It's time to officially Pit Joe Paterno and the Penn State football program.

The BBQ Pit
1401

Date rapes, pedophilic casting couches, it’s all been known and kept under the carpet for decades in Hollywood, and for the most self-serving of reasons.

SDMB - Crickets!

Oh, well, right political ideology I guess. Too bad ol’ JoePa was on the wrong side of the political fence. What he did or didn’t do that may have been wrong was nowhere near as bad, yet when it comes to Hollywood there’s not a whiff of outrage nor single mention of dead raccoon dick suckage to be found anywhere around these parts.

I wonder why that is?

Where’s all the outrage? Where are all the cries of “He/She KNEW!!!..And did NOTHING!!!”

Where are all the…

Oh, wait! Paterno posed with GWB once, didn’t he? And he’s old! And white!

Well, there you have it! Being an old white conservative reporting abuse according to the law is much worse than covering up decades-long knowledge of pedophilia out of career concern or because the pedophile is a ‘respected artist’.

I’m finally beginning to get the hang of things around here, aren’t I?

1402

No, but I don’t think anybody expects you to ever get the hang of it.

1403

ticks off the checkbox

BINGO!!

1404

I doubt it.

These Hollywood allegations are just vague allegations about a general problem. People tend to get more hyped up about allegations attached to specific known people.

There’s no doubt that people tend to be biased by political loyalties as a general rule, and that may or may not be a factor here, but it’s not something you can conclude based on the specific comparison you’ve made.

1405

Oh, I don’t know. In just the last few days I’ve read of Corey Feldman and Paul Peterson having direct decades-long knowledge of specific pedophile offenders, as well as one of the Little House actresses saying it was comon knowledge around Hollywood when Corey Felman and Corey Haim were being passed around like candy. I’m at a bit of a loss to understand why Sandusky’s victims draw so much more sympathy and outrage than do what has been done to kids in Hollywood all this time. Same offenses, same damage, if you ask me.

Frankly, I, myself never tumbled to the political nature of the outrage against Paterno, even after someone mentioned early in the thread that he’d been photographed with GWB. But watching the completely over the top nonsensical outrage which has been directed at him, and toward those of us who’ve suggested that Paterno’s involvement may not have been as alleged, and in light of comments made by posters such as Kolga who alleged I was defending Paterno because he is a “white conservative man,” has caused me to re-examine the motives behind all this. And then when you see the utter lack of outrage or even concern over the plight of the kids taken advantage of in Hollywood…well, it’s certainly enough to give one pause.

1406

Corey Feldman and Paul Peterson might have knowledge of specific offenders, but the public does not. Corey Feldman and Paul Peterson are probably quite outraged, but the public at large has no Evil Monster to focus on.

1407

But one of the main allegations about Paterno is that he KNEW and did nothing. Well, these people “know,” yet the hystericals of the Straight Dope couldn’t care less.

Plus, people here have no more specific knowledge as to Sandusky’s victim in the shower incident than they do to any of the kids currently being abused in Hollywood. And to me, if Paterno is going to be raked over the coals merely upon the suspicion that he knew abuse was going on, then Feldman, Peterson, et. al should be coming in for even more abuse because they’ve known of it for decades and have admitted as much.

Additionally, Feldman has come right out and said that in regard to one specific pedophile, it isn’t for him to name the guy, someone else will have to do it. I can only imagine the fireworks that would have gone off around here had Paterno made such an admission. In short, why is Paterno an evil monster while Feldman, Peterson, and the apparently huge number of other people in Hollywood who’ve known of this activity for decades and looked the other way either to protect themselves, or, even worse, because they admired the offender’s artistry? Paterno’s been reviled and castigated for allegedly trying to protect his football program. Why is protecting the Hollywood movie industry and it’s admired “artists” any different?

1408

Those guys are not the employers or former employers of the abusers. And even more significant, those guys are victims themselves, who get cut some slack.

1409

There is an interesting comparison going on in the hockey world right now with regards to the former junior hockey coach Graham James and former NHL star Theoren Fleury.

Fleury recently came ‘out" as a victim of sexual abuse, spanning several years, by his junior hockey coach, James. This came about several years after another former hockey player alleged that James had also abused him. I’ll admit to not being up enough on all the details to go into further details, but after James’ most recent conviction (he had been convicted and pardoned a few years ago) Fleury called out the government/criminal justice system as not doing enough to protect children from being abused. A Montreal journalist called Fleury hypocritical, because Fleury was actually one of 18 investors/financiers for the Calgary Hitmen junior hockey team during a time when James was the coach, before Fleury came out as a victim. In essence, the team was completely managed by James, but the journalist feels that Fleury also had a responsibility to protect young players from James.

As a victim, though, what Fleury went though, and the guilt and shame and the just-hope-it-goes-away and struggles to deny what happened to him… well, it’s unimaginable, what he must have gone through, and it’s less easy to condemn him for trying to support the one thing that made sense to him, hockey, even if it meant having James around. Fleury went through years of suffering and a cocaine and alcohol addiction that ruined his career and finances - he could barely take care of himself for a time, let alone be responsible for others.

It’s hard to blame him, because even though he knew what James was, he had real psychological barriers to prevent reporting it. Then again, there is some responsibility… he knew, so was in a position to do something..

You end up with a “blame the victim” argument, but in the end it comes down to this: Fleury did not have the resources as a kid/teenager to stop James or to adequately deal with what he suffered. I think others knew or suspected James of inappropriate behaviour…certainly his other victims did…and yet no one said or did anything. Had one person questioned what was going on at the time, so much more horrible stuff could have been avoided in the long run.

So I guess… the one thing I can think of that would make me maybe understand Paterno more would be if he, himself, were the victim of sexual assault and the trauma was too big for him to deal with. I guess it’s possible. But are we to assume that that’s the case for McQueary, his dad, the doctor, Curley, Schultz and everyone else involved in this whole sordid tale? So many people could have done something. So many people didn’t.

As for Hollywood: I don’t follow the stories, so other than my general outrage at “raping/sexually asssulting people is BAD” I can’t really comment on it more.

1410

Well that’s just a lie. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14554246&postcount=1381

But whoever it was that warned me not to fall for your dumbass red herring was right. This thread isn’t about Hollywood molesters (I’ll start one if you want) and the Hollywood allegations are less detailed so far than the ones we have here, have not been neatly gathered and compiled by skilled investigators and prosecutors (yet) into a single damning legal document, are not (yet) based on sworn testimony, are remoter in time and likely harder to substantiate, and do not have a specific focal point in a single named suspect/accused party. If it were more analogous, there’d likely be more outrage (in a thread of its own). Much more basically, two wrongs don’t make a right, and don’t hijack other people’s threads, both good rules to live by.

1411

I don’t recall saying that two wrongs make a right. I’m just trying to get a handle on the real reason why Joe Paterno has come in for such insane and illegitimate hatred on this issue, and based upon what some of the posters to this thread have had to say, it appears that Paterno’s conservative politics may well have something to do with that.

And I don’t know that what I’ve done constitutes hijacking a thread either, although frankly it isn’t your call to make. I’ve merely questioned why Paterno has come in for such harsh criticism in regard to an issue - i.e., what he allegedly “knew” - that people seem much more benign about when it comes to Hollywood.

1412

Joe knew a friend was raping children. He did nothing to make it stop. That’s it. How is that hard to understand?

1413

You don’t know that.

But Feldman and Peterson and countless other people in Hollywood do have specific knowledge of the sexual abuse of children and have had for decades. They say so themselves. Further, they’ve kept silent about it for the sake of their own careers and/or because of the standing or reputation of the child rapers in question. How is that not worse than what is merely suspected when it comes to Paterno?

1414

Who said it was, or was not? No one’s discussing it because it’s not the subject the OP chose to discuss.

I notice you elided right past my calling you out on “no one here is willing to condemn the Hollywood pervs,” given that I did, which directly nullifies your (illogical anyhow) contention that this would or could justify Paterno.

1415

Yeah, you paid lip service to it, I’ll give you that. What I’m not seeing though is outrage. Not from you, nor from anyone else around here, despite the fact that this issue has been in the news for several days now.

And where did I say this “justifies” Paterno? What does that even mean? There is no justifying Paterno. Either he’s guilty of some major wrongdoing or he isn’t. Justification has nothing to do with it.

You have completely lost both perspective and your mind when it comes to this issue, haven’t you?

1416

That would be me. So, CUT IT OUT. Starving Artist knows exactly what he’s doing when he tosses in irrelevant bullshit into a thread, and the only thing to do is simply stop responding to his derailment attempts. Or maybe respond with a one-line “This is irrelevant to the current discussion.”

Whether or not there are allegations of child rape in Hollywood doesn’t need to cloud up the issue of Paterno’s complicity in child rape in Pennsylvania. ElvisLives’s summary is spot-on, and any arguments against that summary have already been discussed and accepted by reasonable people while rejected by pedophilia apologists.

1417

Joe essentially admitted it himself. Do the words “something of a sexual nature” ring any bells?

Or do you simply enjoy the sound of being laughed at?

1418

I have to say it’s amusing to watch you two endlessly cautioning one another not to fall for my nefarious attempts at…discussing the facts.

The outrage and conclusion-jumping that has gone on in this thread regarding Paterno is ridiculous. And the justification for it has been that Paterno “must have known” what was going on, and that he covered it up to protect his football program, which resulted in even more kids being sexually abused. Further, none of this is based on fact but only on supposition.

Yet here we are with a situation in Hollywood where people definitely know of child sex abuse that has gone on for decades and have admitted as such, resulting undoubtedly in a great many more kids having been abused in the meantime, and there’s not a hint of outrage about it to be found anywhere on this board.

So, are kids being screwed by adults a bad thing or not? And if so, why is what has been going on in Hollywood drawing a “meh” from the posters on this board? There has been no shortage whatsoever with imaginings of what all has happened to countless kids over the time Sandusky has been on the loose, so where is the imagination engine over all the kids who’ve been abused in Hollywood all this time? And over the motivations for keeping it secret, which has also been admitted to be to protect careers and/or the exalted “artists” who are guilty of it?

1419

When he said that, he was talking about what McQueary had told him. His response to having been told that was to report it to his superiors, which is both what the laws requires and longtime campus practice suggested he should.

The comment you originally made - “Joe knew a friend was raping children. He did nothing to make it stop” - is incorrect both in its implication and in fact.

1420

He told somebody else in the university he effectively controlled (NOT law enforcement), did the absolute bare minimum legally required of someone in his job, and that was it. IOW *he did nothing to make it stop. * :rolleyes:

And it beggars belief to think he had no idea all those years, with all the other incidents we know of and that someone in his position, both professionally and personally, would know of as well. So why do you believe it anyway? :dubious: