Sandusky apparently admitted what he'd done to one of the mothers and said that he wished he was dead. I wish he was dead, too.
But what's odd to me about Paterno's comments have been how this was such a tragedy for HIM. And for Penn State. Doesn't he have any loyalty to humanity itself? Why doesn't he have any solidarity with those little boys?
It's like football is everything. I think they ...should cancel their entire season and get a sense of perspective. The entire community should do penance for at least a year. Football has become a form of idolatry for them.
Football is stupid, and brings out the stupid beast in people. I've never liked it. Ok, I hate the sport. It should be banned. If this was one of the clean programs, then the whole sport should be outlawed. I can't believe they are going to play the game on Saturday, and that students are upset that Paterno is out. They showed students demonstrating at Penn State while in a drunken state, and smashing things. They want an accessory after the fact to continue in his position? They want a coach who looked the other way to keep his job?
There are more important things than winning a stupid game.
And it really is a stupid game. These people might as well all be zombies in a postapocalyptic rite.
Why don't the trustees go all the way and fire the entire team and ban football at the school for a year or two (or preferably, make a truly moral choice and ban it permanently at their school?).
Soccer is a superior game. (It is a superior game.) (Badminton is even better.) (Team sports invariably lead to communism.) But it's also disgust over all the allegations and cover-ups, and the whole way in which many people find it highly inconvenient that some children's lives were destroyed before Paterno could have his last season. Why did it have to come out now, is the message I'm getting.
You shall know them by their fruits, Christ said. We can see the fruits of the football program at Penn State. Monstrous idiots without a trace of wisdom or decency who pulled in millions of dollars for their school thanks to winning seasons. Football reminds me of ancient Rome at its worst. I don't think there should be any contact sports.
38 comments:
Just one more proof that college and university administrations cannot be allowed to police themselves in criminal matters.
Penn State's former president, Graham Spanier and Head Coach Paterno have been fired by the Board of Trustees at PSU; I don't know if they're vulnerable to civil and criminal actions, but I should think and hope so. The athletic director (T Curley) and a senior vice-president for finance and business (G Schultz) are charged with perjury and failure to report a crime. Penn State's former chief counsel (Courtney) may be drawn into this maelstrom as well. M. McQueary, who, as graduate assistant coach, claimed to have witnessed and then reported one incident of child rape in the Penn State athletic department by retired defensive football coordinator G Sandusky (and then dropped the matter after he told his above superiors), for some inexplicable reason is allowed to step in to coach the offensive team for the next game. "Offensive" indeed.
I hope there will be a thorough investigation. I do think they should shut the program down now, and detain all possible suspects.
It seems there is a missing DA who was possibly assassinated.
Italy is an unbelievable mess at this point, I understand. The mafia shoots any judge who dares to investigate them. This is part of the downfall of Italy.
It seems that Paterno had a similar situation going on in which he and his men were basically above the law and anyone who messed with them went missing.
As it turns out, it was easier to bring down Qaddafi than to bring down Paterno.
We also shouldn't forget that Foucault in History of Sexuality Part 1 argues that child prostitution is no big deal. He should have been Penn State football's mascot.
Just call them the Nittany Foucauldians.
And inside literature departments there are many who refuse to out Ginsberg or Burroughs or to take them to task for their open abuse of children and the call for all others to do the same. Ginsberg's poems are replete with odes to this kind of thing -- esp. in the last book, Death and Fame, but you can find it in many other books, including Howl.
But the literati turn a blind eye when it comes to their own, and I suppose this is what the football establishment at Penn State, or some leements of the Catholic church did, or what the ELCA is now doing, or what the Episcopalians are doing. No one wants to stand up, and so they end up as accessories after the fact.
My mother's family homesteaded near Bedford on the Juniata River about sixty miles south of State College at the time of the American Revolution. My people moved west to Ohio after the War of 1812 and on to Indiana during the Civil War, but I have a family tree with nearly 20,000 names on it, many of whom still live within a thirty mile radius of Altoona. I don't just feel a kinship with these folks. Anyone whose family has lived in that area more than two generations is more than likely a cousin of mine.
If Penn State wins their last three games of the regular season they'll be in serious contention for the national title. How does one argue with that kind of success?Paterno took his degree in English Literature at Brown, a perennial Ivy League hotbed of unreconstructed liberalism. Perhaps the dragnet for bringing charges against those condoning pedophilia should be extended to the English Department. Anyone caught with Poe or Nabakov on their course syllabus is an obvious suspect.
Politically correct readings of these writers should be mandatory for everyone associated with organized athletics. Anyone refusing to cooperate with designated authorities in this matter will face immediate suspension without pay. Those without meaningful employment will be subjected to harsh public discipline.
when women can kill the children in the womb and the law condones it
there is no more credible law
it's all spectacle and sham
we never get the true story
it's already distorted beyond repair
let's just call it fiction
i love the mythic rise of student revolt on the campus
reminds me of the old days
only victims
there are only victims
i resent the fact that news people were saying paterno is the winningest college football coach
somebody look up john gagliardi
this proves
there are no credible facts
blood vengeance perhaps
jh
What JH says here is important insofar as it's important to repair the sense of law and order. Without that, no one can live. We have it impaired because O is a communist, and hates business. We have it because P is a jerk and only minded his own business, when his job mandated that he care for an entire empire and everyone in it, especially the weakest. We have chaos too because all of our values have been attacked by communists and other shred-Betties cutting curlicues in the snow, and leaving Jesus for dead. I wish Paterno was tried and electrocuted. I think this would return our sense of decency and respect to a degree. Or at least tried and seriously fined to the tune of ten million dollars, leaving him destitute. I have no idea why he did what he did, or didn't do what he should have.
jh
I understand it has taken Gagliardi more than fifty years to repair the damage done to the reputation of the program by his predecessor, who was notorious for allowing a pro football player to compete on his team under an assumed name.
Leave it to JH to blame legalized abortion for male on male sexual assault.
Wendy
Sorry, I meant leave it to JH to say legalized abortion CAUSES male on male sexual assault.
I've been up for 24 hours with a sick kid....I'm a little tired.
Someday I won't use those excuses anymore.
how do you know what you think you know about what nobody really knows it's 10 yrs after the facts scant evidence rustles out of the trashcan of culture and scientists have leapt upon the detritus and are examining it with zeal...odd amid everything else that goes on in this culture such a wretched story could sit there and moulder in a swirl of decomposing matter with the smell of rot and still lurch out there into the concsiousness of the people the masses i think i am not sure but i think there is something deliberate afoot i think there is an unspoken player(s) and it ain't the presumed victims i don't know who those people are but i think i do understand their motives and it is freaky and everyone should understand it as freaky someone has devised a means of sparking vast civil discontent and horror at the drop of a media line and i also detect that they do it with utter joy....i may be wrong but i think it is a three dimensional chess move and the chessmen have been carved to look like unbelievable freaks
how about a big
HOHUM for the carnival we like to call america
what's next in the theatre of the macabre
here's where catholics are a bit different in temperament kirby doo
we would tend to pray for all the players in the sordid drama
nabokov out doing the twist with
therese of liseux
how about a few more lurid graphic details
i heard a pretty lady commentator (also a lawyer) speaking in lurid graphic terms of showers and gestures and jerky human physical mayhem and there was a smile on her face and a glint in her eye
she was the trial lawyer she was on TV she had the goods she spoke them out there like a poet on speed
i can't believe you don't appreciate the surrealism of it all
you get bogged down in the politics
somehow you've distracted LS from what the UR perception of your movement was all about
imagine bosch painting the o so modern scene
the freaks have assumed the status of nobility
now we're playing the game
who would you rather sit down and drink a cup of coffee with
an obama communist or dick cheney or gloria steinem
america was established
as a medium for child abuse
history is replete
capitalism merely sharpens her teeth
there is no redemption in a society imbued with the dictates of the protestant work ethic
it has sold out to satan and has made a kiddy theme park out of the mess
i just hope joe P can find forgiveness in his heart for the people who pushed him down kicked him in the teeth and buggered him into the footnotes of a meaningless history
i'm sick of america
i throw in the towel
i want nothing of the idealism
nor
the motives
i want a cave
jh
Wendy,
We all have our hobbyhorses don't we when it comes to blame. My initial assessment of the mess at Penn State had to do with Foucault, and communism. When there's a mess we first round up the usual suspects!
I alienated an Italian colleague by blaming it all on Italians!
But JH has this thing that women should go back in the kitchen and cook, and then the world would be right again, as it no doubt was when JH's mom was in the kitchen. At some point she must have escaped and then his family went to hell and in the handbasket was no meatloaf and no gravy and where were the biscuits?
It was an abortive day!
I don't know where my communism schtick derived from, or how I try to link it to Catholicism.
I did read Wiki on the Mafia last night, wondering about their history, and why they ended up here bothering us in what used to be a Protestant nation of Carrie Nations!
It said that Mussolini extinguished the Mafia in the 1920s and 1930s so they emigrated to America and started over. This is also why the Mafia helped us when we attacked fascist Italy.
And after the war they've come back with a vengeance and are now hitting judges and even the families of judges whenever they go after the mob.
Why is there no Norwegian mafia? Why do some groups get unattached to the law, and differ fromthe regime?
I don't think the Scandinavians have done this. We love the government and law. We see it as functioning. And we cooperate therefore.
Many groups don't see this and therefore won't cooperate.
Catholic Italy, Catholic Mexico. Huge crime families.
Instead we have no art in Lutheran areas but we do have philosophy and we do have humor. But the character of the area comes out of a completely different ethos than that of Paterno and his ilk.
We don't even have football.
I find the sport absolutely appalling at every level.
but I should shut up. I'm offending all the people who love the game and love Joepa.
Being a mother is exhausting. I should know. I've seen my wife exhausted for years and years but she's coming around now.
Hope you can sleep.
Wendy, you could be Snow White and we'll be the Seven Dwarves.
JH, cave emptor is of course a cave that we can all have.
I can't believe the game is going to go on tomorrow. Business as usual.
The team was built on the hides of small children. It's like the marching columns of Romans.
Pictish children squeal their final death screams in the Coliseum as doves float far far above.
jh forgot to mention that while the record for career wins belonging to the coach at St. John's is now safe from the depredations of JoePa, it was achieved competing at the Division III level, meaning that they don't generally offer athletic scholarships and their players really are students who just happen to enjoy playing football.
Gagliardi's predecessor was a man named John McNally, who was born and raised in New Richmond, Wisconsin, hometown of my dad's mother. McNally played football for St. John's and he did so under his own name. While he was a student, however, competing on Saturdays at the collegiate level, he was also earning his school fees playing football on Sundays for a professional team that knew him as Johnny Blood.
I think there was a movie released two or three years ago featuring George Clooney, who portrayed a character based upon the exploits of that legend. I would hazard a guess that the three Johns, McNally, Gagliardi and Blood, have something to do with the name of the team mascot, the Johnnys. The movie bombed at the box office.
How soon will we see the life story of Jerry Sanduskey on the big screen? He's already written the book. It's called 'Touched'.
There is a story in the Daily News on the disappearance of the DA who was investigating the Paterno organization. He disappeared in 2005 and no body has been found:
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/i-team/penn-da-passed-initial-sex-abuse-charges-penn-state-coach-jerry-sandusky-disappeared-05-article-1.974806
I haven't looked up Second Mile. It was the outfit that Sandusky put together to lure kids into his net to use to pimp to donors at Penn State's football program, according to some allegations by a columnist named Michael Madden.
Is that Second Mile outfit also a Christian organization, or nominally Christian? You can bet that they will also be sued into the ground.
american football is
a homoerotic distraction
with costumes
men grunting and groping
and slithering and romping
and gyrating and slithering and
drooling and mashing their flesh against one another..in the end someone is going to get phuqqed
with cheerleaders on the side
who represent to us
the best that feminism can offer
craig
in the 40s 50s and 60s
st john's was playing teams from much bigger schools
before the conference things got ironed out
they would play south dakotah state
they would play creighton
they would play st cloud state every year up until 1990 a school that was always 3 times the size
and more times than not the johnnies would beat 'em
those were the days when teams would play anyone who would get on the field
and it was out of that culture that johnny blood came
he was great
an intellectual a world class malthusian and an inveterate imbiber of alcoholic spirits
one story about him is that the chicago bears offered him a deal for a season and said $175 a week if you're sober $150 if you drink
he said
i'll take the $150
those guys had no illusions about being icons for social progress
they were guys having fun
we've lost that
sadly
once the women laid some claim to that culture
it all went down hill
but i'll just stop there
jh
There's something new and authentic in JH's voice today. I like it, I think we're getting somewhere somewhat.
wendy
how dare you misinterpret my
succinct assessment
of legal degradation in the land of the free the home of the brave
i simply state
once abortion became legal
it nullified the weight of law
it sanctions murder of persons
therefore no law is credible
it's a harsh assessment
but i'm stickin with it
i'm an outlaw
we need to establish motherhood as the primary social value
and protect that
one could ask
where were the mothers of those boys
jh
If someone were to pay me 100 million dollars, I would still not attend tomorrow's game at Penn State.
i would attend
but i would be sure to give
10 million to my favorite charity
as a matter of fact that's the way i treat all american entertainment now
i will only go if i'm paid to go
My grandmother's deal with the coach was that my dad could only play if he got straight A's. A B in typing nearly ended his football career.
The story by Michael Madden about Sandusky's Second Mile pimping boys to prominent wealthy citizens in exchange for donations to the football program make the whole scenario sound like a combination of Twin Peaks and Sopranos. Then there's the missing DA, who disappeared in 2005. They found his car with cigarette smoke and ashes in it, although he didn't smoke, and never let in anybody who did. They also found his hard drive in the Susquehanna River. Huffpo has an article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/11/ray-gricar-missing-jerry-sandusky-pennsylvania-da_n_1088950.html?ref=sports&ir=Sports
Maybe McQueary had a sens of how huge the pedophile netwrok had become, and maybe the death threats he's getting are from that network.
This could be a setup as big as the Catholic church setup. Maybe Paterno was in on it, too. It's an enormous mystery.There will be more deaths as investigators close in. It could be that the mafia is involved.
All this story still needs is UFOs.
thereznobusinesslikeshowbizneSS
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/29/INF21F2Q9H.DTL
Any chance PSU has secret plans for recruiting Afghani refugees to play linebacker? Check out a movie called The Kiterunner. When you occupy somebody's country there's going to be fallout.
When is a yes a no?
When it's a Paterno!
Did you hear Penn State lost their last game?
Yeah, they got raped!
Seriously, though, I hate to see a fellow English major go down in flames. Live and learn, right?
And don't let your coaches rape little boys. That would be a good lesson to learn.
The interesting thing here is really how far down the rabbit hole does this go? Were donors involved as a journalist (who clearly has the conflict-of-interest-I-wanna-keep-this-story-going-angle) suggests? How much did Joe know and when? How likely will this keep our eye off of the Obama administration fast-tracking a government contract to a major donor in the vein of Bush-Haliburton?
i think it's all a title IX conspiracy...castration is now a varsity sport
Kirby,
Things have finally settled down enough in my life that I can get back to this post, and my missing comment from a week and a half ago.
It seems to that in this post, you are making exactly the same error that you so eloquently vilified in the Duke 88. And that is, you bought into the prosecution's theory of the case lock, stock, and barrel, because it fit into your preconceptions, and then urging that a university take immediate an unlateral action against the ostensible perpetrators without waiting for the judical process sift fact from fabrication.
Looking back at your first comment in the Duke Lacrosse Redux thread, you wrote, 'The crime that I argue that the Group of 88 committed falls under the category of "bearing false witness." But they immediately insisted that the three students who were charged be thrown off campus, and their careers at Duke terminated, without even the benefit of a trial.'
In the case of the Duke 88, they bought into a common narrative that rich white frat boys will take sexual advantage of vulnerable woman. Usually, that vulnerability comes from over-indulgence in alcohol that the frat boys provided, but in the Duke 88 case, the vulnerability was constructed out of race, class, and occupation.
This is exactly what you've done with Paterno and the Penn State football program. You have a general understanding of college athletics as being a distraction from the central mission of academics, and often enough a financial distortion of a University's budget. And so you want to use the Sandusky affair, and in particular the broadest form of the prosecution's case (involving both Paterno and Spanier) to argue for that entire team sport should be discontinued.
Whatever you said about the Duke 88? You're just like them.
The Duke faculty tried their own students, abusing their authority in the name of race, gender, and class (all three came into play, and since the case seemed to reinforce their bias, they couldn't resist hoping that it made all their fantasies of how the world works into a truth that validated their mindless theories).
I am not a part of the Penn State community, and so have no authority to abuse in terms of my understanding of the Paterno case. Paterno was the resident authority in the matter, that is, since he had been at Penn State since 1950, he was the deepest and most important authority in the matter. By his own admission he should have reported the matter to the police, and "wish that I done more," as he put it.
I see him as part of a hierarchy (the topmost part) and he didn't protect those on the bottom, but merely reported the matter to his athletic director (who in effect reported to Paterno).
I couldn't follow your ideas here. There's an athletic team, and there are accusations, but beyond that, I don't think you dealt with the niceties of the situation.
I am, first and most importantly, coming in after the indictment was sealed, and Sandusky had been arrested (many people in academia would not consider what Sandusky had done to be a crime unless race was involved because unless it was, race and gender were not involved -- if race and gender were not involved, many people in academia could not care less). Class was almost certainly involved, but that is no longer of any concern to most academics.
We will not hear anything from feminists since no girls were involved, and boys deserve whatever they have coming to them.
If the boys turn out to be black, then we will get the race mavericks weighing in, but if they are not, we will hear nothing from the Sharpton clique. If they are, we will hear about it for the next ten years.
As for me, my problem with the Paterno situation is my problem with Catholic hierarchy (Paterno is Catholic) and the problem of not standing up and bearing witness (a problem we see not only in the Catholic abuse problem and its subsequent cover-up but also in Italy itself in which a mafia has extended its power throughout the peninsula bringing the Italian economy toward the brink of collapse).
Lutherans have many problems, but reporting and being a witness is not one of them. We do not have a damaged sense of authority and so we generally trust authority (often too much, due to St. Paul's Romans, and the passage about trusting the authorities).
These ARE enormous problems, but none of them are attributable to me. Not to say I'm flawless, but being outside the situation, and coming in after many of the facts have already been established, I'm less liable to commit any atrocious lapses in judgement such as we saw with the Duke 88.
Thank you for writing!
Kirby,
Paterno was the resident authority in the matter, that is, since he had been at Penn State since 1950, he was the deepest and most important authority in the matter. By his own admission he should have reported the matter to the police, and "wish that I done more," as he put it.
It seems to me that the case against Paterno is substantially more ambiguous than you're presenting it. He was presented with hear-say, and he kicked it up the administrative food-chain as such. There's an eminently ironic phrase for Paterno's (and the prosecutor's) argument that he should have done more, "Monday morning quarterbacking." Note that Paterno would have been held blameless, even admirable, if the AD or VP had simply passed the word along to the police. Any of them could have, and none of them did. If there was collusion, a joint decision to do nothing, that's one thing. But I don't have the sense that that's how it went down.
And here's another part of the puzzle that doesn't get much play. Sandusky was being groomed as Paterno's successor. In 1999, he was awarded Assistant Coach of the Year. Yet, he "retired" the same year, at 55 years old, and despite seeking a coaching job, he didn't get one. Funny thing that. Maybe someone around him was putting out the word that there were problems here. Maybe it's worth thinking about who was putting that word out, as you think about culpability.
Not to say I'm flawless, but being outside the situation, and coming in after many of the facts have already been established, I'm less liable to commit any atrocious lapses in judgement such as we saw with the Duke 88.
Why do you consider these facts to be any more reliably established than the "facts" of the Duke Lacrosse "rape," which was tried in the media by the prosecuter?
It seems to me that the Penn State Board of Trustees should have suspended Paterno, Spanier, et. al., pending the result of a trial, but not fired them outright. It is one thing to act decisively in the event of credible information to protect others. It is another thing to prejudge the case -- and that's exactly what happened with the Duke 88 and with you. You're guilty of exactly the same error.
Stu, what the Duke 88 did to the students at Duke is what you're doing to me. First off, the students at Duke did nothing. They got the wrong three people, and framed them, and then railroaded them. The stripper pulled a Tawana Brawley. Remember that nothing happened at Duke. And yet everyone rushed to judgement with the exception of one or two administrative officials.
At Penn State, something really did happen. At least eight children were molested, and the perp was caught in the act, and Paterno not only didn't report according to Pennsylvania law, he participated in a cover up and allowed Sandusky to continue to have keys to athletic facilities that allowed kids to continue to be abused in those facilities.
I'm not sure why I'm like the Duke 88. After all they railroaded the students when nothing at all had ever happened. In this case, there are eye witness reports that Sandusky molested children, reports that he himself doesn't deny. Paterno himself who was the capo of this situation has said that he wished he would have done more. He was responsible for the situation.
He didn't do enough.
I spent the evening in a jacuzzi and am exhausted. Your "j'accuse" struck me as hilariously frivolous, but it was fun to wriggle out of, in order to protest my total innocence. It's widely decided the children were harmed.
Now if it turns out that no kids were harmed at all, and that the kids made all this stuff up, then we would have a situation parallel to Duke.
And at that point, I would apologize. But I would not have the responsibility that Duke 88 would have had. I have had no bearing on the case, being an outsider from a remote institution, writing on a blog that doesn't have national attention. Duke 88 were inside the institution and weighed in on their own students. Their names were widely known throughout the nation as wishing to forward the railroading. After the facts were known and it became clear the DA railroaded the kids (for which he lost his license) they still did not apologize, but went on bizarrely to continue to press the case even after the case had been dismissed by everyone else in the nation. They were still certain it had happened although all the facts were otherwise.
Your assertion that I am like Duke 88 is more like Duke 88 than I am, or so I think. Let's see what the others say, and see if Brett or others take your side. Helen Losse might, but she doesn't come here much any longer. In both cases I believed that there was a truth that was suppressed, and I thought it was a symptom of corruption and misplaced priorities.
Your values in this case are hard to fathom!
Kirby,
You need to go back and re-read your summary condemnation of the Duke 88. It had everything to do with a rush to judgment before a trial.
Has there been a trial of Sandusky? Has there been a trial of Paterno, or Spanier? I must have missed it.
The Duke 88 erred because accepting the prosecution's version of facts fit their narrative. You're doing the same. There is nothing more to say.
Your values in this case are hard to fathom!
You're not trying. I agree that children need to be protected, and that if the case proves to be as the prosecution alleges, then Paterno (and Spanier and others) should have done more. But I also think that the record will ultimately show that both did considerably more than is currently understood, and that this will moderate judgments that now seem all-but universal. I've already sketched out a reaction by the PSU trustees that I thought met their obligations to both the alleged victims, and the alleged perpetrators: suspension until trial, and final resolution thereafter.
I wonder about your values. You were big on "innocent until proven guilty" in the Duke case. You don't give a damn about it here. Hence, "innocent until proven guilty" is not one of your values, but instead is a tactic that you apply selectively to cases that meet other ideological tests.
Here's the thing that I don't get. Sandusky "retired" in '99. Yet the incident that is at the root of the current allegations occurred in the PSU football showers in '02. What, exactly, was an ex-employee doing there? Why did he still have access? I've not heard this addressed at all.
Stu, you are in a time warp because of other events that have kept you from getting the latest facts in the Sandusky case. Paterno allowed Sandusky to use the facilities after he was not renewed. This meant that he had keys, and continued to abuse at least eight more children in the PSU facilities, and was caught red-handed at least once more. Read Jerry Sandusky, the Wiki page, and get caught up with the facts of the case. There are many new bits of data, including a missing DA (they can't find the body), the number of victims (not alleged victims who stand to gain something by speaking out, but instead victims whose lives will be further ruined by these crimes), and there are statements by Sandusky himself that have come to light, such as his statement to one of the victims' mothers: I wish I were dead, as he put it.
One way in which Paterno might not be as guilty as I have put it here is that he may be of an age in which it wasn't commonly realized that child perps will repeat their crimes if given the opportunity. He may have thought Sandusky was able to control himself having once been scolded. But perps in this category are repeat offenders at a 99% rate. What Sandusky apparently did is to use the facilities and tickets to treat children to presents that he would then get them excited with. Paterno let those gifts continue by not completely severing the relationship of Sandusky and the University facilities.
Paterno may not have realized that this would be the case, and the kind of crime may have been far from his ability to understand. He was, after all, 86. And maybe he had no awareness of anything outside of football. He may have been a kind of idiot savante. If that's the case, then it's possible to forgive his incredible dimwittedness on this matter.
There are new rumors that Sandusky groomed these kids as a child brothel for wealthy donors. A columnist named Michael Madsen made those allegations public. One wonders if the investigation will turn up an entire crime organization founded on the premises of PSU and in which money used to create a competitive team was gotten via this child brothel and translated into successful seasons. Time will tell.
As I see it, the number of personnel of very high standing involved, and the length of time this took to play out (at least a decade, and possibly more) make it quite unlike the Duke case in which a single night was involved, a false claim by a flighty person was believed by 88 faculty members, and in which the DA knowingly railroaded three young men who had nothing to do with the case.
So far as PSU we have instead an insider very far up in the hierarchy who is accused of a far more dreadful crime -- raping children inside of campus facilities for a period exceeding ten years, and in which the top coach of the team was aware of the crimes, and barely did anything to stop it. Presidents of colleges can be released for any reason, and do not generally speaking have tenure, as faculty do. They can be released for any reason. It is not a crime to release them. Neither Paterno nor Spanier have been accused of criminal activity and neither one will be tried.
The lacrosse boys were tried over a period of years, and false witness was knowingly borne against them. They were summarily removed as students from the student body. This was illegal given that they had not yet been found guilty (and ultimately the stripper herself said they had the wrong three men even though in fact noone had ever raped her).
The cases bear a tantalizing but superficial resemblance. The deep parallels aren't there.
Paterno was, by the way, a lifelong Republican, and a major donor to the Republican party. So I bear him no animus on a political basis.
On November 5, 2011, former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was arrested on 40 counts relating to sexual abuse of eight young boys over a 15-year period, including alleged incidents that occurred at Penn State.[28] A 2011 grand jury investigation reported that then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary told Paterno in 2002 that he had seen Sandusky abusing a 10-year-old boy in Penn State football's shower facilities. The grand jury report would later detail that McQueary saw Sandusky sodomizing the boy. [29]According to the report, Paterno notified Athletic Director Tim Curley the next day about the incident, and later notified Gary Schultz, director of business and finance, who oversaw the University Police.[30]
That's from the Paterno page. 40 counts is fairly serious, and eight boys. We have far less in terms of the Herman Cain problem -- three reports of HARASSMENT, not rape (Clinton was accused of raping Juanita Broaddrick and paid her 850,000 hush money, but Democrats don't care, and would love to have him as president again), but with Cain it was only harassment, and we don't have faces, only allegations, and the crime is not nearly as serious as rape, much less of minors.
Where minors are concerned, the country is understandably alarmed because the very possibility of consent is not there.
The wiki page on Duke's lacrosse team cites the division of faculty members amongst the 88 Duke faculty who decided that the lacrosse players had been guilty of a hate crime:
"In three departments, more than half of faculty signed the statement. The department with the highest proportion of signatories was African and African-American Studies, with 80%. Just over 72% of the Women's Studies faculty signed the statement, Cultural Anthropology 60%, Romance studies 44.8%, Literature 41.7%, English 32.2%, Art & Art History 30.7%, and History 25%. No faculty members from the Pratt School of Engineering or full-time law professors signed the document. Departments that had no faculty members sign the document include Biological Anthropology and Anatomy, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, Genetics, Germanic Languages/Literature, Psychology and Neuroscience, Religion, and Slavic and Eurasian Studies."
Kirby, I believe from time to time stu has also observed that innocence in a given case should be presumed in a court of law but not necessarily in public opinion.
An article in the WSJ on Coach Paterno's battles with Penn State's former standards and conduct officer, Dr Vicky Triponey--over whether Penn State football players should be subject to the same disciplinary treatment as other students--may be relevant to Paterno's role in the Sandusky case.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204443404577052073672561402.html
Oh yes, Kirby, and there's this recent fairly gushy pro-Paterno piece by the "Paterno Family Professor in Literature and Director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University," aka "Broob":
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/opinion/at-penn-state-a-bitter-reckoning.html
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