There was an earlier cite as well, but let’s go with the more convenient cite in post #1582 above.
What you’re engaging in is spin. Which is fine, and you could be right. But you’re not entitled to call other people liars because they go with the plain meaning of words and sentences and not with your spun version. And if you’ve called them liars and then discovered this testimony, you should have the decency and integrity to retract it and not just drown out the issue by attacking them on other matters even more vociferously.
Very literal interpretations of summarized text leading to nitpicky arguments over the exact shade of grey in an otherwise black world…
…or, an SDMB thread.
Most people think that an adult man, naked in the shower alone with a 10 year old boy is already something questionable…add contact…any sort of contact…and the line is definitely crossed. Add the details testified to by McQueary, and there’s no question the line was crossed, and it’s horrifying. Trying to nitpick whether you’re a mile over the line or a mile and an inch over it just doesn’t matter any more. Most of us feel that Paterno knew that the line had been crossed; exactly by how much is irrelevant in the context of us feeling that he should have and could have done more in response to that information.
THAT’S a good one – it would have been to call the police, because then the kids would have other people know, and they’d be traumatized that people found out. Hey, so what if the abuse continues – just as long as nobody knows!
(God, re-reading this thread makes me want to go and take a shower. It’s like rolling in filfth)
The next time I hear of someone abusing kids for years and thinking ‘How did they get away with it for so long?’ I’ll be reminded of this thread and people like SA.
Paterno dropped the ball, you hear of a man having a shower with a kid not his own, at night, with no one else around you damn well make sure that kid is safe no matter how many toes you tread on.
Certain people need to distinguish between the following:
[ul]
[li]What Sandusky did[/li][li]What Paterno assumed Sandusky did[/li][/ul]
These are not necessarily the same, and statements about one do not necessarily apply to the other. This should be obvious, but some people are having trouble making the distinction.
I’m not sure what this is in response to, but if it’s a response to my post, then it’s irrelevant in context.
Other certain people need to realize that if what Paterno assumed Sandusky did didn’t warrant a call to the cops - after being told that he was busted naked with a 10 year old boy in a deserted shower room at night complete with slapping sounds and sexual contact - then he’s a fucking moron at best.
SA challenged Guinastasia for an example of him saying that “Sandusky’s behavior was probably horseplay”, and she responded with a bunch of quotes relating to Paterno’s assumptions about Sandusky’s behaviour, rather than about Sandusky’s behaviour itself.
I am not inclined to get involved with a debate with Guinastasia, so I was a bit coy, but on further reflection perhaps I wasn’t clear enough.
So you’re saying that Guin did not back up what she accused SA of posting, and her many quotes all missed the boat in that specific regard, but that’s all OK because in your opinion those quotes illustrate other problems with SA’s position.
If SA was the most brilliant and logical person on this planet, it would be futile to discuss issues with people who bring this attitude to the discussion. It’s not enough that you have dozens of posters piling on to one guy, but despite what you claim is the tremendous stupidity of SA and despite all the material he’s provided in this thread, you can’t manage enough integrity to limit yourselves to attacking the guy for what he’s actually said, and instead need to pretend that he’s said all sorts of other things that you can attack him for.
Does not speak well for your position here (among other things).
No, no. The spin is introduced only (as I pointed out earlier) by the fairly lame cross examination by Sandusky’s lawyers that elicited some trivial “admission” that McQueary didn’t actually see Sandusky’s penis making the entry.
The snips you quote from McQueary’s cross examination otherwise reveal him consistently wanting to say that he is close to certain that penetration was happening, which was a 100% reasonable and tiny inference to draw based on seeing an old guy right behind a kid whose hands were braced on the wall, naked, after hearing slapping, sex-like sounds.
SA would like to seize on this fairly meager cross-exam “admission” to imply that McQueary was/is anguishedly uncertain and conflicted about what he saw. In reality, McQueary keeps coming back to “I saw some form of intercourse,” and getting hung up on his conceding to a shyster’s cheap “but you can’t be one million percent sure, can you, as you did not actually see the penis enter the anus” is both falling for molester-enabling crap that SA has been peddling, and not understanding how cross-exam is played when a shyster otherwise has no hope on the merits. I could always get you to admit that you were not 100% certain of some tangential or cumulative fact. It doesn’t undermine the core testimony, it only appears to (the criminal defense lawyer hopes, in the mind of the dumbest eventual juror).
That’s fine. That’s a valid perspective. You can disagree with someone who has another perspective. But none of this means that someone who states that McQueary wasn’t sure what he saw is a liar. Because the plain meaning of McQueary’s words were that he wasn’t sure.
What you actually said was:
In actual fact, McQueary did say that he wasn’t sure, so SA is not a liar for claiming that he said this. Your vehement assertions that McQueary never (“NEVER”) said this are factually incorrect.
Again, what you can say is that although McQueary said this, the statement has to be understood in context, and does not have as much import as SA is assigning to it, which is the gist of your argument on this point. But you cannot keep your integrity intact while calling someone a liar for making a factually correct statement.
You speak of context, and I think rightly. And the context here is that, as Guin ably illustrated, SA has been feverishly concocting all sorts of fact-free scenarios in which Paterno could have though McQueary was reporting something non-criminal. He’s gotten pretty creepy in formulating hypotheses that he suggests a reasonable man could take as innocent explanations for naked man-boy contact in a shower. In this context, his insistence that McQueary “wasn’t even sure what he had seen,” based solely on some cheap cross-exam admission that he had seen what he thought was damn near sure anal intercourse but no, he had not seen the penis actually enter, is disingenous, especially when offered in aid of his baseless alternate theories of some totally non-sexual explanation that Paterno could have taken away.
Oh, and by the way, you assert that Guin didn’t provide anything in which SA suggested that Sandusky might be innocent, as opposed to that Paterno might have somehow innocently thought he was. But, she did.
Apart from the dishonest bullshit of claiming that McQueary’s testimony was “vague,” I’m pretty damn sure that also answers your indictment of me for saying that SA gave credence to the “showering lessons” bullshit. He did, thereinabove.
Again, none of that makes him a liar for claiming that McQueary said something that he actually said.
That was not Guin’s claim. Her claim was that
She did not come close to backing this up.
In your quote, he wrote “within the realm of possibility”. There’s a huge difference between “within the realm of possibility” and “probably”.
[In addition, in the original post from which that quote ensued (#1464), SA was clear that the distinction was being made between “inappropriate vs. illegal behavior”, not that any of the other behaviors were appropriate.]
It’s mitigated to an extent, but on the whole, no, as above.
[I am not SA’s lawyer here, and I disagree with much of what he’s posted here. But the attacks on him in this thread have been very over-the-top and dishonest in many instances, and I’ve commented on a few instances that caught my eye. If your position was as strong as you claim it is, this should not be necessary.]
The posts calling him a pedophile or defender of them are over the top and not really supported by his position.
But here is the problem with SA’s position: instead of sticking to an opinion about how to handle the report (call cops vs report to administrators), he has chosen to try to justify in objective terms why not calling the cops is completely appropriate.
There are two problems with that:
Both sides are just opinion, so it’s tough to objectively defend much of anything
It has led him to some completely ridiculous positions, for example, his insistence that the police would do nothing unless a victim was already identified. This is an example of a position that is so completely unsupportable that it forces the question: assuming SA’s brain is normal and functioning, what is his game?
Beyond that, there have been persistant attempts to pretend he has said things even more extreme than what he actually has.
I agree that that’s a ridiculous position. But it’s not like people don’t otherwise say ridiculous things around here. It’s actually pretty common.
If you need to speculate about this one, my guess FWIW is that he made a mistake and didn’t think it through clearly, and then couldn’t back down due the general tenor of the thread. It’s not uncommon for people backed into a corner to dig in.
But I’m equally interested in the motivation of others in this thread, who are not beset by attackers from all sides, and could afford to be more measured. My speculation here is that their behaviour is a combination of 1) revulsion at pedophilia and 2) mob mentality. It’s like schoolyard punks who feel good about beating up someone else, and when there’s a crowd of others at their back and they feel safe in taking a shot of their own, they seize the opportunity.
Why do you discount SA’s motives? Namely that he lurves him some Paterno and he’ll fish for any rationalization he can to paint him in a good light, even though he’s deep in the shadows of this whole rigmarole.
And Starving Artist’s latest bullshit, that calling the police would in fact be a BAD idea is so fucked up that I cannot imagine how ANY human, with a conscience, could make it.
He’s more concerned with defending his hero – Paterno – than worrying about the victims. “Oh, they couldn’t have been identified, so why bother?” Yes, false accusations are devastating. That doesn’t mean you go the exact opposite route and ignore what’s going on right in front of your nose.
His idiotic misconception of just how a police investigation works is astonishing. The evidence and reports have been posted here time and time again, yet he keeps refusing to address it. Watch ANY documentary on A&E or Biography. Read ANY book on a criminal case. (Note, I’m not talking about a novel, I’m speaking about non-fiction). Talk to an actual cop or investigator, and see what they tell you.
I get the impression that had he been in McQueary’s place, he might not have acted to stop what was going on. And that again disgusts me.
“All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing”. Of course, that assumes that Starving Artist is a good man in the first place. And reading this thread, I have my doubts.