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.
humility, peace, love, respect, humor…
if you *keep the focus on yourself*, it is incredibly empowering. it is the opposite of giving your power away to anger and resentment.
with awareness and some practice, it becomes second nature. truly helpful when healing from trauma, or otherwise..
Star,
that’s the point. Unconsciousness. He was planning from Jan. 2011 to retire and negotiated a 5 mil retirement with the use of a private jet. Then, when Nov 2011 hit the fan, he pretended he never heard of man/boy rape.
NOT unconscious.
My definition of “unconsiousness” is more of a Jungian one. It has to do with dis-owning those parts of myself that I find objectionable. I, then project those objectionable things onto others. As long as I am doing this, I don’t have to address my own shit. And, it is shit.
Jung called this “the shadow”, and it’s important to note that JUng was talking about, “everyman” not the cluster B’s or the spaths. He was talking about you and me.
Just watching this dialouge unfold proves to me that even those of us that truley believe we are good, kind, loving people are capable of great aggression, just because our own desire to control, or be the boss, or have the last word, or be admired because “We know, and you don’t” is rampant, even in otherwise good people.
I’m really bored with the haloed ones. I find that the truley enlighted admit that humans are fallable and are willing to look at themselves and others with some kind of compassion.
Good people scape-goat. They triangulate and they project. They do really rotten things.
Not that I am particularly religious, but Jesus said, “forgive them Father, for they know not what they do…” He was the ultimate scape-goat, but, he knew about unconsciousness, he knew about scape-goating, and he knew that even good people would fall short of the glory of God.
This is in no way saying we should pity Psychopaths. It is just a recognition that good people fuck up. This is also not a defence of Joe Paterno. This is an indictment of people who are blind to the possibility of evil in themselves.
I want to say this with the true intention of education.
There are many different levels of sociopaths, as we know. We are learning that there are romantic sociopaths, business-related sociopaths, platonic sociopaths, religious sociopaths, and so on. We know this. We’ve read the stories of other survivors, and we’ve posted our own experiences.
Why, then, is it so hard to reconcile that Paterno is just one of those alternate sociopaths? Someone who “walks the walk” and doesn’t just “talk the talk” would have intervened, immediately, when another colleague reported that a child was being raped in the shower. Instead, the excuse for the attempt to maintain the integrity of an atheltic program was placed far, far above the priority of HUMAN integrity – PLEASE, note that my use of CAPS is meant for EMPHASIS and is NOT, under ANY circumstances, to be construed as online yelling or hostility.
A person – any person – who lived their lives for the better of HUMANITY would never have ignored Sandspathsky’s actions, would have instigated an immediate investigation, would have questioned other coaches AND victims, and DONE SOMETHING until Sandspathsky was either proven to be innocent of the allegations, or that the allegations were VALID.
In Tolkien’s trilogy, there was in-fighting and vociferous disagreement between the allies who were fighting against Sauron, the Evil. To paraphrase what one character observed: the laughter of Mordor will be the reward for this. To pit friend against friend and distract from the True Cause is his design.
Does anyone else perceive this online disagreement to be a complete and utter distraction from what the core issues are? Rather than acknowledging the truths of this ugly, nasty, and very, very sad chain of events as the culmination of a GROUP of sociopaths (and, therefore, learning of the spath herd behavior), there is, instead, a flurry of insults, denials, and personal defenses going on that are overshadowing the truths.
There is no malice here, at LoveFraud, except against the spaths that have harmed us, perhaps. But, we are ALL survivors of dire personal damages, and we must – moral imperative, here – MUST be willing to call a spade what it is, EVEN if it means that the illusion that was so carefully and deliberately generated is a personal trigger and shatters something that we BELIEVED IN as moral fortitude.
Brightest blessings to each of us……
I think the definition of sociopath can be watered down to include every person who intentionally does something self-serving, harms others, or misbehaves. By that definition, we have all been spaths at one time or another. I won’t speak for the rest of you, but I cannot sit here and say I’m perfect and have lived a selfless life. I don’t see what purpose it serves to liberally throw that label around. Again, I hope the perps those who are still living are held accountable to the full extent of the law. Are they sociopaths based on this one incident? I don’t see how it matters what you call them, as long as you hold them accountable and make this an example for the purpose of education. It remains to be seen whether any of the aiders and abetters are capable of remorse for their actions. They are too busy being afraid of going to prison.
Stargazer, I read what you’re saying. Nobody’s perfect, and that’s a fact. Sometimes, “nobody’s perfect” seems to be an excuse for behaviors that are particularly heinous. I’m not casting personal stones at Paterno – I’m stating facts, and “feelings are not facts.”
My belief that Paterno fits the profile is based upon his deliberate efforts to sweep the multiple and continued sexual molestations of young boys by a member of his Staff under the proverbial rug, and then accept accolades for his “services” to humanity and the Penn State Athletic Program. So, what happened to his sense of duty when he discovered that a member of his Staff was raping children? What Paterno chose to do was what human beings have done since before recorded history: allow, enable, and ignore gross misdeeds for the sake of “reputation” and blame that allowance, enabling, and ignorance upon the better good of such. But, as I view it, “reputation” has nothing to do with “integrity.”
I used to work for a well-known publication that conducts an annual readers’ poll to name the Best Italian Restaurant, Best Auto Mechanic, Best Hair Salon, and so forth on down to Best Physician, and other professionals. This is a very, very “prestigious” regional award and the manner in which these awards are determined is that readers fill out a form that ONLY appears in the publication – it cannot be copied or duplicated. Then, the completed forms are either mailed or deliverd to the offices, and the results are tallied. What really happens is that various businesses pre-order hundreds of issues that will have the printed poll in them, direct staff and employees cut the polls out, and hand one to each customer (client, patient) to complete. Then, the businesses mail or walk in these boxes and boxes of “legitimate” polls to be tallied in their favors. I know this because I managed the whole affair one summer and complained to my Director. Her assertion was that it boosted circulation and that it didn’t matter what the outcomes really were. “Reputations” are built upon such awards, Stargazer, but “Integrity” has absolutely no connection to “reputation.”
To put it in a personal frame of reference, people in the exspaths office not only knew of his violent sexual intrests, but enabled him to carry out various interactions and actually provided a trysting place for groups of people to act out their interests in a private setting. So, are the people involved in those activities “victims,” or are they enablers? But, this is an absolute certainty: not one soul alerted me that my spouse was engaging in acts so violent that they could result in injury or death, nor did any one of these people suggest that the exspath seek a divorce and THEN engage in these activities. And, these activities are risky, dangerous, and the exspath’s involvement in them placed my health (and, possibly life) at risk. Those people all kept their mouths shut to preserve their own reputations. Not one of them meets the criteria of having “integrity.”
I guess it’s easiest to view the aiders and abetters to Sandspathsky’s crimes thusly: the thief who has been burglarizing dozens of homes feels nothing but the thrill of his actions, but suddenly is terribly, terribly sorry only when he’s finally caught.
I actually do not believe that everyone has behaved as a spath: I know I have never been intentionally self-serving at the cost of other people, or intentionally harmed someone else, not even wilfully misbehaved, not even as a teen… only times I misbehaved was a couple of times at the testing age of a toddler – when they do exactly the opposite of what they’ve been told not to do. I even remember those moments: all I could hear was my mom saying me explicitly what not to do (“Do not draw with a pen at the blank page in the new book”, “Do not open that wrapped package there which is a present for your cousin”) and it was as if my toddler brain couldn’t think of anything else, and the moment she couldn’t see I went and did it almost as if compulsed to do it. But once it was done I would instantly regret it horribly, and fess up to my mother. Of course I got punished, but it was the regret I felt myself that thought me not to do bad stuff, because it made me feel just awful in the end. I lied twice as a young kid as well.
I’m not saying I’m perfect: I’m rather chaotic, forgetful, can procrastinate, tend to leave for an appointment at the last minute and arrive too late due to traffic, and while I handle stuff with care I am prone to lose MY stuff. Any of my punishments from 6 till teenhood revolved around these mistakes only – me forgetting to change my trousers into those I could play outside with and then having a fall and thus have a hole in or huge strain on my good trousers; me forgetting that I had gone to a friend’s house on a step and went home on foot leaving it out there where I had left it. I have hurt people at times through rejection of going no contact out of self-protection after they damaged my life with their meddling, and I have exposed the spath out of feelings of responsibility to make background info available on later victims. I raise my voice when I’m upset, but getting better at it. I have not lived a selfless life, but neither have I lived a selfish life (the first does not automatically mean the second thing).
I have values and I try my very best to live according to my values and up until recently I solely measured myself to my values and did not judge other people for having other values. Nowadays I do judge them and their actions, inactions and behaviour according to my own values. And I do not feel there is anything wrong with that anymore, because it is the judgement that will guide me to hold them accountable for it.
Star,
this article describes the difference between normal people and spaths:
http://narcissists-suck.blogspot.com/2009/03/malignant-narcissism-brief-overview.html
In essence it says that we all struggle with our selfish impulses –except the malignant narcissist. He has embraced his selfishness. My sister admitted this to me, she said, “Skylar, it’s ok to be evil. We’re all evil, I’m evil, you’re evil blah blah blah”
I’m with Darwin’smom, I’m not evil. I’ve done bad things, I remember my spathiest moment was when I was 12. I’ll not divulge what I did! too shameful! There was another moment I recall at age 15…bad, bad, bad.
Mostly, these days I struggle with learning to be more selfish. I made deviled eggs this morning and I was putting half on a plate for BF. I noticed that I was picking the prettiest ones for him and keeping the ugly ones for my breakfast. I do this automatically, it’s a bad habit.
Edit: notice I didn’t use caps for emphasis. I used italics instead. I don’t want anyone to think I’m YELLING.
Sky, I liked that article that stresses how malignant narcisssists do not struggle with their selfishness.
You know what I do not struggle with? To do right for other people. It’s something I cannot help myself doing.
The worst I’ve ever done was steal some candy (sour candy, it’s the only candy aside from chocolate I like) at the grocery store while my mother was ordering at the counter of the grocery store owner. Nobody never found out about it, never. And I never told anyone. It’s the first time I confess it. I must have been 7. Well, I couldn’t eat the candy afterwards. My heart was bleeding for the deception I had done upon the grocery owner, an older man whose eyesight wasn’t of the best (he squinted). All I could think was how unfair it was to the grocery owner. So, I kept it and smuggled it back into the store. It was and is just far easier for me not to wrong other people. If I would wrong other people I just feel horrible and bleeding with empathy.
Ever had to go to a new school where you didn’t know any other kid? Perhaps there was just this one kid who would welcome you without reserve, without pressure? I was such a kid. I was by myself when it came to peer groups though. I was bullied very sometimes, but most of the time I simply did not belong to any of the pecking groups. Didn’t even want to really. I was more of a one-to-one friendship person rather than part of a group. While I didn’t have a best friend for a long time, I did have personal friendships with people in all groups. Couldn’t understand though why it didn’t always last and while I accepted people at face value, I didn’t feel accepted by the groups at face value. When I was 15 though two girls of a year older at HS showed curiosity and genuine interest in me, just like I would show interest to say a newcomer. And through them I met that best friend of mine. Anyhow I hung out with the older teens because these were my genuine friends, which of course inspired envy in the other teens of my own HS year. Some just suddenly wished to socialise with me more in group stuff, and others who had taken me up as their social case (and I knew this) in need of help turned their backs on me. Of course when we were the last year and the eldest at HS I was literally told that now my older friends weren’t there anymore, I was all on my own again. I simply befriended some nice people in those who were a year younger than us, and a newcomer guy who had to return to Belgium after dangerous riots in Kinshasha in Congo (then still called Zaire). I did suspect he was gay, though he hadn’t outed himself yet. During our spring break in the bus to Paris I remember how the whole ‘popular’ group badgered us with questions and suggestions that we were a couple. Quite ridiculous and petty.
Anyhow, despite all that, towards the end of the schoolyear and HS career, the popular group was split over some dispute. Don’t even remember what it was about. It was silly. Teachers noticed the whole class climate had altered. I basically was the whistleblower to our class coach teacher, and informed them about the group dynamics and why they were upset with each other. They used that info to get them reconciled again. I had no self interest in that reconciliation. I didn’t particularly like the groups, didn’t want to be a member, knew I never would be part of those groups and knew they wouldn’t treat or accept me better for it. I just felt it was a great pity that these people who used to be friends to each other for years were having such hostile feelings towards each other towards the end of their HS career, so close to going to college and university and probably hardly ever see each other again. I simply didn’t want them to say goodbye to each other in such hostile terms.
At graduation pupils tend to get prizes and rewards for subjects. I won the prize for biology, for non religious ethics class and for exemplary pupil for non-curriculum school affairs. Only prize at the time I really was proud of was the biology one, though my mom was proud of the latter one. For a long while I didn’t understand its importance. I didn’t need a prize or a reward to have done the right thing for other people, even though they didn’t particularly like me and vice versa. It was completely normal for me to do the right thing. I would have betrayed myself if I hadn’t helped out at that ugly situation. Now, especially after the spath experience, I understand it’s exactly the reason why I got the prize – because doing good and the right thing without self interest is what is the most natural and normal thing to me. I’m not holy, I’m not rare, I’m not a saint, but I’m a naturally good and kind person who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about peer pressure and use my own values of what is right and wrong to guide me to act and judge, and I don’t have an ounce of spathiness in me.
And basically I find the ‘we all have some watered down spathiness in ourselves’ argument incorrect. My closest friends and good friends are just like me on the naturally being good department. My parents are like me. Yes, we are all flawed and we all make mistakes and sometimes hurt other people unwittingly. But they aren’t selfish, they aren’t mean, and they have not an ounce of evilness within them. And if they exist, then statistically more of naturally good people who don’t struggle at being good exist.
I seriously considered posting this in all capitals.
Maybe it would be a lesson in doing your real homework – or at least a step in the direction of thinking outside the pathalogical lens.
While I am sure Ziegler’s editorial will fall on deaf ears here, I’m still going to call attention to the need to pursue facts without making judgement.
What is popular may not be true.
And what isn’t true got you into trouble in the first place.
You are NOT diminished by having been fooled and until you stop looking at everything through the lens of finding a spath under every rock and behind every bush, until you stop overanalyzing your childhood, romance or marriage to a disordered person and until you stop looking at everything through the lens which compares to the disordered, you are stuck there.
While you’re stuck, the facts may escape and you will follow any herd including each other.
Think!
Editorial by John Ziegler
How the Media May Have Framed Joe Paterno
7/19/2012
Regardless of what the final facts eventually say about what Joe Paterno knew and when he knew it about Jerry Sandusky’s criminal behavior (contrary to what the media has told you, they aren’t in yet), the media coverage of him has been as unfair as any I have ever seen. In some ways, the media coverage of Joe Paterno has combined some of the worst elements of both the reporting of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the 2008 presidential election.
And while it is possible that they may end up being “right” about their seemingly insatiable desire to destroy Paterno’s reputation, if that indeed turns out to be the case it will be due far more to pure luck than to actual credible journalism.
Here is the story of how the media may have framed Joe Paterno .
After the grand jury presentment was made available at a Saturday press conference which announced the Sandusky indictments last November, the initial media coverage was, in retrospect remarkably, and tellingly, rather muted.
ESPN, who would later the next week drive most of the narrative of the overall story, limited most of their coverage over the weekend to a passing news mention and a perfunctory place on the ubiquitous scroll on the bottom of the screen. After all, they had actual college and pro football games to broadcast/cover and no need to interrupt those ratings winners for the story of some guy who hadn’t coached football in over a decade.
The first edition of Sports Illustrated (which went to press about 48 hours after the indictments) after the news broke does not make mention of the Sandusky story in even one news article. Sandusky didn’t even make the “For the Record” section under “Arrests.” The story is only cited in an opinion column on the back page which reads somewhat like the “last word” on a story which is horrible but which may not provide much opportunity to write about in the future.
By the next week, Joe Paterno was somehow on the cover of SI along with multiple banner headlines, including one indicating that this was the biggest scandal in college sports history.
What changed in the ensuing week? Well, Paterno was fired, but not because we learned anything significantly new about the scandal during that time. Instead, what happened was that ESPN, with the help of popular website Deadspin (which was the first outlet to jump all over the story and predict Paterno’s demise), decided that they could change the rules of this game and make what was an otherwise dead sports week into a dramatic, ratings winning, passion play.
The initial take of the mainstream media was that this was not really a Joe Paterno story because, while Sandusky had been his assistant coach and there was a major allegation which occurred on campus, it was after he had already left the program. Paterno had testified but had not been charged. The prosecutors said that Paterno had done what was legally required of him, though they did raise the issue (in the response to a leading question from the media) of whether Paterno had fulfilled his moral responsibility with regard to making sure the allegations were properly followed up.
Seemingly lulled into a false sense of security by the relative rationality of the initial coverage (which was neither as intense nor as insane as it soon would be), Penn State made a couple of critical errors. The first was that they failed to make it clear that when Paterno had reported the Mike McQueary allegations to Gary Schultz, that he was doing so to the person in charge of the campus police. The media, either out of incompetence, deceitfulness, or both, never made that clear and in fact often reported that Paterno “never went to the police.” This omission created a huge hole in Paterno’s ship, which should have been easily plugged. Instead, it was an unnecessary leak in his story which still exists in public perception today.
The second big mistake Penn State made was related to Paterno’s weekly press conference that Tuesday. At first they announced that it would go on as normal, but naively/stupidly they also put out a press release saying that they would not allow any questions on the Sandusky matter. This was the equivalent of telling a child they can’t have a particular brand of candy; it made the media want to go in that direction exponentially more than they already did.
When hundreds of reporters/jackels showed up salivating for what they surely hoped would be the fresh carcass of a cranky old man being bombarded with questions he wasn’t supposed to answer, Penn State foolishly pulled the plug. To the sharks in the news media this was essentially like pouring blood in the water. It was simultaneously an admission of guilt in their eyes as well as an indication that Paterno was doomed because Penn State was not going to back him. The feeding frenzy began in earnest.
Now the media had what they wanted. They suddenly processed all the excuses they needed to turn a story about a likely child molester who hadn’t coached at Penn State for twelve years, into a tale of whether a legend had failed in his moral responsibility to protect children he may or may not have even known were ever in danger.
The public wouldn’t care much about Sandusky, but everyone knew Joe Paterno. The tearing down of a pious legend makes for incredible copy and it transformed that week from a remarkably slow sports period (the NBA was still on strike, baseball was over, and football was in a midseason lull) into a ratings bonanza.
Now it should be noted that one of the primary weapons which drove the deep passion and anger on this story at the outset was the misuse of one key phrase in the grand jury presentment. The prosecutors brilliantly (though deceitfully) claimed that Mike McQueary had witnessed Sandusky having “anal intercourse” with a ten year old boy in the Penn State showers.
Quite simply, there is very little in the human condition which makes our brains turn off their logic mechanisms faster than the concept of a child being anally raped by an old man. Like the color red to a raging bull, this phrase turned what would have been reasonable outrage into a communal blind fury. It also made it nearly impossible to discuss the actual facts of the matter because people understandably don’t like talking about the subject.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that had the grand jury presentment not used the words “anal intercourse,” that Joe Paterno would not have been fired the way that he was and likely would have coached out the season. I also have little uncertainty that the phrase was purposely misused in the grand jury presentment because prosecutors knew exactly what kind of public reaction it would provoke.
I also believe that part of the reason that the phrase “anal intercourse” was placed in the grand jury presentment was because, at that time, contrary to public perception, the legal case against Jerry Sandusky was actually remarkably weak.
Incredibly, there was/is no known victim in the McQueary episode (Don’t tell the media that! They still don’t realize it!), and, though somehow no one knew it at the time, McQueary had inexplicably testified incorrectly about which day, month and year the incident he supposedly witnessed took place.
Few people realize (and none of them are in the media) that at the time of the indictments there was only one allegation of actual “sex” from a known witness, and that person’s story had been disbelieved by officials at his own school. The prosecution needed a big explosion in order to blow the case wide open and bring in other accusers they had to be sure were still out there. Their tactic worked perfectly, but it also had the side effect (one with which it seems they weren’t unpleased) of making it impossible for Paterno to get a remotely fair public examination.
As it ultimately turned out, the “hanging” jury in the Jerry Sandusky case actually rightly acquitted him of “anal intercourse” in the McQueary allegation. But by that time it no longer mattered and this inconvenient fact was almost universally ignored by the media.
As for Paterno’s firing, ESPN basically campaigned for it continuously over two straight days and at least one member of the Penn State board of trustees admitted that, the body which somehow voted unanimously to unceremoniously terminate the man who put their school on the map, had done so in direct reaction to the intimidating media coverage.
One of the most absurd moments in ESPN’s wall to wall coverage came when former Penn State player Matt Millen cried live on air while implying Paterno had let everyone down. Like something out of Alice in Wonderland, it was barely ever mentioned, and never put in its proper context, that Millen himself was an active member of the Second Mile board (and not just in a ceremonial capacity). He was never even asked if the Second Mile or perhaps maybe even he himself deserved far more blame than Paterno considering that all of the victims originated there and Sandusky had had far more contact with them than he did with Penn State over the previous twelve years.
Instead, all people saw on TV was a former Paterno player (one who was not at all close to Paterno) crying while being sympathetically consoled by an ESPN anchor. This opened the floodgates and began a momentum which quickly convinced even strong Paterno supporters that they had better jump on the media’s bandwagon or be made to look like they were supporting child molestation.
Even former Penn State quarterback (and ESPN commentator) Todd Blackledge eventually came out for Paterno’s firing and yet somehow ended up prominently speaking on behalf of the 1980’s at Paterno’s memorial service. When I watched Blackledge being interviewed, I had a very strong sense he had essentially been bullied by the coverage of his own network into throwing Paterno under the metaphorical bus. The fact that he would praise him so dramatically just two months later would only augment that feeling.
When Paterno finally released his now infamous statement announcing that he would resign at the end of the season and stating that, “with the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more,” the media twisted it into something completely different than it really was.
Here, much like Tiger Woods at the beginning of his scandal, Paterno, used to mostly fawning media coverage, was slow to realize that all the old rules had changed. In the eyes of his former friends in the media he had been instantly transformed from a protected species to one with a large bounty on its head..
Previously, that written statement would have been warmly received as a grand gesture from a great/wise old man who was the first to admit what literally hundreds of people should have been forced to acknowledge: that the signs that Jerry Sandusky was a monster were missed. Now, in this frigidly cold media environment in which Paterno suddenly found himself, the statement instead was viewed as an arrogant, out of touch, admission of actual guilt.
This last point has been repeated, almost as if it were a mantra, by countless people with whom I have spoken about this in the last seven months. I even heard highly respected “journalist” John Feinstein grossly misquote Paterno on a national radio show as having said, “I didn’t do enough.” When I quickly messaged the co-host who is an old colleague of mine to please correct him on air, Feinstein laughably insisted that there is no real difference between the two quotations, even though it is obvious that they have two very dissimilar meanings (incredibly, I asked to go on the show as a guest to explain why Feinstein was wrong, but the co host told me that Feinstein was afraid of the debate and vetoed the idea).
Contrary to media created perception, what Paterno said there was in no way an admission of guilt. Instead, it was exactly the right thing to say at that time, but the media wanted a head on a spike and they needed it fast. Paterno’s was by far the most appealing scalp and nothing short of total decapitation was going to quench their thirst for blood.
When they finally got it (without Joe Paterno, an employee of over sixty years who literally built the school’s library, even getting a formal hearing) the students understandably reacted with their own rage, but one which the media purposely misunderstood in order to fit their own narrative and forward their own agenda.
According ESPN’s live coverage (as well as most of the rest of the print reporting) of the student “riots” which ensued after the announcement of the Paterno firing, the Penn State campus was upset because their precious football team might be harmed and they couldn’t care less about the victims. This analysis was as absurd as it was self serving.
It was very clear that the students were mostly angry over the lack of due process and simple respect shown for a man who was the reason many of them had applied to the school in the first place. It was also obvious that the focus of their outrage was on the news media for their disgraceful coverage of the story and the board of trustees for caving into the media pressure.
This was not just proven by the fact that the most serious act of vandalism was directed at a television news van (something the media bizarrely seemed to think was simply a coincidence). It was also exposed in a classic moment when, as if by accident, ESPN’s entire narrative for the whole episode blew up in their faces on live television.
If there was one clip I wish everyone would have watched that fateful week, it would be this one of a Penn State student being interviewed live on the network which had created most of the uproar, the remnants of which they were now covering. The unidentified student succinctly laid out the entire case in way that was in direct contradiction to the way that ESPN had been reporting it.
When the field reporter sent it back to the studio (where they had been covering the events with all of the fairness and objectivity of the Hatfields reporting on the McCoys) the anchors Steve Levy and Stuart Scott were literally stunned. After pausing as if they had just heard for the first time that there is no Santa Claus, an exasperated Levy was forced to acknowledge that the student was “a relatively well informed fan”ah, I would say. He had some of the facts correct.”
Levy didn’t mention which facts the student didn’t have correct, probably because there weren’t any. His partner, an equally shocked Scott, looking as if he was realizing live on the air that maybe there really was another way to look at this entire story, laughably opined, “It is a very interesting dichotomy—
After Paterno was fired, the media, having its pound of flesh, decided to quickly move on and some relatively pro-Paterno stories began to sneak out, even on ESPN (I believe because some there, like Tom Rinaldi, were angling themselves for what was thought would be the inevitable Paterno interview). However, the simultaneous revelations that the Syracuse basketball team apparently had a pedophile on its current staff were treated completely differently (even when their head coach Jim Boeheim called the victims money-seeking liars) and further exposed the unfairness of the media’s Penn State/Paterno coverage. I am sure that it is just a coincidence that many of the staff at ESPN just happened to attend Syracuse.
When Paterno died, most of the coverage was rather respectful, while certainly nothing like the celebration of an amazing life it would have been had he passed just two months earlier,
At the memorial service, when Phil Knight finally stood up and said what so many people with the actual facts but without access to broadcast platforms had been silently thinking, the media really had no idea what to do. The last thing they wanted was their initial conviction of Paterno to be exposed as a ratings-driven rush to judgment, but they also have trained themselves to not speak ill of the recently deceased (even actual pedophiles like Michael Jackson). Clearly conflicted, they pretty much decided to ignore Knight’s comments and hope that the evidence would eventually come back in favor of the judgment they had already rendered (they treated similar comments from usual media darling, Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, in much the same way).
When the Sandusky trial was completed in record time and it was announced that a verdict had been reached, Piers Morgan casually stated on CNN, without a shred of evidence at that time, that “clearly Joe Paterno took part in a cover up here.” What was so infuriating about watching that moment was that it was clear that Morgan had no idea what the actual facts of the case were then, and that absolutely no one even bothered to question him about his potentially slanderous statement.
When Sandusky was acquitted of the very charge which was the source of the vast majority of the media coverage which directly led to Paterno’s firing, you probably had to research that information for yourself. The broadcast outlets either weren’t even aware of this incredible fact, or simply just didn’t care. They had their story and they were going to stick with it no matter what transpired.
In that context, the media’s reaction to the Freeh report becomes far more easily understood and almost humorous. They had already universally decided that there was only one legitimate view of this story.
I myself was continually frustrated that I couldn’t even get straight forward columns questioning this narrative placed at any of the outlets which had routinely run my work. Time and again I either got no explanation for why this was the case or the editors in charge made it clear that their grasp of the facts was so poor that they actually mistakenly thought that I was the one who had no idea what I was talking about (a perfect example of this phenomenon was the fact that there was no actual known victim in the McQueary allegation; most media people I communicated with thought that was just not possible and wrongly presumed I was just wrong). I have gone against the grain of the conventional media wisdom many times in my career, but I have never experienced a worse example of group think producing virtual censorship than this one.
So when CNN got the leak of just one email prior to the Freeh Report’s official release, the media made it very clear that they were going to accept any crumbs of anti-Paterno evidence with mouths as wide open as their minds were closed. The report (not even the actual email) of only one very vague note from Paterno’s boss Tim Curley mentioning that he had spoken to “Joe” and had decided to change the plan on how to deal with Sandusky, was treated as if it was clear evidence of the coach having taken part in a cover up. Sports Illustrated couldn’t even wait for the actual report to come out and essentially convicted Paterno based on just that remarkably thin evidence.
The media, of course, never even bothered to point out that Curley, after casually mentioning having spoken to Joe, goes on to start each of the next four sentences not with the word “we,” but rather “I.” While this doesn’t prove what influence Paterno did or didn’t have over the discussions, in a remotely fair media environment it should have certainly raised important questions about Paterno’s presumed guilt. Unfortunately, this has still somehow never happened.
So, when the Freeh Report actually did come out, you could almost hear the media preparing their pom-poms and readying their cheers of “See! See! We really did get it right when we rushed to judgment against Paterno because the story was just too good to resist!” (Though, for some reason, no one ever questioned, if the Freeh Report really contained new evidence proving Paterno’s guilt, why was it that the media felt so comfortable “convicting” him before that information was ever known? Wasn’t the media essentially admitting that they didn’t have enough evidence to come to that conclusion before the Freeh Report?)
Whether Freeh understood this or not, his scheduling of the report’s release was certainly consistent with someone who knew he was likely to get a chorus of cheering from the media (which by the way, could have also influenced his conclusions as everyone is more likely to do something they if know is going to get them adulation). The report was released at 9 am on the Thursday of one of the slowest sports weeks of the year and, preposterously, his press conference was just one hour later.
Only in a story like this could a press conference an hour after the release of a detailed report which took at least three hours to properly read be taken remotely seriously. And yet, no one bothered to even point out that the very same media asking the questions of Freeh barely had time to read his remarkably biased conclusions and certainly had no way of examining the actual evidence in the report.
This pathetic reality reared its head with a massive amount of misreporting regarding the report. The most obvious example of this was that several commentators immediately took to ESPN and, based on the report’s debatable conclusion that Paterno knew about the 1998 Sandusky investigation, erroneously stated that this meant that Sandusky’s 1999 retirement had to have been related.
The amazing thing about this was that Freeh’s report specifically exonerates Paterno on that very issue and these people (including former Paterno “friend” Brent Musberger and ESPN’s beat reporter Jeremy Schaap) not only got it dead wrong, but they also unwittingly revealed that they hadn’t even bothered to read the report.
There was also no coverage of a major mistake Freeh made during his press conference (no, not calling the key witness “McQuade”) when he appeared to claim that his team had spoken to the two janitors who allegedly witnessed Sandusky molesting a boy in the Penn State locker room in 2000. Freeh seemed completely oblivious to the fact that the only witness to that episode has dementia and can’t speak to anyone. His team only spoke to someone to whom the original witness told his story (and, for the record, there is no known victim for that allegation either). Incredibly, I contacted the reporter who asked Freeh the question that got this response and it appears he had no idea Freeh had made a glaring error.
But the most significant problem with the media coverage of the report was that, partially because of the haste to get to the bottom line in a “breaking” news story (TV has no patience any more for actual facts), most of what got discussed were the report’s “conclusions,” and not the nature of the actual evidence on which they were based.
There was next to zero analysis of how it is that a man’s entire life and reputation can be destroyed by three extremely vague emails written by someone else (with whom Freeh never spoke who has never been asked publicly about them) over a decade ago. Quite literally, if Tim Curley was simply “name dropping” Paterno in an effort to bolster his position in the two most critical of those emails (a very plausible but seemingly impossible theory to prove), then the entire case against Paterno is dramatically different and, frankly, almost non existent. And yet in the mind of the media, and therefore the public, the evidence is perceived as both overwhelming and rock solid.
What makes this particularly galling is that it is never even mentioned that the very same Curley whose emails are now said to “prove’ that Paterno took part in a “cover up” and “protected” Sandusky, is also the guy who, when Paterno died, released a glowing written statement praising the coach’s “honor and integrity.”
Why has there not been even a perfunctory effort on the part of the media to understand how that public pronouncement makes any sense at all under their own current narrative? In the media’s view, Paterno must have forced Curley into a cover up and caused him to be charged with serious crimes. Why in the world would he praise Paterno’s “honor and integrity,” especially when it could take away the legal defense of “Joe made me do it”?
These are questions that the media is simply just not interested in even asking because they might not like the answer they get (that, and most of them don’t even realize that Curley did this, or aren’t inquisitive enough to connect the dots). Instead, their narrative has now quickly turned to whether or not Paterno’s statue should stay in place or whether Penn State football should somehow get the death penalty.
So now that the media thinks they have all the answers they want (and too much of the public, and even Penn State supporters, have bought it hook, line and sinker), the need for further information is now over. There is no need to wait for the Curley trial when we might actually learn whether the “leads” that Freeh found are actually real evidence.
Most maddeningly, the media is now openly mocking the Paterno family for continuing to speak out and for their plan to come up with their own version of the Freeh Report.
So, let me get this straight. The media rushes to judgment against Paterno, the family says they just want the truth to come out, the media finally gets some vague evidence which can be interpreted as backing up their original view, and now the case is closed because once they have gotten the answer they want they decide it is wrong to ask any further questions? Really? Why does this feel like something out of a Cold War era fascist country?
The bottom line here is that we simply don’t know exactly for sure what Joe Paterno knew and how his actions regarding Sandusky should finally be evaluated. Unfortunately, barring Tim Curley coming forward with the whole truth, there seems to be a good chance that we will never know all the answers on that issue. What we do know for sure is that the media’s coverage of Joe Paterno has been a disgrace which has further proven that real journalism in this country is dead. Whether the media ends up having guessed right here is irrelevant to that sad and obvious conclusion.
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