Really? Joe Paterno IS Penn State. He's won every power struggle with his "superiors". Before this week no one outside of State College knew who any of the administrators were.
This would be a big deal at any powerhouse school, but St. Joe is the main reason why this is the lead on every news program in the country. Sideshow? The Whole F'ing Show.
Obviously Joe Paterno is the representation of Penn State and yes, I am aware that in struggles with Spanier and other higher ups, Joe Paterno would come out on top. To some degree that is overblown, because the major struggle he won was in maintaining his position.
And just because no one outside State College didn't know who his superiors were, evidence indicates that his superiors were far more culpable in this than Paterno. Paterno's lack of action was immoral, but he did take more action than those he reported this too. Paterno is most likely naive and willfully blind in this unless you believe that because he generally won struggles over his superiors that he controlled everything and knew everything at Penn State. That doesn't really hold water when thought about rationally because (1) Joe Paterno cannot make every decision at Penn State. No administrator is capable of that. (2) Joe Paterno is really fucking old and has been for a while.
Just pointing to the fact that Joe Paterno is the whole fucking show get at what happened because "the whole fucking show" is not the only thing that caused this. What I mean by this is that the "Joe Paterno/Penn State" cult isn't the only cause. Focusing on Joe Paterno makes it seem that is the case.
I am not just saying to call for more accurate facts, though I think that is a worthy goal because we all know that the media is terrible at reporting accurate facts. I say this because without thorough reporting, there really is no purpose to this.
What does inaccurate moralizing reporting do? It doesn't help the victims. In fact there is evidence that victims are hurt by it because the shame they feel from these deeds is magnified because they are not only constantly reminded of what they did, they are reminded that they didn't speak up and report it even though it was so clearly and obviously wrong that only a coward would not report it. Victims internalize that. They believe themselves to be cowards or perhaps they convince themselves they are freaks to some degree because clearly they would have reported it if they were normal. It would be far better for the legal process to take care of things without the media if what they will do is prove how much they know that child rape is wrong.
What does this type of reporting do? It doesn't prevent these scandals and cover-ups from happening. It certainly doesn't stop a Sandusky. One would hope that the immense backlash would stop people from initiating cover-ups. However, there are ways this type of reporting encourages coverups. It makes friends of the pedophile overcautious about reporting these things because they know that even a whiff of this would set up a firestorm that ruins a person's life, which I think is one factor in why people did engage in the cover-up, considering that everyone involved knew Sandusky for decades and were friends with him. It creates a fear that if a pedophile is outed, it will destroy the institution no matter what because there will always be questions about whether he could have been discovered earlier and someone might have kept quiet at some point. These beliefs are certainly irrational, but with the way the media conducts itself, the irrationality critique runs both ways as the media is already behaving irrationally.
This type of reporting certainly doesn't teach the people related to the institution but not involved with the cover-up to not be reflexively defensive of the institution. The reporting on student behavior has been abjectly terrible. The rough approximations on how many students were involved in the rioting is around 2000 to 3000. That is less than 10% of the student population. There have been gatherings in support of the victims on campus as well, but those have not been covered at all. Instead, we get the wailing student crying, "Joe Paterno is Penn State." The prevailing attitude is that Happy Valley is a cult center where everyone worships Joe Paterno. Anyone with a functioning brain should be able to deduce that not everyone in State College was rallying and rioting for Joe Paterno. The most vocal ones are going to because generally, those who are the loudest, are often fuckwits. Not always, but when we are talking about large crowds, the rule becomes more applicable. I am not saying that this cult wasn't part of the reason this disgusting behavior was covered up, but there are a lot of people affiliated with the university, students, faculty, staff, people living in State College who have been profoundly disturbed by what has happened here and they want to know who is responsible and what can be done to fix it, what can be salvaged, because the Penn State that they know is not slavishly following Joe Paterno or even if it was, they want to salvage something good not from this situation, but from the remnants that remain after the scandal.
The efforts of the media to paint the whole situation with a broad brush is only going to galvanize people around Penn State because they realize it does no good to try to be rational and deal with situation, as trying to sort things out is a sign that you are just as good as a child rapist. The calls for swift action were right, but the actual meaning of swift demanded was unrealistic considering the scope of the scandal. In any normal situation, the President of the University would make the quick decisions required. In this case, President Spanier was compromised, expressing unconditional support for two people indicted. The Board of Trustees initially were to convene on Friday but decided to convene on Wednesday. Many people were fired pretty fast after the magnitude of the incident became clear. I am not saying this to defend Penn State, because obviously those fired were all Penn State administrators who either covered this up or were massively delinquent in their duties. The Board of Trustees delay was met with claims that they would be keeping Paterno and that he would coach on Saturday and be able to go on this magical farewell tour. Maybe the media was the reason the Board fired Paterno so quickly. I am more inclined to believe that reading the Grand Jury report was easily enough. The iota of delay in firing Paterno was considered evidence that everyone in Happy Valley worshiped Joe Paterno and that he was untouchable.
The media coverage could help prevent cover-ups like this in the future by presenting details of what happened. Massive scandals and cover-ups don't happen for simple reasons. Institutional protection is one reason, but on the other hand, institutional protection would also be a reason not to ever engage in a cover-up because they blow up in your face all the time. Some level of arrogance is necessary, the arrogance that the institution is more important than the tortured individuals. Certainly the cult atmosphere contributed to this, that because they were doing good things, evil could not be present in the institution. This belief was fed because everyone kept telling them that football was extremely important, and Joe Paterno was the architect of this exceedingly important institution.
But then again, the institution did do good things. People did benefit from it. Some of the money taken in by football went into the University. Intangibly, football brought in alumni donations, allowing Penn State to still thrive academically, at least for a state university. Football also brought a sense of community, not only to the people who worked and learned at the university, but those who had once been there and those who were in the area. I note all of these positives because this institution and its surrounding cult were not absent good. This is part of what causes this, that real good is done by the institution. While there are certainly selfish motives as well, such as pecuniary gain and reputation to be had, there is evidence that there is some misguidance as well. The ultimate calculus in the end is that innocent children, the most vulnerable of those innocent children, were sacrificed for the Penn State football institution. Repeating that calculus incessantly, getting louder each successive time, does not accomplish anything except feeling good about yourself. That has some importance, but it doesn't help prevent stuff like this from happening in the future. Everybody already knows that. Detailing the process on how a few people forgot is important because then it can better be prevented. People can see where potential blind spots might be and how you could potentially build a football program that does some good without having kids raped.
And so I finally get to Posnanski's quick post. While I obviously agree with his assessment of the howlers, I don't agree with his point that people should be shouting on the rooftops supporting Paterno. People have been doing that and it has been an embarrassment. Also Paterno benefited from that his entire career. His name is on the Big Ten trophy. He had the respect of his adversaries, even many fans of opposing teams. He was practically a god in State College. Posnanski is probably too close to his subject and should have remained dormant until he could achieve a critical distance. The public doesn't need an outcry of support for Paterno and he doesn't deserve it. However, being reminded of the good Joe Paterno has done is needed. It's needed because his goals for the institution were admirable. His goals became the institution's goals. Knowing how those good intentions and oftentimes good outcomes turned out this way is important. It would be easy to think it only happens because of evil vices such as hubris and greed infect and institution, encouraging opacity and fear of authority's reprisal.
It isn't that easy. Some people in the institution were only interested in preserving its image, Schultz and Curley most obviously. Paterno is harder to figure. He could easily have reported nothing, just listened to McQueary, told him he'd take care of it, and then lie about it if McQueary followed up. McQueary quite likely imagined Paterno a father figure and would have acquiesced. That would be the easy way to cover it up, by not involving anyone else. He did report it. Why? Maybe Paterno was concerned with doing the bare legal minimum to cover his own ass and then allowed the cover-up to happen knowing he was safe. Possible I guess. I think it is far more likely that he did the bare legal minimum to protect his friend and longtime professional colleague. He knew he had to do something but he didn't want to be the one to call the police. What is gruesomely astounding in case of sexual abuse of children is the level of denial and willful blindness that occurs because of the horrific nature of the act. People will disbelieve allegations against a family member or a friend even in the face of overwhelming evidence. It comes across as callous, and it is, but it happens all of the time. Generally good people, decent people fall into the trap. Those in Paterno's generation are particularly susceptible to it.
If this explanation is true (which it could be, there are a lot of explanations that could be true aside from Paterno, evil incarnate) it does not mean Paterno should not have been fired. He was rightfully fired. But trying to find these explanations does much more than repeating the gruesome details of these allegations and vowing to beat the shit out the next guy you meet raping a child in the shower. It has the potential to prevent evil from fostering within an institution. There are so many that didn't do the right thing at so many points in time. McQueary could have called the cops immediately or at anytime. Joe Paterno could have called the cops immediately or made sure an effective investigation was conducted or made sure that his superiors called the cops. Schultz and Curley could have called the cops or conducted an effective investigation. Who the fuck knows what Spanier could do. Could an institution be constructed that would avoid this? Could Curley and Schultz not have been stooges? If the bare minimum of Pennsylvania law required Paterno to report it to the police, could this have been averted considered Paterno did do the legal bare minimum in this case? Just saying, "These people are evil," doesn't help, because the solution at that point, "Don't allow evil people to have power," is pretty useless.