Posted on 11/12/2011 8:13:38 AM PST by Kaslin
Back in 1999, I was driving into State College for a Penn State football game, listening to the pregame show on the radio.
They were interviewing Jerry Sandusky about his impending retirement. The play-by-play man asked him how much he had enjoyed working with Joe Paterno.
“Nobody enjoys working for Joe,” Sandusky said. “He’s hard on everyone. He demands perfection, and perfection is hard to achieve. And he lets you know about it when you fall short.”
The host sort of recoiled from the answer, but the color man cackled and said, “Yeah, Joe and Jerry don’t exactly see eye to eye.”
The color man was George Paterno, brother of the coach.
That’s what makes the defense of Joe Paterno offered by Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post and others so absolutely misguided. Jenkins’ idea was to call a shrink and ask him about the psychology of reporting one’s friends for the acts of which Sandusky has been accused.
But Sandusky wasn’t a friend. He was a co-worker, an underling – and one, by then, whom Paterno knew to be capable of some ghastly things. So what if we rethink this and view Paterno not as a man of honor who protected his friend out of misguided loyalty but as CEO of a corporation – which, essentially, is what a major college football coach is – who has discovered misdeeds by a top executive?
And make no mistake, whether he liked him or not, Paterno did protect Sandusky. He knew about the 1999 incident. He knew about the 2002 incident. He probably knew much more. Yet, he allowed this alleged predator to go on for another decade, even though he knew Sandusky was a foster parent and head of a charity that brought vulnerable children into his orbit.
And remember, Sandusky would be on the loose today if it were up to Joe Paterno. The coach can say what he wants about hindsight. But for hindsight to be meaningful, it has to come before the frog march. Ask Jack Abramoff.
The I-told-my-boss defense also does not fly for Joe. It’s fine if you start out that way. You tell your boss. You get the paper for a week. If you don’t see a story in the paper about what you told your boss, you take other action. Particularly if you’re Joe Paterno.
Because if you’re Joe Paterno, your boss – the athletic director – is not actually your boss. He can’t fire you – the AD tried once, with the help of the president of the university, and Joe rebuffed it. He can’t discipline you – Paterno’s version of right and wrong is infinitely more credible than the ADs to the people who care about Penn State football. And the performance review is done by the TV-watching, ticket-buying, suite-reserving, game-attending public, which cares all about Ws and Ls and nothing about your opinion.
It’s a little more complicated if you’re Mike McQueary. To him, Joe is much more than a friend. He is a mentor, a boss, an example of what manhood and leadership are supposed to be. If he thinks the Sandusky secret should stay in-house, it is not as easy to go against this. But go against this you must.
But back to the original question: If Paterno didn’t protect Sandusky out of friendship and loyalty, then why? And why did those whose ties are not as strong – the president of the school, the VP of finance, the athletic director – not only not come forward but affirmatively lie on Sandusky’s behalf?
There is a good chance the AD and vice president could go to prison for awhile … and perhaps longer if more details emerge.
And how big is this cone of silence? Does it include the university police? The local police? Other state officials and/or office-holders? And, again, why? What are these victims to make of the community they live in and the men who run it? Did nobody care about them enough to stand up and stop this?
This time last week, we all assumed these were decent men. The rioters in State College obviously still think Paterno is.
Why then? Why was this hidden? A lot of people think the secret inside the secret has been revealed – what on earth could be worse than a 40-count indictment for child molestation? But some other secret was bigger. That secret is worth keeping even if it means prison for some of the top officials at Penn State and, for Paterno, the loss of the job that seemed to be his for life and a reputation envied by all in his profession.
That must be one hell of a secret.
Ray Gricar had a reputation for helping battered women and abused children. It was his soft spot. He often went out of his way to get justice for these people. He also followed up with them to maintain their safety in many instances.
This was a man who, if he had sunk his teeth into this, was like a pit bull. If he realized that sandusky was the tip of a very big iceberg, then you can bet he was into it.
Why isn’t the Wife Swapping Studies scholar-president of State Penn on the hook to become part of the chain gang too?
A LOT of money at stake ... tens of millions per year.
A lot of prestige at stake.
Reputrations, rellationships.
You have a district attorney who has been pronounced dead after going missing 6 years ago...what did he know...how close was he getting?
This whole thing is sick, depraved, and digusting. Corruption and crime at the highest levels of that school and I bet it reaches out beyond that given the money, power and prestige this thing threatened.
I believe the NCAA should give a multiple year death penalty to that football prgram. Let the players go elsewhere and not be pennalized...but kill the prgram for at least 3 years.
I also believe that there are more people hwo should be in jail.
I think you’re right MHGinTN.....this is moving along and seems to point to a much larger arena then the college itself. Nasty business when people in high places gain too much power and that which it welds.
Astute comparison! Look at my numbers above - the $1.2 million CEO of a $91 million dollar enterprise where the “workers” (athletes) are volunteers. Who’d want to put such a goldmine at risk?
It's good to have stable centers of expertise in an organization busy with "change".
Yep. Saw the governor speak the other day. He looked nervous.
There was an interesting article in our local fishwrap not too many months ago which explained that 6 in 7 college football programs actually lost money. I'll see if I can find it and post it.
The night Gricar went missing, they sent a dozen police cars, a swat team, and helicopters with searchlights to the Penn State campus.
He had scheduled an appointment with an ‘informant’ but never showed up and neither did the informant. Details get lost. Information drips out and causes chaos. Misinformation is rampant.
After that, the Penn State angle was NEVER mentioned again.
There are those who think :
I am expecting exactly that.
I have lost faith in the “system”, completely and totally.
You and me both.
The local news readers continue to refer to the crime as “child abuse”, instead of the criminal homosexual pedophilia that it is.
He should have reported it to the police. Oh, wait a minute, that's the case that was reported to police and they dropped it.
If Sandusky and Paterno didn't like each other why did Sandusky have an office in the football facilities after his retirement?
Did Sandusky retire as a football coach or did he retire as an associate professor in physical education? Was Paterno any sort of faculty administrator? Did he have any involvement in the conditions of Sandusky's faculty retirement? I'm pretty sure the answer is no but I'd like to see in spelled out.
If Paterno didn't like him -- and I don't think he did -- why would he let him stick around?
I think there is something really dirty at Penn State but I don't think Paterno has anything to do with it.
Yuh. And back when the first studies began to indicate that maybe there might just be a connection between cigarettes and lung cancer, you could find a bunch of stories in local papers about how cigarette smoking is actually good for you.
Comments like this are what makes reading Free Republic fun.
What is the Madden rumor?
Amen...conditioning the public; making it sound like someone hit a child with a belt...
http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2011/06/22_college_football_programs_m.html
22 college football programs made money in 2009-10, NCAA report says
He had scheduled an appointment with an ‘informant’ but never showed up and neither did the informant.
Whoa! That's an amazing piece of info, one I hadn't heard before.
If someone eliminated him, the body's nearby, I should think. There are always construction sites around a big-time University like Penn State.
I wonder if... ?
“Some people need to be lined up against a wall and shot.”
Amen, Brothers and Sisters.
Here on FR, I lay verbal napalm on Islamic practices and infiltration, and here we are with the American PC-equivalent of Islam’s sexual grooming of a conquered population: sexual abuse of children and the condoning of homosexuality/predation against our young boys/young men.
Rush said he’d lose his job/show.
Barney Frank and Lindsay Graham must be just as proud as Keith Ellison, Arne Duncan, Kevin Jennings and 0bama.
This $h!t’s flat out wrong. People get that and need to cut out what’s rotten, or we all will be tainted. God is no mocked.
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