Posted on 01/31/2012 8:44:20 AM PST by Neverforget01
When the hundreds of thousands of Penn State alumni hear the name JoePa, they think of moral leadership, of the kind of person they aspire to be. Of his warmth, his fatherliness, his steadiness, and his granite character. Joe Paterno was for hundreds of thousands of alumni the very model of the moral ideal of Western humanism.
Hundreds of thousands of alumni think a huge injustice was committed against JoePa by the board of trustees, and they have emphatically expressed their sentiments to the new interim president of Penn State during his coast-to-coast series of alumni meetings to damp down the great anger he is encountering.
First news of the Sandusky scandal, in which longtime defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was accused of sexually molesting underage boys, broke in March 2011, and it came before the board of trustees that June. They said it was not a Penn State problem, because Sandusky had left the university in 1999, though he continued to use an office there for several more years. It was a problem for the institution Sandusky had founded, the Second Mile organization for youngsters.
Then, quite suddenly in November 2011, with a huge national scandal erupting, the board suddenly acted as if the burden were on them. They did not weigh their own responsibility, their own inaction, their own failure to get to the bottom of the scandal of five months earlier. In a fit of what to many alumni seems to have been fear for themselves, the board’s members ducked their own responsibility, and in the most ignoble and impersonal way, made JoePa, the moral giant of Penn State, a moral outcast.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Maybe because the children who have been affected by this tragedy probably won't be at peace for the rest of their lives!
Amen.
I’ll trust in that judgment 100% of the time.
What are you talking about?!?
That guy is regarded as America's biggest pussy. A 6'3" former football player who saw an old man raping a child and ran away to ask his daddy what to do?! Nobody exonerates him. In my book, he's number 2 or 3 on the scumbag list in this affair, depending on what Mrs. Sandusky knew.
There is almost no end to the number of people who acted shamelessly in this situation. Joe Pa is up there, but he's not at the top.
Agree -
But what the hell was NRO thinking when they published that despicable column on their website?
K. Lopez - she's the editor of NRO - she's been prety silent about this - what's up with that?
The comments on the National Review site are worth reading. On target, and 10-1 opposed to this dreadful jock-worshiping column by Novak.
Fixed it. Some crimes need to be responded to with an appropriate measure of force, immediately.
My point is these defenders are inviting, forcing us really, to continue to criticize the man. To counter these phony defenses.
The Sandusky scandal is a stain on an otherwise great career and is certainly a sad way to go out. IMO dismissing Paterno was the correct action. Some things are more important than a happy ending to one man's career.
Novak figured out a way to draw yet more angry scorn on Joe Paterno.
“Why don’t they let the poor guy rest in peace.”
Because phonies like “Individual Rights in NJ” never want to miss a chance to grab the moral highground.
Hypocrites such as IR in NJ are like hyenas pouncing on a carcass, driven by bloodlust and a desperate need to tear down their betters.
What pathetic little people they are.
Roger that.
Whatever happened to the reporter who made allegations that Sandusky was "procuring" boys for high dollar donors. That story got really quiet, really quickly.
You're right that Joe P is no saint, but there's a whole lot of blame to go around from the top on down.
F U J P
Because they're too busy beating their chests in moral superiority to realize Paterno isn't the child molester. It wasn't his place to investigate Sandusky. And since he only had second hand info on one incident there isn't a damn thing he could have done about it except what he did do, report it to the proper authority.
The thousands of lives he helped speak loudly against your contention.
He did what was required and seemed best at the time. In retrospect, we
all wish we’d handled situations differently.
I will withhold judgment until the details of the entire sordid
case against Sandusky are revealed.
Until then, I will stand next to a man who has continually given
not just time, but personal commitment and money over decades.
... and who died with no bitterness or grudge and exhorted his
family to do the same.
Regardless of the chain of events as currently told and morphed, if Mr. Paterno had knowledge of someone he knew and had some measure of control over who did, possibly did, or thought about molesting A young boy, young boys, whatever -—if he did nothing about it except to ‘elevate’ it and demur, when he, as coach and master of the sports domain at PSU who had utter control over the comings and goings and status of people who operate there, then he was complicit.
On something such as egregious as molestation, you don’t accept or ignore ‘rumors’. A decent man would confront and ask, face-to-face. Had he done this, his legacy would be untainted.
So, if Joe Paterno wasn't involved in sports - let's say he was just a manager of a department store and he protected one his childer molester employees - would they have kind words for him?
I agree with Gaffer. I cannot excuse Joe P’s looking the other way over the years as Sandusky still had access to facilities at PSU, seems to have brought young boys along on trips, etc. If it was YOUR SON, would you be letting Joe P off the hook this way? I think the last count was 12 that had come forward. There are likely more. If Joe had acted properly (go to the police) when he first became aware of it, at least several boys would never have been victims of Sandusky.
It's a matter of making a distinction between two different pathologies.
It's a natural human impulse, but it is a dangerous one and it can be expressed very grotesquely.
The Board of Trustees consists of 48 members, including appointees, elective, ex-officio — blah, blah, blah. Large bodies such as this do not function efficiently until there is an ‘event’ that focuses their attention. Unfortunately when that happens they tend to move in a rapid, knee-jerk fashion.
The Trustees are still floundering. I bet the sole thing that they can agree on is to try to limit the damage to the football program since that ‘bomb’ has already exploded. I don’t have a lot of hope that the investigations are going to get to the bottom of the Sandusky-affair and what I suspect is a much larger hidden problem in State College, PA.
Joe Paterno should have done more. He should have notified child welfare & law enforcement directly. It was a moral failure on his part. He shouldn’t have been fired in the manner he was, but he still should have been fired.
I can’t help wishing that Joe would have taken retirement years ago. A new coach would have rated closer outside supervision. Nobody looked over Joe’s shoulder. He would’t tolerate it.
That Board of Trustees needs to get whittled down to a more manageable size.
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