Nobody has said that Paterno thought he should find out why Sandusky and the boy were naked together first, nor have they said that Paterno should have found out why they were naked together first.
This is just more evidence of the fact that most posters in this thread seem incapable of comprehending just what it is they’re reading and then keeping their facts straight from post to post.
Of course it’s difficult to keep your facts straight when you’re hysterically or angrily hopping from post to post, skimming them for something your opponent has said or been alleged to have said that you can become outraged about, which is what most of the posters in this thread have obviously been doing - including you, apparently.
From a legal standpoint, Paterno is probably in the clear. But from a moral standpoint he failed. From ABC News
He didn’t want to ruin their weekend? What about the kid getting raped by Sandusky? I’m sure he had a pretty shitty weekend. But I’m sure it’s more important the administrators get to watch football undisturbed.
If there wasn’t the mandatory reporting law, would Paterno have done anything? Other than do the bare minimum of reporting which was legally required, Paterno did nothing which took into account the welfare of that child or any other child Sandusky abused. And no one else did either, which is pretty sad.
You know, a while back I asked Starving Artist a question, and I was told he had no time, he had to run. Ok, here it is again:
Take the same situation, put in it political terms. Former staffer to a Senator. Resigns, but it still close to the Senator and staffer after the fact. It’s not unusual for him to be seen around, is what I’m saying.
Senator becomes President. Former staffer is reported to be raping a 10 yr old boy in the White House showers. Ok, to throw it to you, something is reported that sounds like it’s a sexual nature. It’s reported up the chain, and nothing else happens until it comes out later.
Even if you say that every person involved did the legal thing with regards to reporting, would you want that person to still be President? He/she didn’t do anything, it was their staffer. They reported it up. I’m pretty sure we’d be screaming for the President’s head, and so would you.
My take on this has always been it doesn’t matter if Paterno knew all the details. He was the coach, it’s his locker room, and you have to take the fall in that situation. If he didn’t want Sandusky around the lockers and the program, he wouldn’t have been. It’s that simple. By allowing him to be around he helped create an atmosphere where this could happen.
If you want to be the guy on top, then when bad things happen, you are supposed to take responsibility. Even if you think you did everything right.
This is another way of looking at Paterno’s moral failing. Long before this news came out, more than a few people had been politely muttering (because no one wants to be accused of age discrimination or questioning the judgment of a “legend”) that Paterno needed to ride off into the sunset with grace (or should have some time ago). This isn’t necessarily because he was senile per se or couldn’t hack it as a figurehead head coach (he’s had a spotty record in the last decade, but not abysmal and this year was shaping up okay). It’s because, well, at some point, it’s time to go, and let the next generation take over (not having a real good succession plan or acting as though you’ll be in charge forever is a trait not only of “legendary” coaches – Bowden faced the same discussion – but of the Kim Jong-Il’s of the world – not that Paterno is Kim, just that hubris is hubris).
There can be a lot of wisdom in elders, but I’ve found too that there’s a lot to the saying that there’s no fool like an old fool. I can’t be the only one here who’s dealt with older family members who just don’t have good judgment, but have strongly held, querulously insistent, wrongheaded opinions that you have to patiently either work through or ignore. That’s bad enough when it’s just in the family and the stakes are between getting them to stop driving and just head gracefully out to their woodshop or knitting. But when an old fool insists on retaining institutional control of a major business, the consequences can be even worse. Anyone who read Paterno’s pathetic press release in which he thought he could get away with pre-empting the Trustees by setting his retirement for the end of the year, or listened to his stupid out-of-touch press conference, knows that nothing but self-centered hubris can excuse his not having retired years ago.
jtgain, when you say you checked out I don’t know if that means you stopped posting, or stopped reading altogether. AFAICT, only one poster has directly called SA a pedophile for defending Paterno, and she did so out of, I don’t know, adolescent (I say this in the good way) exasperation after some personal attacks by him. Several others of us have said that the specific arguments SA was relying on – trying to suggest that some forms of sexual contact with a minor were not as serious as anal rape – sounded like justifications that pedophiles might use, so he might stop using them, because they served no useful purpose in view of the fact that law and morality don’t allow for any form of naked adult-child contact, ever. The fact that SA kept insisting with such vehemence that naked tickling or naked hugging or naked wrestling were a very different, implicitly okay, ballgame, one that Paterno wouldn’t feel any urgency about reporting (putting aside the fact that he fabricated these scenarios), was what creeped me and more than a few others out.
You are dishonestly characterizing what that article says. What it does say is that neither Paterno nor Curley believed a crime was actually going on. In other words, they thought McQueary was misinterpreting what he saw.
And frankly, given the logistics of things: Sandusky’s height vs. that of most ten year old boys, the venue, and the fact that most men in the masculine world of big time college football would rather be caught dead than engaging in homosexual acts, especially with a child, and the idea that sexual activity was what was going on could easily sound implausible to Paterno and Curley. Hell, it sounds implausible to me too, especially the anal rape scenario that everyone in the early stages of this thread were so eager to latch onto.
You are correct. They thought McQueary was misinterpreting what he saw probably for the reasons you stated. But that is the moral failing I am talking about. They are morally deficient to think like that. You are explaining why they think like that. I agree with your reasoning. I would also add they didn’t want the bad publicity it would bring to their football program. The difference is that I think that makes them morally deficient.
If Paterno was also a witness to the crime and could explain it as horseplay, I could almost understand. But from what McQueary testified he saw, I can’t conceive of how anyone could misinterpret that as horseplay. Sandusky moving back and forth against a child’s backside is not harmless horseplay in any possible scenario.
All of this has nothing to do with the numerous allegations in this thread - especially in the early going before people started getting pinned down with the facts - that Paterno was a knowing pedophile enabler, evil through and through and virtually as guilty of wrongdoing as Sandusky.
Certainly it’s possible that Paterno, being the age he is and having come from the era he came from, was more or less in the dark about the kind of activity McQueary saw or thought he saw. But that would be due more to life as the way he’s always known it rather than due to senility or dodderage.
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. I’ve been called a pedophile, a pedophile enabler, a pedophile sympathizer and pedophile wanna be for no other reason than that I suggested that because Paterno was a man of longstanding reputation for honesty and integrity that we wait until we know more before we condemn him. This ‘personal attack’ line is bullshit. On the rare occasion that I’ve made a personal attack on someone in this thread, it was because of accusastions they’d made about me in the first place.
See, this is a perfect example of the lying you’ve been engaging in throughout this thread.
The relatively benign pseudo-helpful description of your behavior in response to what I said is laughable and a lie.
I’ve never even stated, much less “insisted with vehemence”, that naked tickling, hugging or wrestling between Sandusky and a child were okay. But unless someone can show me Pennsylvania or federal law which provides that such activity is criminal, it is not inaccurate to say that had Paterno viewed Sandusky’s actions as mere horseplay (and I say “mere” in contrast to child - and especially anal - rape), then he would logically not have felt compelled to jump on the phone and notify the police.
At some point today I hope to find time to go back and cite at least a small number of the lies you’ve been shoveling over this thread like the manure it is. It would have to be a small number because the page length if I were to cite them all would likely exceed the board’s capacity for content in one post. A person could completely ignore virtually every accusation you’ve made about me in this thread without losing a single honest, factual tidbit about what I’ve said or about me as a person.
You are essentially as big a loon as miss elizabeth, though instead of her practice of blatantly obvious and over the top name calling, you go in for lies couched in lengthy filights of verbiage. But you’re no more honest or intelligent than she is, and certainly not worth taking seriously by any lurker or poster given to reason and fact.
I wondered about that as well. Not that I want that mental imagine in my mind, but isn’t Sandusky a pretty tall guy? 6’4" if I recall. Wouldn’t that make the anal rape impossible if they were in the position that McQueary describes?
Not to be graphic, but if Sandusky’s hands were around the boy’s waist and the boy was standing with his hands against the wall, Sandusky’s penis must have been near his upper back. No way could anal penetration have occurred.
Now, yes, yes. It would still be inappropriate, etc., but all of this has been conditioned on the premise that Paterno was told in no uncertain terms that Sandusky was anally raping a boy and we are judging his actions based on those facts.
Actually your original accusation was not directed at SA. but at Brickbacon. Although given SA’s apparently weak standing with this crowd, I can see why you would prefer to act as if it was him.
Are you earnestly wondering whether or not there is a law which prohibits a 60 year old man from bringing a 10 year old boy to a deserted locker room and showering with him naked?
See … this is where you’re getting the accusations from. You’re clinging to any retarded rationalization you can think of in an attempt to clear the name of your hero. And by the way, who gives a shit if Paterno was a “man of longstanding reputation for honesty and integrity;” he wasn’t in this particular case.
Face facts. He fucked up hard. He needs to face the music.
I never said it wasn’t and I agreed with the post that linked to that. I renewed the question when SA took this particular baton from the other(s), on the same rationale.
My reading of your quoted text is that you intended to convey to jtgain, who had objected to the implication that he - by virtue of holding a similar position - was being called a pedophile, that your objections were to SA specifically. My apologies if this is incorrect.
Well, FWIW, I’ve never bought into the notion that the top guy is always responsible for everything that goes on in the company or organization he’s the head of. People can’t be everywhere at once, nor should they expect to be. Society has simply accepted for whatever reason that in instances where an offence is particularly onerous, the top guy’s head should roll, but that doesn’t make it right. But if the primary focus of the thread had simply been that Paterno, as the head of Penn State’s football program, should fall on his sword and bow out as a symbolic gesture expected by society, than my arguments on his behalf would have centered only on that.
As for the rest of the question you asked, I’m not going to take time to address it in detail. In threads like this there is just too much demanding my time and attention. I could spend half the day merely constructing a post to address Huerta88’s lies, which he has so graciously and stupidly asked me to do, and of course that requires not only that I have the time available out of my day, but that I leave other posts addressed to me unanswered in the meantime. Then in time those posters often start to want to know why I haven’t answered them, and a cycle gets set up where I’m always trying to come from behind.
So let me just say that to the degree your scenario parallels the scenario regarding Paterno, my response would be the same as it has been here. I simply don’t agree with automatically making the top guy take the fall, especially when you consider that hugely negative impact it has on the good he may be accomplishing, which will almost certainly be brought to a halt and maybe even reversed. The situation with Paterno is a perfect example. He brought in a tremendous amount of prestige and income to Penn State University. That prestige and income allowed Penn State to grow and offer greater educational opportunies to a greater number of students, and everyone involved with the university benefitted. Now it is pretty much gutted. It’s reputation is shot, it’s financial support is hugely diminished, and future enrollments are sure to plummet. Who’d want to admit attending Penn State in the wake of this disaster? So the damage done to the university is huge and wide-ranging. It will take years if not decades to get back to where it was. And why? Because of a hysterical overreaction to a crime that may not even have occurred ten years ago, and because of an equally hysterical insistance upon singling out Joe Paterno as the focal point of the entire issue. So a university has been ruined and many kids are going to miss out on the benefits they would have gained by attending the superb university that Penn State had become in large thanks due to Joe Paterno, and the kid involved isn’t being helped in the slightest. The whole episode is one huge waste. Sandusky should have been arrested and prosecuted for whatever crimes the evidence indicates he may have committed, and that’s it. He is the responsible party, not Paterno and not Penn State.
Yes, I am. And unless you or someone else can point the law making it illegal, I will continue to wonder. There is a big difference between inappropriate behavior that is questionable and most likely should be put an end to, and behavior which is illegal by statute. If Paterno felt that what McQueary saw was most likely inappropriate but not illegal behavior, then obviously he would not have been of the belief that a law had been broken, and therefore had even less impetus to call the police.
I think one thing people need to realize around here is that we are talking matter of opinion, as you could not begin to prove that your assessment of my motives and their allegedly retarded rationalizations exist as a matter of fact. Nor can you prove objectively your opinion about Paterno. I think his reaction was perfectly understandable; you don’t. End of story. All either of us can do is argue about it. So stop acting like your opinion is settled fact, 'cause it ain’t. Not by a long shot.
Paterno’s control over every facet of life in central Pennsylvania is precisely the issue, because it means that it was his choice to hold Sandusky responsible for his actions or not, and he chose not. The evidence that has come out since the firing (victims of child rape harassed into dropping out of school because they damaged the football program, Penn State refusing to cooperate with outside investigations, the students who rioted in favor of pedophilia) shows that this whole area is a degenerate football cult led by Paterno. The buck stopped with him and he passed it.
The human body is equipped with some fascinating and useful features called joints. The knee joint is particularly advantageous in cases where a 6 foot tall person wants to fuck a 5 foot tall person in the shower. Thanks to the knee joint, the 6 foot tall man does not need to upper-back fuck the 5 foot tall person, but instead can bend his knees to adjust his height in order to access the proper orifice. The human body is truly remarkable!
Unless Sandusky is in the kind of shape that would qualify him to perform with Cirque du Soleil, neither scenario sounds particularly plausible to me. Sandusky would have to virtually squat, not merely bend at the knees, in order to facilitate the type of motions that would be involved in actual anal rape, and it would be very difficult to hold a kid off the floor and rape him anally while also bending over at the waist and holding him up with one arm. Also, McQueary’s description of what he saw doesn’t say anything about Sandusky holding the kid off the floor. So if these scenarios sound unlikely to me, I imagine they’d never even occur to someone of Joe Paterno’s age and life experience.
