Posted on 11/11/2011 1:25:04 AM PST by Colofornian
The Penn State legend tried to do an end-run around the trustees, but they still fired him for doing nothing to stop the alleged sexual abuse of young boys. Now it’s time to ditch the rotten college football system, says Buzz Bissinger.
Like everyone else, I cannot get the scandal of Pennsylvania State University out of my mind.
The story is unfolding at the speed of sound, not just the worst sports scandal in modern history but also one of the worst scandals in modern history:
A former Penn State assistant coach for 29 years and alleged sexual predator, Jerry Sandusky, apparently continued unchecked because of the failure of university officials and head football coach deity Joe Paterno to do anything that might have made a difference instead of what they collectively did achieve:
Buck-passing and unconscionable cowardice.
Paterno announced in a statement Wednesday that he would retire as head coach at the end of the football season after 46 years. He tried to sound like a humble martyr, but he was selfish and self-serving as usual. With the hubris and arrogance that has been the hallmark of his career over the past decade, the over-the-hill 84-year-old attempted to do an end-run around the Penn State board of trustees, who have been meeting to decide his fate. Paterno was hoping he could forever claim he decided to leave the football program of his own accord. The trustees called his bluff Wednesday night, firing Paterno and university president Graham Spanier.
Paterno is just a part of this whole sordid, shameful disgrace. He is easy to focus on because of his mythic stature, all false idol, as it turns out. But I find myself not caring about him anymore, particularly now that he has been let go.
What I am trying to fathom is how it ever became possible that so many men of power and intellect did nothing when it became obvious, because it was abundantly obvious on the basis of the findings of fact handed down earlier this week by a Pennsylvania investigative grand jury, that a former assistant coach familiar to all of them was apparently plucking out little boys as young as 10 to f--k up the ass or be on the receiving end of blowjobs.
(Note: we need to stop the daintiness and describe the alleged offenses for what they truly are in the vernacular to somehow try to capture the monstrousness. Not anal intercourse or oral sex, which sounds clinical, but butt-f--king and blowjobs and cock-grabbing and pants-groping and other assorted acts that the 67-year-old Sandusky allegedly inflicted on eight minor victims over a 15-year span, according to the 23-page grand-jury report, and resulted in 40 counts of serial sex abuse of minors.)
I think the answer to the question of inaction is simple. It wasn’t a matter of university officials and football staffers in Happy Valley not wanting to deal with it (which they didn’t), or not following up (which they didn’t), or having better things to do like attending Friday-night football pep rallies. There is no great conspiracy theory at work.
What happened, or more accurately did not happen, goes to the core of evil that major college sports programs in this country have become, equivalent to Mafia families in which the code of omertà rules and coaches and staff always close ranks around their own, even if it means letting someone who was first accused of inappropriate sexual conduct in 1998 continue to roam.
The horror of it all, both in terms of what Sandusky allegedly did and what Penn State officials did not, can be summed up by a single sound.
It is a “rhythmic, slapping” sound, according to page 6 of the grand-jury report. It is heard by a 28-year-old football graduate assistant named Mike McQueary in the locker room of the Lasch Football Building on the Penn State Campus at 9:30 on the Friday night of March 1, 2002.
McQueary is placing some new sneakers into his locker. At first he finds it odd that the lights and showers are on. Then he hears the sound coming from the showers. He looks inside and according to his grand-jury testimony, sees the cause of the sound: a naked child of roughly 10 years old with his hands up against the wall with a naked Sandusky butt-f--king him from behind. Sadistic, yes. Sick, yes. Beyond disturbing, yes. Deviant, yes. Immediate grounds for calling the police? Of course, yes. The upshot?
Nothing. Nada. Not a goddamn thing but the passing of the buck up the food chain of bureaucratic bullshit where too many people know that something awful has happened and try to bury it.
McQueary, who witnessed the incident, witnessed it, doesn’t call the police, although he is 28. He runs to his daddy. His daddy advises him to tell Paterno. He tells Paterno. The great JoePa, who regardless of his noncredible insistence in grand-jury testimony that he was never told the specific nature of the sexual act, does at the very least acknowledge that McQueary did relate to him that Sandusky was “fondling” a young boy.
Unless fondling of young boys by assistant football coaches at Penn State is commonplace and encouraged, that alone should be enough to make Paterno go to the police. Or being the father figure he supposedly is, tell McQueary that he has to go to the police and will accompany him, given that Paterno is the most popular and powerful man in Pennsylvania, with instant credibility.
But Paterno does nothing beyond fulfilling his minimal obligation. He passes the information he says he has on to athletic director Tim Curley and that’s it, the obviousness that Sandusky is doing something terrible apparently far less important than such crucial pursuits as watching game films of the last Ohio State game. And on up the food chain it goes—to senior vice president for finance and business Gary Schultz, all the way up to Spanier, the university president. But with each iteration the incident only seems to become more diluted and more muddled or, as the grand-jury report unequivocally indicates, some of those aware of what happened are lying their balls off to try to minimize what they really knew. Which would also explain the action that the university ultimately took against Sandusky:
He had his keys to the locker room taken away, which he had still maintained after he stopped coaching in 1999.
Which may also explain that in the wake of such draconian punishment, Sandusky subsequently gave blowjobs to a minor roughly 13 years old more than 20 times in 2007 and 2008, according to the grand-jury findings of fact.
Joe will mercifully be gone, along with President Spanier. Curley has gone and Schultz stepped down. So should McQueary, who is actually the most gutless in not telling police what he witnessed. The entire Penn State coaching staff, too much under the influence of Paterno, should go.
And so, frankly, should major college football and basketball as it exists now, rotten beyond repair, as has been pointed out a thousand times. Totally disconnected from the academic experience, they are insulated kingdoms with their own rules and reigns of terror because of the money they make, trading in illegal recruiting and illegal gifts and illegal favors, and now, thanks to Penn State, alleged sexual abuse of children by a former coach who must have assumed he would always be protected. Just like a Mafia soldier.
Except that the even the Mafia has higher moral standards.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_child_sexual_abuse_accusations_against_Michael_Jackson
This describes the case against Michael Jackson in 1993 - the result of which probably gave many pedophiles the green light.
It also describes the negligent mother - who was so enamored of the ‘celebrity’ environment she and her child were experiencing - she failed her responsibilities to her son. I’m sure some of the parents of Sandusky’s victims were captured by the ‘college football coach aura’ and failed to listen to their better instincts.
I know that the homosexual community has done more to open the door for pedophilia than people know about, but I'd like to hear to response to this one: What do you say if somebody says, 'Well, they don't use the term heterosexual pedophile, either' ?
It took them about 4 months shy of a decade to arrest him...as they started only investigating him in earnest about 3 yrs ago
Read it here: Mothers of two of Jerry Sandusky's alleged victims lash out at Penn State officials' handling...
Good catch. And please keep repeating this emphasis when you post on different threads.
As I read what you wrote, I thought of a "red flag" word picture.
...like a highway flagman frantically waving down a motorcade of cars
-- trying to halt them...
...but they move on...
...confident that the car in front (Paterno) won't lead them astray...
...yet the bridge is washed out ahead...
"The arm of flesh will fail you" (Jer. 17:5)...or as the NIV renders it: "5 This is what the LORD says:
“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who draws strength from mere flesh
A few verses later:
9 The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?
10 “I the LORD search the heart
and examine the mind,
to reward each person according to their conduct,
according to what their deeds deserve.”
If you click on a few of the imbedded links in the article...for example, one of the links takes you to the Miami scandal...the author isn't only referencing Penn State.
Penn State and Miami aren't the only scandals of late...Ohio State, etc.
I think Jim Lampley has a point (post #4)...What has become distinctive about some of the sports programs of late...especially football...is that it's now beyond an adjunct to the educational institution. It's now it's own entity, commercialized as such to suck as much $ from the region and nation as possible.
As such, more is tolerated within it because who wants to rock a boat hauling diamonds from the island where they it struck it rich with a diamond field?
Yhank you :)
Sandusky could’ve been the founder/high priest of NAMBLA,given his sick and twisted resume.Wonder what little gems his computer hard drive holds? And how could his wife have turned a blind eye to this? I find it hard to believe she didn’t know...she just didn’t WANT to know.According to the GJR,she did try to call the one victim before he was to give testimony...was she calling to find out why he was going to say,or to find out why he was testifying in the first place? This is all so sordid.
Because both the GJ presentment and the GJ findings are very careful not to describe what McQueary said he told Paterno. And if McQueary is called to testify publicly in a criminal proceeding against Sandusky, or in any one of the countless possible criminal or civil suits, or state or federal investigations or hearings, McQueary may well say that he told Paterno that it was anal rape.
Second, if Paterno lives long enough, then he may have to testify publicly, or be deposed, in one of these criminal or civll suits or investigations or hearings.
Then there's the matter of the 1998 University Police investigation into incidents (plural) of Sandusky in the football showers with boys. Somebody may have to testify about whether Joe Paterno knew about that investigation, and whether he knew of the findings, and whether he saw a copy of any reports or memos.
And the 2002 incident when a janitor observed Sandusky committing oral sodomy on a boy in the football showers.
Not only may we hear from the other party to the 2002 conversation that Paterno 'insists" was only about fondling or "something of a sexual nature", but we may hear of many other things that Paterno knew . . . and not in the context of a trial or attack on Paterno. Simply in the context of the barrage of lawsuits and investigations and hearings that are going to follow this.
It's ugly, but let's hang onto some sense of proportion. Fast & Furious killed hundreds of people. Nobody died from the Penn State scandal, with the possible exception of that attorney.
Lots of articles on the net, several on this website:
http://elle-kynzer.wrytestuff.com/swa788850-Sandusky-Was-Not-Prosecuted-In-1998-By-The-Da-Who-Disappeared-In-2005-Why-Not.htm
Paterno denies knowing anything about the 1998 incident which happened in his locker room’s showers. Even though the episode was investigated by campus police, State College city police, and the PA Child Welfare Bureau, Paterno and his attorney son claim JoePa never knew about it. Even though Sandusky suddenly decided to retire a few months later at the peak of his career and only age 55, never to coach a college team again, Paterno says he never knew.
The reason, in 1998, was that Sandusky was caught on tape admitting to taking a shower with a young boy.
So the 2002 incident that McQueary witnessed was almost certainly the SECOND (at least) time that Paterno had heard of Sandusky in the shower at HIS facility with a young boy.
Fast forward 13 years after the first event and nine years after the second - and Paterno and McQueary are STILL seeing Sandusky around PennState facilities with young boys in tow?
What each and every one of the so-called adults in this did, the same sin they all committed was "protecting the brand". There was so much money involved that it was imperative that 'the PSU brand' be protected at all costs, no matter if some children suffered under Sandusky (and possibly others) as a result.
That this type of thinking is erroneous *should* have been obvious to 'college educated' people, but was not, is a sad commentary on our times. It is also indicative of something I personally have held to be largely true for quite some time now. That something is that the end product of college isn't so much an education, as it is a complete indoctrination.
Thus, they were either unwilling, or even more shocking, unable to see that the steps they took in 'protecting the brand' lead, in the final analysis, to 'the brand' becoming worthless, and an object of utter scorn. Let those who have been indoctrinated in the Gospel of Marx take heed. The end most emphatically does *NOT* justify the means...
the infowarrior
Excellent analysis.
And, btw, even the local PR experts (CBS affiliate TV-21 out of Harrisburg, PA), agreed with that bled over once this story broke:
...the general consensus among local experts is that Penn State was not thinking of the kids when the news broke, they were thinking about their brand, and that was a terrible decision. “Penn State overruled everything,” stated Soni Dimond of Soni Dimond Media. “The image of Penn State, the brand was being protected and the children were not.”
Source: Penn State's handling of Sandusky sex scandal has been a PR nightmare, say experts
Sandusky the boy-rapist
(OTOH, Sandusky was married, right?)
Cheers!
I'd love to hear Michelle Bachmann on this.
Cheers!
From 'Heather has two Mommies' to 'Billy has two Coaches'...
NO Cheers, unfortunately.
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