tough-as-nails DA, and they say if he didn’t prosecute anybody at any time for anything it was because he didn’t have the goods. So maybe no one else did, or does, either.
We’re making a hell of a lot of assumptions here, and we don’t really know much. Earl and I will disagree about the limits of Paterno’s responsibility, and maybe the job of people in the passing parade to set examples for children, but I’ll wait to see.
“I would have interfered so immediately that Sandusky would have been much the worse for wear”
I’m with you Book. I however the report would have read that I would have done my best albeit failed attempt to protect him from the ‘slip and fall’ he had suffered in the shower…
Greetings: especially “Earl”
Once again, I seem to have used my brevity as the soul of my half-wit.
The point I was trying to make, and that your response alludes to, is that the way Coach Paterno was fired smacks of the “Someone get a rope!” approach. I’m not trying to defend what he did or didn’t do. What I’m not understanding at this point is how this course of action can occur without some kind of “due process”. Usually, large organizations have all-knowing personnel departments which come up with overly tedious requirements to be followed prior to anyone being involuntarily removed from an employment position. I don’t get a sense of that having happened which is what led to my current conclusion that the trusted Trustees had a somewhat larger agenda than those wanting to protect young boys from predators. Admittedly, 20 or 30 years of honorable service may not be sufficient in light of all of the facts of the matter(s) to come to a different course of action, but the coach has certainly earned, at the very least, an opportunity to make his case to resign at the end of the year.
Similarly, in my Psychology studying days, I took a course in Gerontology. One of the things that I remember is that life’s dislocations, divorce, losing a job, having to relocate, can have a much greater impact on the elderly than on those younger. I don’t think that I have seen any reference to this in any of the articles I read. Again, I’m not saying that the coach should skate; just having to resign under a cloud is no small thing after so long a tenure. I just think that the educated, credential-ed, leaders at Penn State are weighing their organization’s image as heavily as anything else. They are in a spotlight that they truly want to be out of. Whatever Coach Paterno’s behavior has earned him, I don’t think it need include a funeral.
Lastly, I’m also put a bit off by this legal/moral nexus. In these days of the Obama/Holder administration, ambiguity in that regard will probably not be a benefit to our republic. It kind of reminds me of the “all animals are equal; some animals are more equal” theme. When public distaste becomes a factor in the evaluation of whether a crime has been committed, we’re on a slippery unpopularity slope. Obviously, some people can’t resist the opportunity to use their high dudgeon to indirectly proclaim their moral superiority. I would not exclude the trusted Trustees from this kind of effect. I have no idea what the level of morality is at Penn State, but I remember someone saying something about “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” I don’t think Coach Paterno is incapable of coming to grips with the results of his behavior. Heapings of moral scorn will probably not be a help in that regard.
I am going to have go with Earl on this one as well. Paterno wasn’t a simple soldier in the chain of command and this isn’t the military. The report was of a crime being committed. For someone in Paterno’s position to simply pass the report up the chain of command and not to do any follow-up is inexcusable…professionally and humanly. It shows that he did not take ownership of the situation.
They made the right decision.
I’m with Earl. An eyewitness account of child rape, an illegal act with a defenseless victim, provides no wiggle room for any of them to believe that they could deal with this without police intervention. How many children were raped because they failed to get the police involved immediately? Just banning him from the premises was not enough – they needed to protect the rest of the community by making sure that he was kept away from children outside of their campus. How is this different from the Catholic church’s moving predatory priests to a different church instead of stopping their behavior? This is just disturbing.
Well…..if JoePa had gotten word that Sandusky had, in some way, been turned over to law enforcement, then maybe he fulfilled his duties as a moral human being. But that didn’t happen. JoePa could not possibly have missed the fact that the guy who had been banned from the premises continued to show up for TEN YEARS…… Had he so little curiosity about this guy and what had happened after he “did his duty” that he simply didn’t follow up? Or did he not really CARE about the little boys? Or was he worried about his “legacy” if it became known that a 10-year old boy was sodomized in his locker room? Or what? Can you think of ANY way to say that JoePa “did his duty” when the very penalty imposed on the alleged criminal/rapist was ignored….by everyone concerned, including JoePa? Please share.
@jj: Re-read what I wrote. I called “monsters” those apparently normal people who had so little regard for the safety of the child being raped on their premises that they did NOTHING effective to stop the perpetrator – simply told him to take his activities off-campus. And then ignored the only penalty they actually did put on him – to stay away from the sports facilities for which they had responsibility.
JoePa MUST be held accountable, and given the uncontested facts, no “due process”, no quasi-legal arrangements, are necessary. I assume that he serves “at-will”, and if he has a contract, it can be terminated for moral reasons, as it has been. So, I don’t have any sympathy for Joe Paterno….just great sadness.
Paterno passed on Sandusky in 1999 a year following the first complaint.
Sandusky was the one-time heir apparent to legendary Penn State football head coach Joe Paterno, but was passed over for the position in 1999, leading to his retirement from the university after a 32-year career with the Nittany Lions football team. As part of his retirement package, Sandusky still maintained an office within the football department and was listed as a professor emeritus of physical education. Sources report he was on campus as recently as early November working out, but Penn State has since banned him from campus.
Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/11/09/jerry-sandusky-scandal-seven-key-players-in-the-penn-state-abuse-case/#ixzz1dL2Yiqqt
And the sordid story becomes mysterious, too. Read about Ray Gricar, declared legally dead, after he went missing in 2005.
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/08/142111804/penn-state-abuse-scandal-a-guide-and-timeline
I’d suggest that maybe the Trustees also need to look at themselves, and perhaps resign en masse. I am not suggesting that they endorsed or knew of the behavior; I *am* suggesting that it was their responsibility to establish a culture and an organization structure under which such things would not happen.
A while back, there was a fire on a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier. It was caused by a sailor smoking in a paint locker, in defiance of all regulations and all common sense. The vessel’s captain wasn’t the one who did the smoking nor was he the sailor’s immediate supervisor; however, he was still relieved of command.
So… one must presume that the DA who declined to prosecute in 1998 is also a “monster,” no?
You evidently know a hell of a lot more about it than I do.
I’m with Earl too. Paterno knew, from an *eyewitness* account that Sandusky was raping little kids on his watch. Period. If Paterno had been an actual man, he would not only have banned this guy from his facilities, he would have *personally* made sure the man met his fate at the hands of the police and the consequences be damned. It is a moral responsibility, if nothing else, and anybody on the staff at Penn State who willingly turned a blind eye to this in the name of “The Integrity (huh?) of the Program” deserves no better than what they get now.
IMO, McQueary, the assistant to the assistant at the time, should lose his job too. How the HELL can you watch a child being anally raped and do *nothing?* WTF? He went home and called his Daddy? Excuse me? What if this was YOUR kid? Would you be ok with that kind of…..craven cowardice? I wouldn’t. I’da been looking for something to hit him with and I damn sure wouldn’t have just tiptoed away to let him continue his “business.” Jesus….what is our world coming to?
Not to mention the fact that Paterno knew this predator was coming to his facility for the next 10 years? What? I wouldn’t have wanted to look at him, let alone know that a predator pedophile was conducting business as usual with his “foundation” for at risk kids. Hang them all. Every. Last. One. of. Them.
And…shut down the athletic department for at least 5 years.
jj: Is the DA you are referring to the same one that Sadie mentioned in her post? The DA who went missing in 2005 and whose body hasn’t been found?
@jj: I know relatively little, and make no judgment about the DA.
There is a good deal of uncontested testimony out there about the graduate assistant (now receiver’s coach, I hear), about Joe Paterno, about the AD and the VP. Given what I’ve heard and read about what these guys knew and then did or did not do, I labeled them “moral monsters”.
I’ve been wrong before, and I may be wrong now….but it makes me ill to hear people being far more solicitous of Joe Paterno than of the 10-year old victim and all of the others, besides. I feel sorry for Joe Paterno at one level – he made some AWFUL moral judgments, and those have come home to roost at a time that someone with his history ought to be retiring while being showered with well-deserved gratitude and honors. But….he was led to this spot by his own decisions.
More generally: So, in 1999 Sandusky retired because of “something” that the DA refused to prosecute. In 2002, he is observed engaged in the anal rape of a 10-year old in the Penn State showers. My understanding is that he was banned from the facilities and the campus at that time. Yet he was working out in the weight room as recently as early November……and we are being asked to excuse Joe Paterno — why?
And…shut down the athletic department for at least 5 years.
I second Earl’s opinion and your suggestion. Penn State receives $132 million annually of which $72 million goes to the football team. Money and morality mix not unlike oil and water.
Just FYI, I’ve updated the post. The first update has some posts that tie in the Herman Cain issue. The second update has a post that’s right on the money regarding moral responsibility here.
I have very mixed feelings about shutting the athletic department….that would hurt hundreds of young men and women who are absolutely innocent….and to what end?
Make a clean sweep of ANYONE working there who had knowledge of what went on and did not report it to the relevant authorities, and I do not mean the Athletic Director. Institute an honor code for coaches and others. Run seminars on an annual basis about moral responsibility and accountability during which this whole sordid story is told, as a lesson in how otherwise decent people can do terrible things because their moral compass has gone astray.
Penalize those who actually “sinned”….but don’t devastate the innocent in order to make some kind of “statement” that truly accomplishes nothing but give those who did it a righteous feeling.
Thanks BW: That says it all for me….we read that story aloud when the kids were in high school. Perfect!
“2. If your adult son calls you to tell you that he just saw another adult raping a small child, but then left that small child with the rapist, and then asks you what he should do, you should”
Does that sound like this: You crash your car into a body of water killing your passenger. When you reach home you should A) call for rescue, B) wait 12 hours then call your attorney.
The SMU football program was shut down due to “under-the-table” payments to players and the cover-up. Many of the young men at SMU were innocent as well, but the verdict was still handed down. This is ILLEGAL activity and appears to be a cover-up. If this is true, shouldn’t the same verdict be on the table here?
@Moose: Maybe….but there is a difference that seems important to me. SMU infractions involved members of the football team and the sport itself…..the current ones do not. They were “merely” carried out by coaches of the football team.
Perhaps that’s a distinction without a difference….I don’t know.
Earl: I guess where I’m going with that is the actions were occuring within the football program (I hope they were confined to that). The administration, it appears, knew that and did very little. Then covered it up. That to me is the crime. The administrators, I guess, felt that he football program was more important than the law, or even morality. I guess I’m not making a suggestion, BUT I wouldn’t be suprised either.
Am I making any sense?
I’m better a data integrity arguments.
Well, you have to understand, this was Penn State. Almost everyone involved, matriculated at Penn State and worked at Penn State for most of their life. There is little evidence that any of them got out of Happy Valley to some place where they could learn real morals. In the end, they knew Sandusky and not the children so they protected their own.
R. Scott Kretchmar, who was Penn State’s NCAA faculty representative from 2000 to 2010, likened the university’s “tragic” response to that of a family concerned for one of its own.
“There is a greater tendency to forgive, give a second chance, protect the reputation of the family. At a very human level, we do that with our biological families,” said Mr. Kretchmar, a professor of exercise and sport science. “We don’t want to see anyone in the family hurt. Penn State has been a tight-knit family, and in some ways that might have hurt us in this situation.”
An Insular Penn State Stayed Silent – Leadership & Governance – The Chronicle of Higher Education
BTW, I scanned the indictment. Not for the weak. But one odd fact that jumped out. Sandusky created this charity in 1977. Now, pedophiles don’t wake up one day and decide to start raping children. There could be 30 years or more worth of victims out there.
Additionally, of the 8 victims in the indictment, most of the activity happened at the Penn State athletic facility or at the hotel the team stayed at before home games. One long term victim stayed with Sandusky at the hotel with the team repeatedly. Then when the school built a sauna in the building, that is where the rapes occurred. Over the last 15 years or so, and no one noticed anything?
Good article on the topic:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/joe_paterno_and_bishop_finn.html
Moose #24 – yes. Same guy.
jj
Never implied that Ray Gricar was a monster. I don’t think there is a center for missing/murdered prosecutors in the US so there’s no way for me to determine how common it is for them to be declared legally dead after going “mysteriously”missing.
Didn’t say you did, either. So now that we got that straight…
Y’all fill me in on the law in other states. I think everyone in Texas knows that a)the Castle Doctrine allows you to shoot an intruder on your property, not only in your house, and b) EVERYONE who knows about child abuse has a duty to report it. The rationale is that no one can get away with assuming that someone else carried the ball over the goal line. I have worked in facilities that insisted that their policy was to report up the chain of command, and you might bring legal tzuris down upon yourself if you went outside that chain. I am happy to report that people who have promoted such a false idea have suffered the consequences. Children are to be protected before the rice bowl.
As for PA law, over to you Sadie.
Pennsylvania is one of only about a half-dozen states where the protocol for staff members of schools, hospitals and other institutions is to notify the person in charge in the event of suspected child abuse. That superior is then legally obliged to report to the authorities.
Michael Adams, the Castle Doctrine should apply to the human body. I always considered my body private property. An “uninvited” guest would be subject to the first weapon I could grab – even if it was attached, if you get my drift
No, Sadie, you use the weapon ON their body part. Get Book to send you some transcontinental martial arts tips.
BTW, and in a rather less combative vein, you probably know that different cultures recognized different personal space boundaries. Southerners, Black and White, do not like to be touched by anyone other than a blood relation. After an encounter with a toucher, as you wriggle away and shake a bit to regain a sense of bodily integrity, do NOT make eye contact with a Black person, if you want both of you to maintain proper decorum. I have made that mistake only once, and we had a rather lengthy biracial moment of mirth.
That was one of the strange things about the Cain thing. We do know how to flirt, and that may include invading personal space. Mr. Cain might have made a pass at one or more of his accusers, even the ones whom he did not, according to records, know, but it is highly unlikely that he would have been a space invader, and particularly not in a period limited to his three years with the Restaurant Association. Ann Coulter has an exceptionally good piece out about the Chicago connection in all that mess.
So, PA has a chain-of-command reporting requirement? They might think, now, finally, about changing that.
The system of education, as exemplified in the behavior of teachers in various classrooms, is to prioritize the “collective punishment” method of behavioral modification. If someone is doing something bad, you punish and hurt the entire group, irregardless of whether that group is responsible or even has the power to do anything about it. This is to inculcate more obedience to the state and to totalitarian cliques. If your quality of life can be negatively affected by somebody else’s independent behavioral, then you might be inclined to do something about it, or allow someone else to restrict that person’s actions: someone else being the government.
The other instinct the Leftist hive has is the cover up and the absolute purge. Organizations like ACORN are consistently obedient to Leftist doctrines concerning purges of disaffected or disobedient members. It is their method of keeping the cultists in line. The way you can tell a Leftist from someone normal is not how they act, but how other Leftists treat them. If they are an obedient shill for the party elites in DC, they will be treated significantly better than those who are disobedient rebellious individuals.
Ann Coulter has an exceptionally good piece out about the Chicago connection in all that mess.
Michael, I read it earlier in the day and Bookworm linked it one of the updates. It’s an interesting topic to examine one of these days “personal space boundaries.” They certainly do vary and with consequences. I was reading an article today about a British woman, who wanted to befriend some Afghans living in Bosnia. The men, five of them – gang raped her.
@ Michal Adams – Dude, you are so right about personal space and southerners. My eyes went wide when I read that, lol. Its very true. I don’t like to be touched by strangers and am downright hostile about it with men, especially men who have been drinking. Blacks…not so much, but I was raised with them, too. My family had domestic help and I went to a black high school in the 70s, in Memphis so maybe I got over that, but I don’t discriminate on the basis of race. Just don’t touch me or invade my personal space if I don’t know you. The eye contact thing is interesting….
Bookworm,
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchel has a similar take as you do — well, sort of:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/mitchell/8720311-452/herman-cain-and-joe-paterno-have-things-in-common.html
I am disgusted by the Mary Mitchel column, in particular when she says:
> Although both of these men are being accused of despicable behavior, people have rallied to their sides as if they are unfortunate victims.
She is making the presumption that Herman Cain is guilty. He has claimed all innocence. Not one shred of proof has been produced to allow anyone to outright call him a liar. According to Ms. Mitchel, then, Herman Cain is guilty until he proves himself innocent.
If we silently allow this to continue, in this dirty, dirty political environment these days, conservatives will come under attack from the liberal political machine via dirty sexual politics tricks. I am not saying that Herman Cain is innocent; but at this point, he cannot be declared guilty. And if he is treated as if he were guilty, then this will never end. All of our heroes, guilty or not, will undergo this treatment, to disqualify them in politics as soon as they become a threat to the status quo.
We cannot allow this.
As for Herman Cain….show me some proof before I’m going to throw him under the bus. A hotel bill, the secretary who probably did the upgrade, the dinner bill…..a stained dress….any proof at all that would stand up in a court of law.
I’ve been thinking about it and Bialek’s story really doesn’t make sense if Cain is the smooth horndog she made him out to be in her statement. According to her, Cain upgraded her regular room to a suite. Why try to grope her in a parked car when it would have been sooo much smoother to say “I’d love to see the suite I upgraded you to and while we’re at it, why don’t we have a nightcap?” I should think it would be a whole lot easier to seduce her and achieve his mission (if sex was his mission) in a comfy suite with big, fluffy beds. Don’t you?
Also, if she was that incensed, they were in downtown DC….all she had to do was hop out of the car and wave down a cab.
Switching gears back to Penn State: To me, shutting down the athletic program for 5 years would be the equivalent of burning down the buildings and salting the ground. I am sorry about all the innocent athletes who would lose out on playing for the Great Penn State, but its not so great anymore, now, anyway. The athletic program is rotten and corrupt to the core, so it needs to be cleansed, and shutting it down for that long would go a long way toward doing that. IMO it would show the whole world that they “got it,” and that this type of tragedy will never be allowed to happen again.
This is still in the “rumor” area for me, not substantiated yet, but oh god if true, the Penn State mess is about to get a whole lot worse. And it would help explains why Paterno would be forced out immediately.
http://www.nesn.com/2011/11/jerry-sandusky-rumored-to-have-been-pimping-out-young-boys-to-rich-donors-says-mark-madden.html
The “death penalty”, shutting down a football program for three years or more, was instituted by the NCAA to protect against money-based corruption (eg, extravagant gifts of money to athletes and their families for coming to that university.)
But if they prove a widespread cover-up across the football program, involving more than just the AD lying to the police, isn’t that worse than any money-based scheme buying a player? It would seem to justify the death penalty on the football program to me as well. Deliberately allowing Jerry Sandusky his freedom, to continue to molest young boys for ten additional years… not getting him locked away where he belongs… wow. As Duchess of Austin just said above, it would indicate that “The athletic program is rotten and corrupt to the core, so it needs to be cleansed”. Death penalty.
Every road and intersection in the Cain accusations lead to Chicago including; Sheila O’Grady, Mayor Richard Daly, David Axelrod and of course, Zippy. Cain is 65, has worked for several major corporations and yet … 3 years with the NRA and the Chicago roaches come out of the woodwork NOW – and not when Cain was running for Senator in Georgia! Something stinks.
Well, Sadie, if Cain had won a Senate seat, he would have been only 1 of 100. That may not be enough power to really upset the status quo, so that may be why they didn’t go after him.
In addition, he was never REALLY a threat to take the seat away from Isaacson (right name)? If he’d been closer to achieving a runoff against Isaacson, perhaps they would have gone after him then, or during the runoff itself.
So it may be that no one took Cain to be a serious threat during his run for the Georgia Senate seat.
But yes, I do agree with you, it is incredibly odd that all of the Cain allegations revolve only around his time spent leading the National Restaurant Association. He has done so much more, leading across other industries. The behavior described, limited to just that two or three years? It is *extremely* unlikely! So where are all the other accusers across all those other years? And all the accusers (as the details emerge) are tied into theDemocrat propaganda mouthpiece Politico and/or the Chicago Axelrod machine… and Obama has gotten where he is due to repeated Axelrod manipulations of opponents’ sexual history. It’s very very interesting…
The story that destroyed Obama’s Republican opponent for the Illinois Senate run, probably should not have destroyed him. It left Obama with no opponent at all, it came so late in the campaign. (Yes, I know, they flew in Alan Keyes to run against Obama at the last moment, but that was *never* going to succeed.) Illinois Republicans should have fought and stuck it out and probably would have run. And there would then be no President Obama today. Strange how these things work.
The Illinois Republicans should have fought back then. And we all should definitely be prepared to fight back now. Keep your powder dry a little longer, because all the details and all the story hasn’t emerged yet. Just a little more time…
The story that destroyed Obama’s Republican opponent for the Illinois Senate run….
That would be Jack Ryan, whose sealed divorce records in California were unsealed and sealed the seat for you-know-who. Another coincidence?
No time to put in a link, but go to Ann Coulter’s column yesterday on the matter. Talk about cutting to the chase! She points out that all the complaints come from Chicago, one of the women actually living in Axelrod’s building. It all makes sense.
@DofA and Michael: About personal space….
My “wake-up” to this was when we went to Bolivia for a year right after we were married. I found myself constantly moving backward whenever talking to someone who’d grown up in country….if in a room, I’d end up with my back against the wall, feeling uncomfortable. Gail and I talked about it, figured out what was going on, and simply disciplined ourselves to overcome the discomfort of having someone a few inches inside the invisible line defining our comfort zone.
Then, of course, we’d laugh every time we’d see a Bolivian talking to an American, as the American kept moving backwards and the Bolivian forwards, each attempting to fulfill their respective need for the “proper” distance.
People are funny – unending pleasure to watch!
Everybody was saying the same thing about Sarah palin when they said she or her husband was something or other. Don’t people remember? Or did Leftist brainwashing psychops remove that little “doublethink” already.
My personal space is defined by the length of my arms. People I talk to stay at that length, or risk becoming rated by me as “potentially hostile”. Distance is the number one prerequisite to violent attacks using hand to hand, melee, or polearms. When a person gets within arms length, they can now headbutt, launch attacks, use knife stabs, and you’re ability to see it and react in time, are significantly decremented.
If someone tries to get close, a simple block using one’s arms at full extension will usually get the message across. A firm verbal warning and a direct escalation to more forceful means if the verbal warning is not obeyed, will command obedience and restructure human behavior to fit. Like dogs, humans will chase retreating foes, whereas a standing wall of a human will exude gravitas and aura enough to stop both human and canine in their tracks.
In point of fact, it is rather dangerous to get too close to people who know how to use violence, particularly lethal force, at H2H/melee range and have the power to do so using tools they have on them or just their bare hands. The only reason “societies” in the world have developed such a close tolerance for space means that their “citizens” are nothing but sheep, with no fangs, tooth, nails, or claws that can present a threat. Once you are within arms reach of a person that can utilize lethal force using no tools whatsoever, you basically have a loaded gun pointed at your head, except you don’t realize it.
In Georgia, there’s a sort of expectation or civic duty that expects civilians to stop crimes in process. This has resulted in broad concealed carry permits (unlike specialized and limited permits in California where only the powerful, like Feinstein can get em, who then try to limit them for others via regulations, fines, and laws). It has also resulted in a the Bowie knife law where anyone with a concealed carry is also authorized to carry long bladed knives (daggers really).
Basically, if a law can be proven to have been attempted, and the force utilized stopped that crime, and nobody else was harmed as a consequence of that force other than the criminals, most prosecutors will not or even cannot prosecute, given the laws and the opinions of juries. This is slightly different for Atlanta, ruled by black Democrats, but the laws constrain them as well. They don’t get the meta-support in places like New Orleans. The culture and the law still impacts them. In the hinterlands of Georgia, near the Appalachian mountains (mountain people), things are much purer in essence.
It appears I have a huge moral blind spot, the same one that the assistant coach who witnessed Jerry Sandusky raping a 10-12 year old boy in a shower has.
I read the account of that incident: The assistant coach was puzzled by the lights being on when they shouldn’t have been, heard the showers running, heard a “slap,slap,slap” flesh noise, walked back to the showers and observed the rape in progress. He then LEFT – admittedly badly shaken – went home, and called his father to discuss it, and then the next morning reported it to Joe Paterno, who reported it to his AD.
The moral blind spot: Why did the assistant not immediately intervene, stop the rape, get that boy the hell out of there to some protection, and call the police? That is the only moral action possible! He didn’t do it. And as I read through the account, it simply didn’t occur to me either. I’m still troubled by that. Basically, what the hell went wrong with him in observing it and not acting; and what the hell went wrong with me, in reading the account and not immediately realizing, “Hey, you idiot! You should have immediately rescued that boy and called the police! Immediately!”
Maybe because I was reading a grand jury report clinically, detached? Not an excuse, not good enough.
It’s bothered me so much, I hope I’ve reset my moral compass. Even as I’ve read what others wrote, and about the pressure that assistant has come under in the last few days, I still think I didn’t accept the moral failure seriously enough. His in action, mine in reading about it and not reacting. It’s very disturbing to me.
The first half of this article really brought it home to me today. Something about the way this was written broke through to me, finally. Perhaps worth a read for others!
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/11/10/omelas-state-university/
I’m wondering, Mike, if the guy simply couldn’t believe what he was seeing, ie, he didn’t react because his mind refused to accept his eye’s data.
Here’s another theory: in this day and age of moral relativism, maybe he didn’t understand that what he saw was wrong. To him, it might have been “private.”
As for your reaction, you read it, you didn’t see it. A different part of the brain was engaged.
I’m still undecided about the official stuff – who should have done what when. Some of the stuff that’s coming out leads me to believe that there’s even greater moral wrong doing than we even suspected initially – and that’s the reason reason the report was ineffective. But who should “pay”? I don’t know. Not yet. Maybe never…but it’s becoming a bit clearer.
Still – I’ve been shocked by the riots. Some articles seem to indicate that the riots are just events looking for any wayward cause, but in this case, the cause they’ve landed on seems to be to blame the young man for _reporting_ what he saw. Not for not stopping it, not for not reporting it to the police – but for taking the apparently ineffective step of simply reporting it to his superior. He’s apparently received death threats. For reporting the rape of a young boy.
I can’t tell you how deeply this makes me wonder about the students there.
Cut their football. I wouldn’t care at this point if the closed down the whole university. It seems to be akin to Sodom and Gomorrah. Let it burn to the ground.
Duchess, You may have misunderstood my reference to Black and White Southerners. Both races demand a wide berth. Do not touch a Black person, if you desire, eventually, to become friends. (Nor White, of course.) My side point was that is one of those things that rather unites the races, of which there are more than many people suppose. Since Mr. Cain is from Georgia, I have no doubt that he would want others to keep a proper distance, which makes that woman who was hugging him seem really out of line.
In some churches I have attended, the Passing of the Peace includes a lot of hugging. People think I am joking when I insist that I only hug on Christmas and Easter. They soon learn. No, I don’t hurt them, but folded arms, backing away, hand held far out to shake it, eventually convey the message to even the most culturally dense. I had a priest who would insist on hugging me. I think it was like that thing where Kerry was always hugging Edwards, dominance. Notice, I “had” a priest. It was not the only reason we changed churches, but it would have been enough.
As far as I can tell, the Penn State students rioted because JoePa had been fired. They overturned a van and smashed its windows and “rioted on into the night”, as one report put it.
I could accept taking the opinion that he should not have been fired. He *thought* the police had been notified correctly. He violated no university code or law. But it is easier to understand him being fired than not fired. These university students are adults. Riots by so-called adults? Inexcusable.
It seems to be akin to Sodom and Gomorrah.
. . . because I’m absolutely convinced that this culture, right now, today, is WORSE than Sodom or Gomorrah ever were. Sodom would be a step up.
http://barnhardt.biz/
Mike McQueary the assistant head coach in 2002, who witnessed the rape of a 10 year-old boy in 2002 and who NOT only did not STOP it, who did NOT call not the police and did NOT report it to Paterno, until he spoke with his own father first. I’ll take a guess here.. McQueary, was worried about his job and his future at Penn State. Remember, Sandusky was not “officially” working for Penn State - he left in 1999 and very oddly, was never offered another coaching job anywhere at any time for another college (COULD IT BE THE WORD WAS OUT ABOUT HIM in 1998) and yet, access to the facilities were part of his perks. Paterno was quite aware of 1998 and 2002 and yet Sandusky still had access.
To the rioting (tipping over a TV truck) my best guess is that it was an emotional response to Paterno. It’s like hiding your eyes during a scary part of a movie or turning the page quickly when reading a thriller – if you do it quickly enough, you don’t observe or have to absorb the really horrible.
I have no sympathy for McQueary. He witnessed a crime and not only did he not stop the crime in progress, he didn’t report it for more than 12 hours, at the very least. So, even if Paterno had called in the police after McQueary reported to him, enough time had passed that any physical evidence against the perp would be degraded at best, and possibly lost or unusable.
If he had done the right thing, in the moment, with no concern for anything but saving that child, he might not have been given the job he had until today as a payoff for his loyal silence. How many children could have been spared the loving attentions of a monster? Sure, even 10 or 12 years ago, the scandal would have been a black eye for PS, but now? Devastation. Of the athletic department and possibly the university itself.
Karma’s a bitch, isn’t she? All the machinations of the powerful, their loyal minions and the conspiracy of silence did nothing but stave off the inevitable….actually making it worse.
Ymarsakar in #57 hit on a difference in culture, which has produced a difference in law. The expectation that individuals will act is incorporated in law, as mentioned above, for one example, that, in Texas, everyone who knows about child abuse has an absolute legal duty to report it, while PA has a chain-of-command approach written into their law. Note, I did say that there are plenty of management types in Texas who want you to report to them, up the ladder. I’ll add that certainly many Pennsylvanians would act independently, but they are perhaps not the majority. We are talking about a big divide, here, one that produces, among other effects, Red and Blue states. It would seem that long-term changes would involve initiatives that encouraged individual responses, like celebrating the Shanksville attempt, Boy Scouts, firearms training, even CPR and first aid classes, every one of which gives people a sense of individual empowerment and therefore of individual responsibility. Note here that the non-reacting graduate assistant was a product of the University. As far back as forty two years ago, we were being taught in our classes about the superiority of collective action. The extracurricular stuff, i.e. campus radicalism, went further, but was different only in degree, not in kind, from what we were getting from most of the profs.
Contrast this with the response to Charles Whitman. In the summer of 1967, he climbed to the top of the Tower, in the middle of campus, and with a couple of rifles and a telescopic site, started shooting people below him. Students went to their dorms and their off-campus apartments and got their guns, and started shooting up at the top of the Tower, keeping Whitman pinned down while the police climbed up and took him down. These guys were not Fight Club types. They went on to get degrees in engineering and Greek and math, and are now grandads, approaching or past retirement age from quite ordinary jobs, but that, right there, is the key difference: Although they were destined to very ordinary lives and professions, they still understood the individual duty to act, and, some of them, at least, answered duty’s call.
A few years ago, when I still listened to NPR, I heard a very shocked All Things Considered piece about a National Rifle Association chapter in the Northeast that held shooting classes for slum kids. NRA actually does a great deal of this, happily only attracting occasional notice from NPR, but we need to do a great deal more of it. Karate classes in Oakland would be another good example of, well, setting good examples, because the discipline and self control learned in martial arts would encourage a more thoughtful, less emotional response to life. America is not so far gone that most of us alive today could see the effect in our own lifetimes, of a rebirth of individualism. We could yet make #Occupy Resolute Desk irrelevant.
Scalzi was and is a big Obama supporter. He was telling people on his blog that Obama would fix what Wall Street and the banks “broke”, and how Republicans can’t talk about fixing the economy when the Republicans crashed the economy. He told people to believe in Obama’s ability to “fix” other people’s messes, and was rather downright obnoxiously arrogant about it all. He, like most people, think his expertise in one field magically transfers *gasp* to other stuff he touches, like Midas.
Scalzi is guilty of not just sitting back and letting Obama rape Americans all year long, take their property, and gloat over it, but Scalzi was an Active Participant in the looting. Anyone that tries to raise Scalzi as an opinion worth noting, will be treated by me appropriately given the circumstances of Scalzi’s previous guilt and sins.
So when Scalzi starts talking about some guy somehow “seeing” stuff going on and did nothing, Scalzi is a hypocrite. What does he expect, for people to recognize evil and do something about it? Did Scalzi do a Fing damn thing to help fight evil in 2008? Hell no, he freaking helped it along and gloated about it, that’s what. So Scalzi, he can just shut up and die in my view.
Universities like Penn State don’t teach critical thinking. If someone sees something they are unsure of, and sexual conduct, drug use, crime, and rape are all things people tend to shy away from, then the person that can use critical thinking would first determine what exactly they are witnessing. They would ask questions, interview, and gain more information. They wouldn’t jump to conclusions, either right or wrong, concerning what happened. Information is what is required to make decisions. When people ignore their own brain’s demand for information, of course they are going to screw up the decision making process. If they ignore it, that is so. If they assume something happened that didn’t (Duke Lacrosse), that is so. If they assume it didn’t happen, when it did, that is so too.
Such things are not “experiences” most people are familiar with. Rape, violent crime, people just don’t understand how it is done, nor have witnessed it. So when they read the word, they imagine that it is easy. Nothing about personally witnessing violence or crime is “easy”, especially for the green horn desk chair monday quarterbacker.
I’m sorry, but what is it that is confusing about what one should do when a 6’4″, 250 pound former quarterback *walks in* on an old guy standing naked over a *child* who is turned to the wall with his hands on it, as he is hearing rythmic *slapping noises?* Huh? What is confusing about *stop the attack?” Why should anybody cut this man-boy any slack at all for not doing the right thing?
Why should McQueary, or *anybody else* associated with what must have been an open secret in the football community, be excused for their appalling lack of judgement?
McQueary did what he did to protect numbers 1 and 2. Himself and Paterno. He was rewarded for his silence with a cushy coaching job and all the perks that go with it. There is *nothing* confusing about that and all the wishy-washy wussies claiming “fight or flight” syndrome are just full of it. The bottom line is that the program had to be protected at all costs and the kids were merely collateral damage. Paterno and Sandusky were good friends for years and Paterno must have had some idea of what a monster Sandusky was when he was forced into *retirement* at the age of 55, well over 10 years ago.
What Duchess said is spot on. I don’t have an ounce of sympathy for Paterno. When the chickenshit McQueary reported what he had seen, Paterno knew full well what Sandusky had been up to. JoPa showed his own moral cowardice by kicking the issue upstairs. Had Penn State actually done something about Sandusky’s rapes, Paterno could have plausibly said that he was not the one who’d fingered his good ol’ buddy.
Charles M said #70: When the chickenshit McQueary reported what he had seen, Paterno knew full well what Sandusky had been up to. JoPa showed his own moral cowardice by kicking the issue upstairs.
Charles is spot on. All the Penn State higher ups already knew about Sandusky before this shower rape incident. They already knew! The assistant coach may have frozen at the moment of moral decision – and collapsed – but the higher ups deliberately turned their back on these poor kids. Now that more details are coming out, it’s clear the firings are entirely justified.
Generally speaking, the news of other people’s sin is supposed to be the signal to search our own souls, not to assure ourselves that we would do differently, but to find the weakness, the bad leaven, that would cause us to behave the same. I am hard pressed to do that, here. McQueary is ten inches taller than I am, and I am damned sure that I could stop the rape of a little boy, or, at the very least, make it much less fun. McQueary did nothing. It’s a funny thing, but the academic departments like to belittle the intellects of the athletes. Sound to me like the athletics faculty for rationalization was equal to anything the academic faculty could muster.
While ripping a scab off the athletic program at Penn State does not offer us many individual moral lessons, it is definitely true that it reveals a depth of moral necrosis in academia that many people will try to say is vastly different from their own establishments, as Americans saw the corruption of New Orleans exposed, policemen who did not report for duty because they never existed, evacuation plans never implemented, levy improvement funds piddled away, all of which exist in dozens of American cities, and all people could see was George Bush’s supposed racism.
The lesson is there, if we would but learn it.
I don’t excuse anything the individuals involved here have done. They are not beholden to me, but nor am I to them. Thus I make no judgment of things people claim happened. If you believe X over there should have done something when he was there, that basically means none of us were there and thus our opinions are not his opinions nor could it have led to any decisions on his part.
It’s legitimate to question actions after the fact when people can usually mull over their options. It’s not legitimate to second guess the experiences of other people vis a vis crime as it is happening to or around them, because most people, and I’m talking about you all here as well, have little to no experience dealing with real crime or criminals. Thus their view is neither expert nor particularly sound. Much of what people pick up about crime… is when they hear about it being talked about by other people on the news. Like Penn State. They lack the experience and wisdom required to make a judgment, and plus they don’t have the facts of what actually happened. Maybe if they were seasoned criminal and citizen guards that deal with crime and criminals like child molestors all the time, maybe they could intuit what should have happened based upon scant evidence, but that doesn’t apply here.
So the whole prejudice thing comes from moral expectations, not realistic or sound judgment of the facts on the ground. Let’s be clear about that. People who want to second guess, monday quarterback, and all that stuff just wish for people to have “better” behavior. They’re not actually forming a judgment of how to make people have better behavior utilizing personal experiences. Morality is not truth. The facts on the ground do not always lead to a moral solution acceptable to society. Morality is dumb, basically. It doesn’t know how to determine truth; it can only force people to behave or misbehave.
People think that because they went to college, they know how something like Penn State works. They have no clue. Evidence one, they had to be told about the corruption before they ever figured out. Big fat lot of good their “college” degrees allowed them to figure that out ahead of time. So basically, if you were ever an administrator or made hiring/firing decisions, you will more easily see why corrupt people had to be fired at Penn State. However, if you have most of your life experience dealing with crime, then you might have higher expectations rightly about how Penn State or the authority figures should have acted. But those things don’t cross each other. A person that believes Penn State should be purged, is not making the same judgment as monday quarterbacking what people should have done upon witnessing what they thought was improper behavior on campus grounds. This also applies to muggings. People who have been mugged, like Robin, don’t have any better judgment concerning serial killers and arsonists, just because they were knew how muggers work. One does not follow the other.
This is another example of the popular human tendency to believe their experience and expertise in A somehow magically transfers over to all kinds of other human fields and experiences. It doesn’t.
[...] the issues at Penn State, Happy Valley, and Joe Paterno’s staff, I hoped the Citadel would not be as deep. The [...]
>> Now that more details are coming out, it’s clear the firings are entirely justified.>>
Now that more details are coming out, I’m wondering how long each of the members of the board have been on the board, and – assuming they were in fact members of the board for the last five years – why they should be held any less guilty. Seems to me they should resign en masse.
Or find out where the buck stopped ….
http://neoneocon.com/2011/11/10/paterno-and-the-duty-to-report/#comment-281257
I tend to agree with her analysis here. And Book has been wondering some of the same things, which is what I place priority on. The things people aren’t thinking of.
suek
To be honest, I don’t know how many sit on the board. There are honorary board members such as Governor Corbett and several of his administrative staff.
Anyway, here’s a snip and more at the rest at the link.
Even though Paterno himself had told the grand jury that McQueary saw “something of a sexual nature,” Paterno said this week that he had stopped the conversation before it got too graphic. Instead, he told McQueary he would need to speak with his superior, Athletic Director Tim Curley, and with Schultz.
That meeting did not happen for 10 days.
http://bcfoley.blogspot.com/2011/11/mike-mcqueary-in-protective-custody.html
[...] I have some of the smartest readers in the blogosphere, I can take a good stab at an answer. In an open thread about Penn State, my readers chewed over the fact that in Pennsylvania, the law allows employees who witness a crime [...]