Joe Paterno, the legendary Penn State football coach, has died.
I can’t help but wonder if the travesty of the last few months, with his former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, being charged with sexually molesting 10 young boys over 15 years, killed him.
I’m not an alumna of Penn State. (I am, however, an alumna of Syracuse University, with its own scandal of an assistant basketball coach allegedly molesting boys.) Still, I hate to see the storied career of Joe Paterno forever blackened by the malevolent behavior of one man, if that proves to be the case.
Some people argue that Paterno had to know what was going on. They argue that Paterno was so concerned about his legacy, the reputation of his football program and Penn State University, that he was willing to turn a blind eye to the behavior of Jerry Sandusky.
I’m not so sure.
Since the scandal broke in November, Joe Paterno has given only one interview, to Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post. The story was published on January 14, 2012. It characterizes Joe Paterno as unable to comprehend what Sandusky may have done, because it was simply too foreign to the way Paterno himself lived his life. Jenkins writes:
He reiterated that McQueary was unclear with him about the nature of what he saw and added that even if McQueary had been more graphic, he’s not sure he would have comprehended it.
“You know, he didn’t want to get specific,” Paterno said. “And to be frank with you I don’t know that it would have done any good, because I never heard of, of, rape and a man. So I just did what I thought was best. I talked to people that I thought would be, if there was a problem, that would be following up on it.”
Is it possible to be that unaware of the existence of evil? Yes, it is, and we all know it.
While I was uninitiated, meaning, before my direct, personal encounter with a social predator, I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would cross paths with evil. I didn’t know that someone who appeared to be so loving and caring could have a hidden agenda. I lived a life of integrity, and I believed that the people who were part of my life were like me.
But, some may argue, sex abuse of children has been in the news for years—look at the stories about the Catholic Church. Well, my cousin was abused by priests. He received financial compensation many years ago—it was probably one of the first cases to be settled. I heard people in my family talking about it. Still, I did not comprehend what he must have experienced.
I didn’t understand the human capacity for manipulation and evil until it happened to me.
So, yes, I can believe that Joe Paterno was clueless. He grew up in a different era, when although the sexual abuse of children probably occurred, it certainly wasn’t talked about. He was inspired by his father. He believed in education. He believed in turning troubled athletes around. His whole life was about winning with integrity.
So for Paterno to realize, at this late stage of his life, that he may have been hoodwinked by someone so close to him must have been a terrible shock. It probably didn’t cause his lung cancer. But it may have sapped Paterno’s strength to fight it.
Read Joe Paterno’s last interview, on WashingtonPost.com.
OMG. I just came online because I happened across a photo of the mural of Joe Paterno with the halo painted over his head.
I was going to post the link. Here it is.
http://msn.foxsports.com/collegefootball/story/artist-removes-halo-from-mural-of-penn-state-football-coach-joe-paterno-amid-schools-child-sex-abuse-scandal-071412/
All I saw was the photo initially. I decided to read the article.
Below is a quote from it:
“Pilato added a large blue ribbon, instead, on Paterno’s lapel symbolizing support for child abuse victims, a cause the artist said Paterno had endorsed.”
Uh oh. I think he might be painting that ribbon out as well. I imagine there is going to be flack over that one.
Blue eyes, you are absolutely correct. He failed when the test was the greatest.
Kim, HI we’re doing well. My kid is skipping his senior year and heading to college. A real triumph.
Sky, GIS, et all. I don’t think your judgements are wrong. I don’t argue them. I just find your posts viscious. But that’s because the shock and outrage I feel as an alumni has a depth of context and experience you lack.
It was in part a matter of being isolated in a community that COULD NOT fathom Sandusky. If you’d ever seen Joe do the commercials for his brother’s used car lots or shot pool in Phillipsburg orsat through a play at the Boal Barn or cruised Bellafonte on a Saturday night, it would be easy to understand that the context was so magnificent for Sandusky and I think he played them all like a violin.
Hens, You speak directly to the part that makes us all so utterly devastated: What was the experience of the victims? Its enough to turn people inside out. It should.
The whole thing should never have happened. It should have ended immediately. Sandusky should burn in hell.
I wish it wasn’t true that Joe Pa should burn there with him. In my heart of hearts, I don’t believe it so. But it all looks very, very bad. And an awful lot of innocent people have been hurt.
Silvermoon,
how can you say that this betrayal gives you depth and context we lack? How?
We’ve all felt the depth and context of betrayal by someone who professed to have the utmost integrity. This is LOVEFRAUD, remember? WE KNOW cog/dis, betrayal and the depth of it.
We were in LOVE with our betrayers. But even still, when we saw the evidence we opened our eyes and accepted that we had been conned by a spath.
Silvermoon, look at the evidence. You’ve been CONNED BY A SPATH AGAIN. IT IS THAT SIMPLE.
Silvermoon, I agree with Skylar. You’ve been conned by a spath again.
I am somewhat offended (but don’t worry, I won’t lose any sleep over this because I know where you’re coming from) that you found my posts “vicious.”
I lost my virginity at 14 on the kitchen table in my church’s basement where I was raped by the church’s minister. Do you want to know what terror and confusion I went through? I had never even seen a male naked up until that day. I turned to the minister in trust and for help. I got something that ripped my legs open and shoved hard up between them-and held there.
Understand what happened. It’s violence. It’s trauma. It’s betrayal beyond human understanding. This isn’t something that a child can put out of his or her head.
It was so traumatic that I blanked out most of the rape for years. Eventually, I remembered enough that I told the church about it, which told our governing synod, which did absolutely nothing but HONOR this minister for 50 years of service.
I think any decent person would be outraged over the arrogance, betrayal, and calvalier indiffence regarding the victims, especially for the sake of what? Football? That’s how normal people would react, the ones whose lives have never been harmed by Ps.
But having been there and knowing EXACTLY what it is the victims went through and suffered all these years, and knowing how these rapes ruin the victims as adults, I take some offence that you found my anger vicious (except that I understand what Ps can do to a person’s head so I am putting things into that context for you, which is more than you are doing for me, for the record.)
This is about as outrageous as it gets. How else do you honestly expect anyone in my position would feel?
You cannot claim that you think our judgments aren’t wrong and won’t argue with them. You are arguing with them if you’re taking us to task for being viscious. You’re not ready yet to feel the level of anger and betrayal that your denial is working hard to suppress.
Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass about Joe selling his brother’s used cars or shooting pool. It’s really over the top if you think that would make a difference to us, the victims.
You aren’t shooting the messenger; you’re shooting the victims.
We have not ruined your perfect image of Joe Paterno. Joe Paterno let you create this image of him. He ruined your perfect image, not us.
Don’t you get that is why Ps are so horrible and evil? Because they can act like such nice guys, seem so normal, or seem so exceptional that people who make them into heros when secretly, they are about as cold, arrogant, and cruel as Ps can get.
Paterno permitted a monster to continue to sexually abuse children who came to your precious alma mater with its promises of glory and the best that education has to offer. He stopped inquiries and efforts that would have protected those children. That is what is viscious. He tainted your school, not us.
That’s what makes Joe Paterno a monster. And that is why you should be feeling viscious outrage as well.
Skylar is absolutely right. You got CONNED.
I aplogize if any of the above offended or upset anyone. That was never my intention.
Grace,
yes to everything you said, but don’t forget: Paterno was setting up a golden parachute in early 2011, knowing that Sandusky was being investigated. He had already agreed to retire at the end of the season, while negotiating for millions plus the use of a private jet.
Then, when the shit hit the proverbial fan, in November, he “offered” to retire at the end of the season in order to allow the board of trustees to “focus” on their task and not on him. They canned him anyway. Everyone was trying to pass the hot potato, but Paterno was craftier than most, he had begun his potato passing long long before the shit hit the fan.
One thing about spaths I can guarantee: they always have an exit strategy. In fact, spaths have told me so, in those words.
Paterno had his exit strategy. Unfortunately for him, just like my spath, it didn’t work out exactly as planned. A FEW people really DID have integrity and didn’t believe his lies.
BTW Grace,
(((hugs)))
I know that the rape was horrific and I can’t imagine it, yet the second rape… I can relate to that. When nobody believes or cares, that’s a second rape. I’m so sorry.
BTW, Silvermoon,
I was not vicious. I was NICE. You haven’t seen me be vicious.
Spandusky and Paterno are an outrage and I SHOULD be vicious, but I’m holding back. Vicious would be describing one of Dante’s circles of hell and putting Paterno in it.
Skylar,
What I said was that I have a depth you don’t because I am a PSU grad. I was there.
And because I was there, there are somethings that are clear to me that you can’t get because you weren’t there.
For that reason, I like so many of us who really are shaken by what happened and especially by the report reluctantly admit that someone we all looked up to fell way far down. Its a big deal disappointment.
And no one fails to comprehend how awful it was for the victims and their families to have to wait so long for it all to come to a head.
It is a terrbile piece of business. Terrible. And I don’t think you can understand how terrible it is either.
Yeah you can come onto lovefraud and yell SPATH about every news article that is posted here. That’s about what you can do.
My point to you is that you get pretty loud and pretty rough sometimes and insist on a conversation until you win it. There isn’t any win or lose on this one.
I don’t feel the need for you to hand me your verdict on being conned again so that you can win the “was Joe Paterno a spath?” context.
I was there. I knew people who knew him and pretty much most of us believe the whole situation is/ was a disaster and we’re sad Joe died in disgrace because for what he inspired in many classes of students, we’d all have liked to see him leave the field with the honor he was known for.
No, I haven’t been conned by a spath. I’m sorry that Joe failed and that he fell. I believe he was a fundamentally good football coach who wasn’t much more complicated than that in an isolated, rural and relatively unworldly place surrounded by mountains and farms in Western Pennsylvania.
It would have been different in a Big City. But in small town with a huge student/transient population, I can see how it happened. The people involved in doing something about it couldn’t believe it. They acted accordingly.
They fell hard on their swords. Sandusky is going to jail, Paterno is dead and the victims will not in their lives forget.
That’s the real.
Take a chill pill Sky, this isn’t something to get so unglued about. Or so ugly and loud.
There isn’t anything to win. It isn’t a contest.
I do disagree and frankly I’m offended by your brash, harsh, know it all judgements on the whole thing and WHEN YOU YELL LIKE THAT you really piss me off.
Because if you weren’t there, how could you know? I’ve tried to make the point a couple of times and you keep going on and on and on as if the more outraged you get, the more likely I am to walk away from what I know and agree that you must be RIGHT.
Well, I said I don’t think you’re wrong because you’re drawing your own conclusions. But, perhaps there is some context to the whole thing that those of you who weren’t there might be missing in your rush to judge.
Over and over again I watch what I call witch hunting vs truth seeking happen here. And this is a prime example.
If you are making judgement without asking questions, it isn’t truth you’re seeking, its people to hang to satisfy your rage.
“You must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between. This is a sharp time, now, a precise time—we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world. Now, by God’s grace, the shining sun is up, and them that fear not light will surely praise it.”
The Crucible, Arthur Miller
The imperfections of my writing aside, I stand with the author of the article. I read the final Report. Win draw or lose, the facts are what they are.
Sandusky was bad, Joe and the University didn’t stop it. Sandusky is going to jail. Paterno is dead and the victims will not outlive the horror.
If you have deeply offended me here on something that is personal but not so closely as a relationship with a pathalogical spouse, how could you know how many other readers you offend ongoing with that overbearing style? That, for the third time, is my complaint.
I don’t come back very often because my experience with it is repeated and I don’t like it. Wanna bet I’m not alone?
OK: Here’s my rhinoceros stomp: BACK IT DOWN
Marcus Aurelius said it best : “Insensitive honesty is brutality”.
Tough love isn’t about just speaking brutally to people. Its about being loving enough to understand what you have to say i going to be tough and being able to express it with love.
Put away your verbal baseball bats or your conversations are going to be limited to only people who agree with you every time because anyone with anything else to say is going to walk away from the competition.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stuart-muszynski/what-joe-paterno-and-frie_b_1682441.html
this says it all.
Silvermoon,
we are here to learn about the RED FLAGS, so that we don’t get fooled again. What other weapon do we have other than knowledge? NONE.
And the flags are so obvious and easy to see once you know them. So we are YELLING at you because we want you to see them. Yet you refuse. Joe was a spath. He didn’t care about anything but his OWN legacy and money. That was clear in the end.
You need to know that my spath kills people and nobody knows it, except his minions and they gleefully keep it secret.
Everyone else sees him just like you see Paterno: a hero. So humble and good and a genious who loves animals, and cared so much about his drug addicted, alcoholic, suicidal wife who took the cats away from him. Those cats were his children you know… except that he killed two of them.
It’s cog/diss, Silvermoon. Sorry you have it. My condolences.
Try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa0nLdVJiIg
Yeah. I was staying out of this because I know it’s a loaded pistol, but, I think we are forgetting that spaths are masters at using human weakness to bind people into their evil. Joe may be a spath,,,I don’t know, but, he may have been a dupe whose hubris took over and destroyed him. We have folks here who had affairs, because they were hooked in….they knew it was wrong, but, they did it anyway. Why? Because they are weak, and human and they made stupid decisions.
Joe is a classic scape-goat. IMHO. He has been deified and now, must be brought down. No. He was human, but got in over his head ……self centered fear, the primarary activator of all charactor defects….not getting what he wants, or losing what he has….unfortunately, his life was enmeshed with Sandusky and it was his ultimate demise.
I don’t expect anyone to agree with me. My point is, that if we have ANY weakness….the spath will find it, and use it and it will bring us down.