"Michael, is it true?"
Posted on 01/20/2018 6:00:57 PM PST by sam_whiskey
The entire trailer is framed as a question of Paterno’s guilt, ending with his son asking “Did you know?” This puts it in a similar league as Levinson’s last film for HBO, The Wizard of Lies, about Bernie Madoff and the familial aftermath of him being charged and jailed for his crimes. In both cases, the focus remains on an older man who has become famous due to incalculable amounts of cover-ups and shady dealings having to face the truth of his actions when confronted by his own children.Its a worthy subject but also feels a bit stale, considering that most movies nowadays are about children trying to reckon with the shadows of their parents.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Gee, I cannot wait for the scenes of Sandusky raping the little boys in the team showers.
I have a grandson at Penn State-—he’s 20.
This entire thing is ancient history as far as he and his friends are concerned.
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"Michael, is it true?"
There’s a movie I won’t waste my time watching.
Pacino is fearless.
I think Hollywood has lost the ability to make an uplifting film. Instead we get this.
What a joke. Such an over-rated actor, who over acts nearly every role he has played, since Godfather. No thanks.
No.
Yes, it was known widely about Sandusky and other perversions of a-hole Spanier and the ilk. Two governors of both parties knew also.
Should the kids now be punished for those sins? I think the dumping on Penn State gets tiresome (from the same posters)...I read the grand jury report one Sunday Morning and one thing will never leave me concerning what "Joe Pa" knew and what he did not do. That is egregious at the very least and technically criminal.
Funny how Wierdowood can make a movie about this as they are the cesspool and ground central of sex abuse.
My grandson loves it———as does his father who has driven down from MA to visit and see a couple of football games.
His mother fell in love with an ice cream place on the campus.:-)
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I can’t think of one reason why I’d watch it.
Overrated? Are you serious Pacino is a great actor.
Do you hear what you’re saying? It was, “widely known” ? You just admitted that you were all complicit...
Serious nonfiction author (who also has written children’s fiction). Germane to the Penn State issue in particular are
- Mark Pendergrast is the author of
- Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our WorldSep 28, 2010
- The Most Hated Man in America: Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to JudgmentOct 28, 2017
- City on the Verge: Atlanta and the Fight for America's Urban FutureMay 16, 2017
- For God, Country, and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes ItMay 14, 2013
- Memory Warp: How the Myth of Repressed Memory Arose and Refuses to DieOct 15, 2017
- Victims of MemoryMar 1, 1996
- Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence ServiceNov 1, 2017
- Mirror, Mirror: A History Of The Human Love Affair With ReflectionAug 18, 2004
- Japan's Tipping Point: Crucial Choices in the Post-Fukushima WorldOct 4, 2011
chat with Mark Pendergrast – November 14, 2017
The Most Hated Man in America: Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment
Memory Warp: How the Myth of Repressed Memory Arose and Refuses to Die
Pendergrast pointedly asserts that he does not expect to improve his standing by writing in defense of Jerry Sandusky, for the simple reason that people with your attitude are legion - and not likely to be easily convinced to think a second time. But the fact is that memory is a slippery thing, and the very accessing of a memory tends to modify it. If you have any recollection of the crazy prosecutions back in the 1990s, you know that children were pressured into “remembering” abuse by people who simply did not have opportunity, let alone motive, to have done the outlandish things claimed. On top of that, there were (in Pendergrast’s telling) two million families seriously damaged by quack psychiatry of “recovered memory” - by techniques which simply could never stand up in a court of law if fully and openly documented. Repressed memory is now utterly discredited, and cannot be openly used in court. But unfortunately that has not prevented prosecutors from using testimony which in fact represents repressed memory.
Basically the essence of recovered memory, as I understand it, is putting pressure on the subject, over a period of time, implanting suspicions and turning those suspicions into belief, and belief into outrage at the “remembered” offense. You then put the “witness” on the stand and they very emotionally and emphatically and convincingly testify to things which might just possibly be true - or, if you are the defendant and are very lucky, it may be possible to actually prove false. If you are on the jury in such a case, you will be under tremendous societal pressure to believe the sincere testimony, especially considering that the crime alleged is child abuse.
The thing to know about the Sandusky case, as far as Joe Paterno is concerned, is that the story of the prime witness changed dramatically from the time he told Paterno initially and the time the case flared up almost ten years later. If you take the story the guy told the jury when it went to trial, and put in in that same guy’s mouth in the early 2000’s time of the first report, you make Joe Paterno a monster. But if you take the story Paterno actually was responding to at the earlier date and put it in the courtroom nine years later, you are unlikely to get a conviction.
For the simple reason that the “witness” didn’t see a thing. All he did was to hear noises coming from the shower while he was in the locker room. At least, that’s what he said early on. Years later he changed the story and claimed to have looked at the two in the shower, and met their eyes with his. And even at that, his testimony was not strong enough to convict on the most serious charge. And it is not the case that the boy in the shower is unidentified; he actually at one point said that he and Sandusky were snapping towels at each other. And that they did not see or hear the guy who heard them, and interpreted what he heard negatively but, at 6’4” and 220 pounds, was neither as outraged nor as brave as the situation would have required if his later testimony was true.
What you have in Sandusky is a guy who had an unusual background in the way he was raised, and whose boundaries with kids were not what is now the norm. Partly, just anachronistic in this far more suspicious era. Sandusky did not have a trail of allegations behind him, simply does not have the track record you associate with a pedophile. Sandusky’s children, all adopted, all stood by him - except of course for the one who recanted and ended up $2 million richer. The administration of Penn State behaved badly, in a different case but still reminiscent of Duke hanging its lacrosse team out to dry. It frantically threw millions at anyone who would claim abuse by Sandusky - and, surprisingly enough </sarcasm - it got a lot of claims. Including soliciting the Freeh report for the purpose of hanging Paterno’s legacy out to dry.
Put the worst face on Sandusky, tho, and Paterno’s handling of the report he got was entirely unexceptionable. He put the kibosh on Sandusky using the showers. He could hardly have fired Sandusky over such a thin allegation - and also because Sandusky was already retired. Believe the contemporaneous report, ignore the stuff that is about as reliable as the charges against Roy Moore. And save the moral outrage for The Swamp.
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