I really enjoy how SA keeps harping on a supposed lack of a distressed look on the kid’s face, as if sexual contact between an adult and a ten-year-old kid is legally copacetic if the kid doesn’t appear to mind it.
Sorry, not accusing you of verbosity, but this is the more succinct summary of SA’s core conviction and “argument.”
Starving Artist prefers Ang Lee movies. His favorite is Crouching Lion, Hidden Salami.
Why are you resorting to speculation about what Paterno “would have thought”, when we have Paterno’s own testimony as well as newspaper interviews stating in his own words what he did think? Not only did he testify unambiguously that he was told about Sandusky “fondling or doing something of a sexual nature”, but his responses in interviews make it even more clear that he knew that the allegations referred to something very out-of-the-way and extremely serious:
By his own admission, Paterno clearly understood that these allegations involved serious misconduct and abuse of a child—something drastic enough to be, as he noted, unique in all his 58 years at the institution—even if he didn’t hear about or wouldn’t have understood all the graphic details.
His response was to hand off the situation to higher-ups and thereafter to ignore it. You don’t need to be any kind of anti-Paterno fanatic or witch-hunting lynch mob to consider that response somewhat morally deficient. The fact that he fulfilled his minimal legal obligations in the situation doesn’t automatically mean that what he did was adequately ethical.
It doesn’t seem to me that Paterno was badly treated as a result of this scandal. AFAICT, nobody tried to sue him or indict him or assault him or anything like that. He was fired because of widespread outrage over the fact that he could have handled the initial revelation of the problem a lot more assertively and perhaps thereby prevented a lot of harm, but he opted instead for the minimum possible response.
Paterno’s self-confessed passivity in the face of this situation certainly wasn’t a crime in itself, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t help facilitate crime. I don’t think that firing somebody in the context of such a scandal counts as persecution, much less as tragedy.
That’s just one of the things that can happen when you make a self-protective choice that in retrospect turns out to have been unwise, especially if you’re someone in authority whose choices determine to a large extent how problems are handled. For instance, UPenn president Graham Spanier was also forced to resign due to this scandal, also without any indictment or accusation of illegal acts, and I don’t see any bleeding hearts whining about what a tragedy that is.
AFAICT, Paterno’s getting so much sympathy not because he was a victim of actual injustice but because a lot of people who idolized him don’t like to see him criticized. Sure, child molestation is a very scandalous subject that provokes a lot of heated and intemperate expressions of public opinion, but the actual official responses to the revelations of Paterno’s role in this scandal don’t strike me as unfair.
Now, now, Kimstu, you’re just being hysterical.
Your post was great except (it has to be said, with this moron) you needed to specify explicitly that Paterno clearly knew that the “abuse of a child” was sexual abuse in nature (otherwise the moron will slip back in with “non sexual fondling abuse”) and you need not to buy into the invented “Paterno wouldn’t have understood all the graphic details” (that’s the moron’s invented fact about how “intercourse with a boy” is a phrase unintelligible to someone raised in the 1950s). Nothing wrong with your post, just you need to dot the i’s and cross the t’s with this moron to foreclose his known recourse to his half dozen or so invented hobbyhorses like “hugs” and “non sexual fondling” and the like.
Excellent post, Kimstu. Minor correction - UPenn, or University of Pennsylvania, is different from Penn State University. The former is a hoidy toidy Ivy League school.
While the latter is the home of serial child rapists, their enablers, and their batshit BFFs.
Not that I’m suggesting the last guy has a college or fourth grade degree, heaven forbid, I meant more his spiritual home.
Now, nobody can surpass me in my loathing of Starving for Adolescents. And I do not defend Joe Paterno’s inaction.
But my heart is still with PSU, so I have to draw the line here, and object to your last comment.
Okay, it’s home to lots of other people as well, most of whom by now are on the right page AFAICT. You can forgive me after those dumbass kids (and they are kids, I guess) initially rallied/rioted to demand JP keep his job. And you can also forgive me after I had to wade through the overly PSU/JP friendly Pennlive boards, though to even their credit few if any there bought in on our little friend’s raving three foot tall boy/McQueary lied theories.
Oh there’s no doubt that the school and the community have work yet to do, so yeah, I can understand your POV.
You guys with your facts! All of which have been directly refuted by SA’s vast compendium of suppositions, innuendos, and conjectures. You cannot prove that this wasn’t largely, partially, or even entirely innocent, because you cannot prove it impossible.
Since the Board policy on such accusations is exactly the same as that in a court of law*, which is to say, proof beyond any doubt whatsoever, so long as any supposition, conjecture, or wild-eyed fantasy exists within the realm of the possible, his arguments are equivalent to your own, and should be accorded the same level of respect!
*Board policy as spelled out in one of those stickies, which I will definitely point out for you when I am not so busy…
Yup, I quoted Paterno’s own sworn testimony making it absolutely clear that he knew that McQueary was talking about “something of a sexual nature”.
D’oh! Thanks, yes, you’re absolutely right.
Well, yeah, but Paterno was from a different era, his views were formed long before the hippies invented gay in the 60’s.
Okay, just wasn’t sure how closely you’ve been following his chicanery (close enough to post a good summary of what everyone knows, but the devil’s in the details with this moron). He has a little game he’s played about six dozen times of introducing the GJ’s characterization that Paterno testified to “fondling or sexual contact,” ignoring Paterno’s other statements and McQueary’s sworn consistent statements about “intercourse” and “extreme sexual contact, way over the line” to pretend that there is such a thing as “non sexual fondling,” that “fondling” and “sexual contact” are mutually exclusive and totally different things, and that it is thus almost certain that what Paterno must definitely have thought McQueary saw (and/or what McQueary, in actual fact saw) was “fondling” that was “non-sexual” and “most likely a hug.”
It’s disingenuous bullshit of course, but with this idiot you have to keep your eye on the ball and never let it be hinted or suggested that the contact was anything but sexual in nature or that the evidence or Paterno or McQueary’s testimony supports its being anything but sexual, as that is this retard’s Hail Mary pass to save (in his mind only) his molester/enabler heroes.
All my football coaches ever wanted me to do was join the debate squad or theater club.
True. I can definitely believe that Paterno might have thought (and certainly hoped) that there might somehow have been a miraculously improbable innocent explanation for what McQueary reported. Naturally he would not have wanted to believe that Sandusky was actually committing sexual abuse of a minor (and on the PSU campus, no less) if there was even the shred of a hope of avoiding that conclusion.
What the evidence cannot possibly support, though, is any suggestion that Paterno could have been in any doubt whatsoever that the allegations concerned an extremely serious matter of sexual abuse. His own words make it very clear that he knew this situation was some catastrophically bad child-molestation-related shit.
Paterno might have thought that McQueary might be lying or hallucinating, or he might have thought that there might be a chance in a million that Sandusky was innocent of actual wrongdoing or criminal intent, or he might just have thought that Sandusky was guilty as hell but it would be best to let the system deal with him. What is clear from Paterno’s own descriptions, however, is that he did NOT regard the situation as something that might well turn out to be no big deal (“eh, quite possibly it was just a coach hugging a kid in the shower” or something of the sort).
Paterno knew damn well just how big a deal this was from the moment he talked to McQueary. He’s said so himself.
And I must say, to give credit where it’s due, that Paterno himself commendably refused to play the victim card on his own behalf, no matter how much some of his fans have tried to play it for him. As noted in the above-linked interview,
I wish some of the people who complain about the “tragic injustice” of Joe Paterno’s firing had even a tenth of Joe Paterno’s class when it comes to acknowledging what the real tragic injustice is here.
Well, I’d at least like to have the opportunity to try.
Not with all the hours I’ve put in. I’m not gonna sit here and watch some wet-behind-the-ears punk come waltzing in here and take this out from under me.
I was calling this guy out for being a tool way before you and all the other bandwagon types in this thread had even heard of him.
That’s what Sandusky said to McQueary.