But everything was so much better in the 50s! It’s the liberals’ fault, haven’t you heard? In asking for civil rights for black people and all that sort of nonsense, they unleashed a torrent on incivility and rudeness that poor, poor JoePa just couldn’t comprehend when he had piles of evidence all around him that one of his assistant coaches was raping children. His fragile little mind just couldn’t take it because he grew up in a better time!
Think of how noble, how filled with integreity JoePa was. I mean, look at all the football games he won, that’s all the integrity a person needs, isn’t it? If a few children got ass-pounded in the process, well, it’s the liberals’ fault, and also old people don’t know what “fondling” means and certainly couldn’t make sense of it in the context of someone who was clearly worried about it, because old people all think child rape results in fatal blood loss. There wasn’t any child rape before the goddamned hippies.
While you guys’ paranoia over liberal thinking and the consequences of it is not without justification, the fact is that if you grow up in an era where sex isn’t talked about, then you grow up in an era where sex isn’t talked about. Any fool would know that.
So, nice dodge guys. I realize that mockage is one of your favorite weapons - especially when you have no effective argument otherwise - but the fact of the matter is that that dog just ain’t gonna hunt. Things are what they are, and if Joe Paterno’s awareness of the possibilities of man/boy anal rape is limited then that’s what it is regardless of whose politics are responsible. (Plus, I imagine even liberals of that era were mostly ignorant of such perverseness themselves. :D)
But even if we allow that that might be true (and I personally don’t buy it) the fact remains that such ignorance in a college coach is inexcusably dangerous given the large numbers of young people on college campuses.
Paterno cannot expect that this excuse exonerates him in any way. Indeed, this plays to all of the allegations against him for the better part of a decade - that he was essentially a figurehead, isolated from the day-to-day management of the team and leaving most matters to his assistants.
If that’s true, it means that Paterno did not act with malicious intent. Perhaps he did what he thought was the best course of action. He’s not evil, just misinformed.
There are other archaic views older generations have that would also get them fired. Some people are racist. Some people think it’s okay to beat their wife. If Paterno said “Get more black boys on the field.” or “Sometimes a wife just needs to be slapped around”, he would be fired. It wouldn’t be because he was evil. It’s because those moral stances do not reflect the society the university serves.
Even if the firing of Paterno was unfair, it may serve as an example to the next person from an older generation who is in this situation. Hopefully he will treat it as a more serious matter and make sure it is fully investigated, if for no other reason than he doesn’t want to be fired.
Are you truly suggesting that it should be the duty of every college football head coach to investigate and famiarize himself with every type of human perversion in order to somehow put a stop to it should it arise?
Football coaches are football coaches. Their responsibility is to know about and coach football, period, and most of them rarely have time for their families, let alone finding time to keep up with and be on the lookout for every type of potential human wrongdoing. To suggest that Paterno is an isolated, doddering old fool whose assistants are running things simply because his life experience has not prepared him to be on the lookout for man/boy anal rape is ludicrous.
I would expect any normal football coach who heard, “Sandusky was fondling a naked little boy in the showers,” not to respond with, “duuuyyyaahhh, what’s a fondling?”
There’s a difference though between overtly making racist or sexist comments vs. simply being unaware of certain types of sexual perversity. For one thing, football coaches function daily in an environment where changing mores regarding race and women’s rights would be hard to avoid. Paterno on the other hand is being castigated not for a crime of omission regarding an activity that probably not 1 in 10,000 people has firsthand experience with.
And frankly, given the way that so many people have proven themselves eager to second guess and hysterically turn on people such as McQueary and Paterno who thought they were doing the right thing, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the next guy who finds himself in McQueary’s shoes doesn’t decide he’d better damn well keep his mouth shut rather than risk having people find some reason to turn on him too.
Yes - that is exactly what I am saying. Certainly sexual assault prevention has never been my primary job, yet every job I have had has required sexual assault prevention training. This is true for paid and volunteer positions alike.
Sexual assaults do happen on campus, and all faculty need to have training on sexual assault prevention and reporting. This includes football coaches, especially since we have seen that college athletic programs aren’t isolated from these crimes. Penn State is hardly the first example of this, though it probably is the most sordid example.
If football coaches were solely responsible for football and had time for little else, then there would be no room for a man to become that fine example of honesty and professionalism that Paterno aspired to be, and that you believed him to be.
I came back to this thread after reading the Paterno interview thinking that some of you may concede that Starving Artist has a point. I was wrong.
It really doesn’t change anybody’s mind that Paterno did not hear any details? Remember from the early pages of this thread where it was asserted that McQueary gave graphic details that would lead any reasonable person to immediately know without a doubt that Sandusky was anally raping the boy? Well, it seems that didn’t happen.
It also seems that Joe wouldn’t even know what McQueary was talking about if he had given him the details as he is from another generation where that stuff wasn’t discussed openly. That doesn’t matter, though. He should have been Elliott Ness on this case…carry on…
If Paterno honestly had no inkling that this particular kind of abuse happens, he had no business being a football coach at all. I really don’t think that is a stretch.
FFS, he was the coach of a men’s college football team. You know, testosterone-full, fit, healthy, popular males in their late teens and early twenties; years often associated with intense horniness and sexual experimentation.
As the coach, his job year in and year out involved mentoring these college football players, and informing them of what kind of behaviour among each other, with their girl friends, in public, at parties, with other men and women is and is not acceptable. A LOT of that behaviour that needs - and does - get talked about is how to not go out and (date) rape and that No Means No and all that kind of stuff.
There have been scandals over the years involving sexual assaults and rapes during hazing incidents on high school or college football and other sports teams in the United Statesand elsewhere in the world. Paterno HAD to be aware of these things, as I’m sure the PSU football club did not want such a scandal on their turf and so the players were talked to/warned about appropriate behaviour.
When someone in that athletic world - McQueary - comes to someone else in that world - Paterno - and tells them that a third person in that world - Sandusky - is molesting/raping/fondling/doing something sexually inappropriate to a young boy of course Paterno knows what those words mean because he’s likely discussed such things (between adults) many times over the years.
THAT’S the real world, SA, not the one where old people aren’t aware that rapes and sex happen, certainly not old people who are, in part, responsible for teaching other people not to go out and rape and how to have appropriate sexual relations.
That’s not what Paterno was told, and what he was told left plenty of room for doubt as to what McQueary actually saw. I’m really getting tired of having to deal with these endless mistaken or dishonest paraphrases that are designed to make Paterno’s actions look worse than they were in reality (which is to say they weren’t wrong at all). The entire reason we’re discussing Paterno’s knowledge regarding child sex abuse goes to this issue - he simply didn’t know or believe that whatever it was McQueary saw was likely as bad as McQueary thought it was and almost certainly felt some other explanation was likely. Still, just in case and according to his role as mandatory reporter, he reported what he was told, in full, and to the proper authorities as both the law and campus experience led him to believe he should.
My grandmother is 94 years old - older than Paterno by a good bit. She’s a very religious woman. But for all of that I certainly couldn’t shock her with a story like this, and I bet she could tell some that would shock me.
She worked for decades as a L&D nurse - so the human condition is no mystery to her.
I do not believe for a second that Paterno didn’t understand these allegations, but claiming ignorance of them does not help his case at all - it hurts it.
Look, I said from the beginning that the law appears to be flawed here. But if the school wants to confront this matter and address it fully, it must do so with a coach other than Paterno in place. He has demonstrated that he is not up to this task.
mnemosyne, I was with you up to the point where you veered from Paterno’s likely role in mentoring horny college age boys on the proper way to behave with their girlfriends to his presumed role in being on the lookout for sixty-something college football coaches screwing ten-year-old boys in the butt in the school’s shower. The first is commonplace and reasonable, the second strains credulity to the breaking point and Paterno can hardly be blamed for not fulfilling his role as mentor for not being aware of and guarding against it.
According to Paterno.
He claims that he did not hear any details. McQueary disputes that. Eventually, a jury will decide who’s telling the truth.
Personally, it seems to me that what Paterno admits he heard: “fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy”, would have been enough to make me report it to the police. Especially if I was a legally mandated reporter.
