Bottom line is that we have substantial evidence that he had no problem circumventing established Penn State University rules/policies and encroaching on other department’s responsibilities.
So when he tries to claim that his actions were because he was concerned about the very thing he showed he wasn’t concerned about year in and year out - it just doesn’t quite add up.
I’ve followed him over the years and I think he probably is a “great guy”, generally.
I also think he made a mistake, and my personal opinion is that he was influenced by two factors:
“evidence”, “experience investigating sex abuse” … for my part, I never felt that Paterno should have gone all CSI on the situation and solved the crime himself.
He should have called the police when McQueary came to him (McQueary should have called the police when he saw the crime). Paterno could have called the police once he spoke to Curley or Schultz. They could all have stood in a room and done it together.
Paterno should have called the police, but he didn’t, and that’s a big part of why a decade has been allowed to go by since the moment McQueary saw Sandusky molesting a little boy. That’s the entirety of my outrage directed at him - that was his test, and he failed it horribly.
Everyone else failed too, for sure. But if Paterno was a great man, I’d have expected him to do more. Turns out, he’s just a man, and not even a good one, let alone a great one, when it really matters.
But only if there was mutual consent.
I don’t know man, if it was just non-sexual fondling, I’m not sure consent was required, but if it were, you could always get it from a ten year old boy in the showers.
His “rationale” led to, in practice, uniformly and in every cited instance less investigation and discipline and exposure of the football program. There were no examples cited in those articles in which Paterno took a harder line than the authorities would have because of his unique insight into how to discipline football players. I think once he made them run windsprints after criminal incidents. Tough love indeed!
He didn’t have some unique or creative or insightful approach to “best discipline” – all the facts discussed revealed that when players got in trouble, the prime directive of his “student criminal behavior” “rationale” was always to minimize it, obstruct investigation and discipline, make pro-player/team exceptions to the rule of law/university discipline. That’s not a unique rationale – that’s a standard-issue cover-it-up-as-much-as-you-can, Watergate style, let’s not air our dirty laundry, form of “investigation and discipline.”
All you’re saying is that you disagree with the approach he took in those other cases. That doesn’t address his rationale, or mean that he was inconsistant.
Paterno: I know how to deal with Situation A and not Situation B, so I get actively involved in Situation A and not with Situation B.
Huerta: No, you’re doing a lousy job with Situation A.
That’s fine in the context of criticism of Paterno’s dealing with Situation A. It does not speak to Paterno’s rationale for avoiding Situation B. Paterno thinks he’s doing a fine job with Situation A, and based on that premise, he’s being logically consistant.
[I’ve been through this previously with RaftPeople.]
Sexual assault A: Paterno is the expert
Sexual assault B: Paterno is not the expert
I know, you are going to say: it’s still consistent because in both cases Paterno did whatever he felt like doing
What’s A? (The Phillips case?)
I would have thought you were better than than this type of thing.
The point is that Paterno and his apologists are now pretending that there were aspects of the football program (and the locker room and former assitants with access to it and summer camps sponsored by the school is damn sure an aspect of the football program) where Paterno felt unqualified to take charge. (Put aside the fact, mentioned a million times, that confronting a friend as to a clear, lurid, and troubling criminal allegation requires no special expertise; it’s disingenuous for an intelligent man like Paterno to imply that it does. And of course calling the police doesn’t require any special qualification or comfort level.).
The thing is, none of the facts available are consistent with Paterno having a principled policy of recusing himself from anything that touched on the football program. The initial criticism of Paterno before this broke was that he was exhibiting significant hubris in insisting on remaining coach-for-life, with no good succession plan and no thought to the limitations his physical and mental aging might place on the good of the team or program. His behavior bigfooting his way through (obstructing, really) various criminal and disciplinary matters reinforce the belief that he had convinced himself, contrary to fact, that he was the Indispensible Man as to all matters touching on the fate or reputation of the PSU football team. He’s as clear a case of a micro-managing control freak as any in sports (and that is saying something).
So with that background, it is a bit nauseating for him now to paint himself as some mere delegator, a big picture kind of guy who meekly excused himself from a lot of issues touching on the football team that he wasn’t qualified for. There’s little evidence, other than in the Sandusky case, that Joe P. ever met an issue relating to his team that he thought was better handled by others.
[querulous self-pitying old fool, from the recent interview in W. Post]
Uh, 'cause, you sort of did?
Some of the many cases of the years were sexual assault cases.
Sure, it was purposefully worded in a way to highlight what I think is the weakness in your argument, but it is still substantially the same as your argument.
You are saying it’s consistent on one level: because in both cases he did what he thought is the correct thing.
But it’s not consistent from the perspective of him deferring to established experts in the institution. Paterno doesn’t get to just make up who he thinks gets to handle things - he was clearly inconsistent when it came to deferring to the experts established by the Univeristy.
That’s too vague to be meaningful.
“What he thought is the correct thing” is very fundamentally different than “whatever he felt like doing”.
In addition, the crux of the issue is whether he had a rational basis for making a distinction, not the mere fact that he thought he was correct. I pointed to the actual rational basis for Paterno’s distinction and you ignored that in favor of pretending that the entire basis was the mere fact that Paterno liked the idea.
No big deal in the context of this thread, but a bit surprising nonetheless.
His position was that sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn’t, and I gave you a basis for that.
Just today, I came to a red traffic light and stopped and came to a green one and didn’t stop. By your logic I was being inconsistent in my approach to traffic lights. Not much in it.
That’s not the crux of the issue.
The crux of the issue is that he did make a distinction - he wasn’t consistent in his application of the rules with regard to very serious situations.
There are very very very few possible legitimate reasons for him circumventing the department whose responsibility it was to deal with these issues (and declaring himself an expert is absolutely not one of them).
In summary:
Uh, actually that is consistent because you followed the established rules.
Paterno would have done one of the following:
or
As previous, we are just going round the mulberry bush at this point. I think your logic is unsound, but nonetheless I’m going to pass on the rehash. I do request that you refrain from incorrectly restating my position in ways calculated to sustain your objections, if that’s not too hard for you.
How can it possibly be “unsound”?
He didn’t apply the rules consistently. Period. That’s inconsistent.
You disagree with that?
I’m happy to rephrase or accept any wording you want…but given that you have accused me of that, would you at least point out where I’ve don it? Or are you just referring to the “did what he felt like” comment?
Yes, as explained repeatedly.
Yes.
Just to be clear in case it comes up later, and to make sure I understand your position: you think he applied the rules of Penn State University consistently in both cases, right?
Keep in mind that statement says nothing about what Paterno thinks he is an expert in because it is completely irrelevant. It is merely a statement regarding following the rules. You think in both cases he followed the rules, right?
I know you don’t want to go around about it, but your position is so extreme (and frankly, completely illogical on the face of it) that I want to be sure. Maybe you would say that he didn’t follow the rules consistently but his thought process was consistent - if so let me know.
Ok. Would “what ever he felt like was the right thing to do” be acceptable? Or is the term “felt” a problem and needs to be replaced with “thinks”?
This is correct.
A lot better, but not there. The reason he was consistent is because his distinction had a rational basis, not merely because he agreed with himself in both cases.
If you are trying to argue he is rational vs insane - I would agree
“He knows best how to discipline his players” - that is just him agreeing with himself
Either way, because we aren’t inside his head, the only thing we can do is judge by his actions - and clearly he was willing to interfere with the experts and procedures - so because we aren’t in his head we can’t accept his stated reasons for not doing more at face value given the counter examples.
We are left wondering what other opinions he may have had about that situation that would cause him to behave the way he did (just like in the other example).
That’s putting an awful lot of faith in just one man, isn’t it? We only really have his word on what his motivations were. And when it comes to deciding who best to discipline football players, that’s Paterno’s call to make. And he chooses himself! It just seems rather circular, but lacking a solid foundation. We trust Paterno because Paterno tells us how trustworthy he is; and he wouldn’t lie about a thing like that, not honest Joe Paterno.
So he sounds like a self-appointed judge, jury, and executioner, until something went horribly wrong. Now he throws up his hands and says it wasn’t really his position to do more. And he must be right, because he’s Joe Paterno; all-knowing and decisive at deciding when he’s ignorant and incapable.