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Old 09-17-2012, 11:24 PM
 
Location: Berwick, Penna.
16,214 posts, read 11,290,935 times
Reputation: 20827

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Quote:
Originally Posted by ScoPro View Post
If Paterno's family is in the possession of exculpatory evidence, what's keeping them from releasing it?

Whatever they claim to have or think, rebutting the evidence brought out by the Freeh investigation will be darn near impossible.
The only point I seek to emphasize is that the media coverage of the scandal was choreographed and stage-managed by a coalition of interests with an agenda -- something almost as well-orgamnized as the cover-up.

This mess has its roots in the uncovering of pedophilia by Catholic priests which, in turn emerged from the deliberately provacative behavior of gay-militant groups like ACT-UP back in the Eighties. The "New Sensitivity" and "Metrosexual" advocacies share a fair amount of common ground, including an ingrained suspicion of activities like contact sports -- which in turn have little use for them.

There is nowhere near as prolific a record of Sandusky's on-camera behavior as there is of Paterno's, but the impression I get is that the man was already losing control of his own persona -- and younger people closer to the program on a day-to-day basis, such as McQueary and Paterno's sons, ought to have had both the formal training and street sense to have seen this coming.

Finally, it's no secret that a resentment existed among some members of the Board of Trustees who saw the program as an obstacle to their vision of a Penn State more in synch with the Cult of Political Correctness. It would not schock me to learn that one or more among them saw this "train wreck" developing, and secretly welcomed it -- until they got more than they anticipated.

All I'm saying is what I've said from the time the "Sandusky scandal" was deliberately morphed into an attack on Penn State within a matter of hours after its emergence --- that the accusers deserve as close a scrutiny as their target.

Last edited by 2nd trick op; 09-18-2012 at 12:51 AM..

 
Old 09-18-2012, 07:41 AM
 
Location: Round Rock, Texas
12,922 posts, read 13,254,089 times
Reputation: 13933
They obviously saw it coming, what with the unexpected contract renegotiation and asset transfers.

But there are still way too many, including Franco Harris, who are soley concerned with preserving Paterno's legacy. Those people are the cultists deserving of the scorn "from the outside".
 
Old 09-19-2012, 05:54 AM
 
44 posts, read 69,955 times
Reputation: 33
Quote:
Originally Posted by ScoPro View Post
Whatever they claim to have or think, rebutting the evidence brought out by the Freeh investigation will be darn near impossible.
Um, what evidence?

Here's another article I'd encourage you Paterno bashers to read. It is full of reason and good insight. I wish more articles like this would get attention instead of the sensationalized bs that was widely circulated during the height of this "scandal".

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critic...urrentPage=all
 
Old 09-19-2012, 10:30 AM
 
Location: Round Rock, Texas
12,922 posts, read 13,254,089 times
Reputation: 13933
Quote:
Originally Posted by D'Annunzio View Post
Um, what evidence?

Here's another article I'd encourage you Paterno bashers to read. It is full of reason and good insight. I wish more articles like this would get attention instead of the sensationalized bs that was widely circulated during the height of this "scandal".

Jerry Sandusky and the Mind of a Pedophile : The New Yorker
The email evidence from the conspirators who deepsixed the scandal after talking to Coach.

And Posnanki, who is peddling his whitewash book, even gives you a clue about Paterno's moral failure:

Quote:
[LEFT]Posnanski, in one of his final interviews with Paterno, asked him if he had considered calling the police. “To be honest with you, I didn’t,” Paterno said. “This isn’t my field. I didn’t know what to do. I had not seen anything. Jerry didn’t work for me anymore. I didn’t have anything to do with him. I tried to look through the Penn State guidelines to see what I was supposed to do. It said I was supposed to call Tim [Curley]. So I called him.”




A grown man who is the most powerful force on campus still failed to get the highly suspect pedophile off his campus for over a decade. Doesn't matter that he wasn't charged - just the massive suspicion & complaints filed should've been more than enough to ban him totally from campus. PSU "guidlines" don't trump Pennsylvania state law.

Pedophilia isn't the "field" for very many, but everyone knows what they are. If Paterno was saying he didn't know about what they do or how the Pennsylvania law reads about reporting suspected child abuse, then he obviously was lying.
Every teacher in your state has that law (which I've read) drilled into them, or should.
We have a similar law here, and all the teachers are instructed by the administrators to report suspected abuse directly to the police after notifying the school counselors what was transpiring.[/LEFT]
 
Old 09-19-2012, 12:26 PM
 
44 posts, read 69,955 times
Reputation: 33
Quote:
Originally Posted by ScoPro View Post
The email evidence from the conspirators who deepsixed the scandal after talking to Coach.

And Posnanki, who is peddling his whitewash book, even gives you a clue about Paterno's moral failure:

[/color]

A grown man who is the most powerful force on campus still failed to get the highly suspect pedophile off his campus for over a decade. Doesn't matter that he wasn't charged - just the massive suspicion & complaints filed should've been more than enough to ban him totally from campus. PSU "guidlines" don't trump Pennsylvania state law.

Pedophilia isn't the "field" for very many, but everyone knows what they are. If Paterno was saying he didn't know about what they do or how the Pennsylvania law reads about reporting suspected child abuse, then he obviously was lying.
Every teacher in your state has that law (which I've read) drilled into them, or should.
We have a similar law here, and all the teachers are instructed by the administrators to report suspected abuse directly to the police after notifying the school counselors what was transpiring.[/LEFT]

1. Why is it that if someone doesn't relentlessly attack Paterno, he is whitewashing?
2. Joe Paterno could not ban Sandusky from campus, no matter how "powerful" you think he was. Sandusky had emeritus status at the University (something else Paterno had nothing to do with), and was totally out of JoePa's jurisdiction.
3. "just the massive suspicion & complaints filed " No matter what you may have read, heard, or believe on the subject, JoePa was not suspicious of Sandusky. He didn't know.
4. "If Paterno was saying he didn't know about what they do or how the Pennsylvania law reads about reporting suspected child abuse, then he obviously was lying." Paterno has said that he didn't know how to handle the situation, so he reviewed the school guidelines and did what they directed him to do. How evil of him, right?
 
Old 09-19-2012, 04:56 PM
 
Location: Berwick, Penna.
16,214 posts, read 11,290,935 times
Reputation: 20827
In the last years before everything fell apart, the gap between the aged Paterno, the players, and the assistants running the program became more apparent, just as it did with Bear Bryant at Alabama. In that environment, with both Paterno and Sandusky operating in their own semi-isolation, something was likely to happen.

We'll likely never know why Paterno, raised under an entirely different set of values, didn't seek more advice from his own family; but to paint a man already approaching his seventies at the time things began to unravel, as the center of some conspiracy equipped to deal with a rapidly-changing public perception, is ludicrous.
 
Old 09-19-2012, 05:27 PM
 
Location: Round Rock, Texas
12,922 posts, read 13,254,089 times
Reputation: 13933
Unbelievable denial from you people.
 
Old 09-19-2012, 06:52 PM
 
Location: GIlbert, AZ
3,032 posts, read 5,252,854 times
Reputation: 2105
Why is this thread still live? Hes dead, whats his name is going to jail, Penn state will be screwed for the next 10 years. Nothing else matters.
 
Old 09-19-2012, 08:16 PM
 
4,734 posts, read 4,318,244 times
Reputation: 3225
What happened at Penn State is probably a variant of what is otherwise referred to "Bystander Syndrome," a situation in which people are confronted with an emergency but don't know how to react to it. The situation is unexpected, perhaps even unfathomable. It's outside the vein of everyday life. It's an extraordinary situation that confronted ordinary people. People said the same thing when Kitty Genovese got murdered back in the 1960s - 38 people saw or heard her get stabbed to death and yet nobody did anything to intervene. The cold, hard truth that psychological and scientific research has revealed is that human beings - especially when dealing with a crisis in groups - often fail to respond to emergencies the way that they ought to.

Don't get me wrong - that doesn't really excuse anything. There's absolutely no defending the lapses that happened on multiple levels. I think those who covered it up made a decision to do so. As a result, some vulnerable individuals are still living with nightmares, for which there should be some consequences for those directly implicated. But having said all that, I think it's better to focus on how things like this can be prevented in the future rather than stewing about the past. Obviously, there were laws in place to punish people for concealing this information. Yet they didn't work? Why not? Maybe there needs to be more workplace training to identify the signs of abuse, and more procedural training on setting up an information process so that whenever something like this happens, there's a quick way to get the information to the right people. The training should involve everyone from the state university president on down to the water boy.

Actually, my biggest gripe isn't with Penn State; it's with the NCAA, which utterly failed to send the appropriate message to the program - and to all college football programs that institutionalize running afoul of the law. There absolutely should not be football at Penn State right now. Their program should have been shut down for three to five years. This should be a time to think, a time to reflect on all of the things that have gone wrong with that program. This is not the time to use football to get over a crisis -- not when football caused the f*cking crisis in the first place!!!
 
Old 09-20-2012, 04:34 AM
 
Location: Berwick, Penna.
16,214 posts, read 11,290,935 times
Reputation: 20827
Quote:
Originally Posted by ScoPro View Post
Unbelievable denial from you people.
Most, if not all of the posts here aren't denying anything; what we are asking is that the"lynch mob" mentality, which emerged within hours of the story's breaking, the calculated appeal to the a large section of the public which is either unfamiliar with, or hostile toward the institution of college football, and to some of the more immature of the fan base of a few other schools which saw this as little more than an opportunity to gloat over somebody else's downfall, be recognized for the cheap shot it is.

We are all saddened and humiliated by these events. But many of us who have a long-time connection to Penn State, who spent years in the Nittany Valley and still return, have a different view, one conditioned in many cases by personal experience, that the sensation peddlers and the outraged suburban soccer moms, to whom a simplistic answer was directed, cannot understand.

There was wrong-doing at many levels and in many quarters, as this sordid mess unraveled. It's especially galling for me because one of the things I learned at PSU during my freshman year (via adaptive Physical Ed -- I have a noticeable physical deformity) was to master a few simple challenges, like swimming, and to enter a locker room without fear because the crude dumb-bullying element was no longer there. We were told that Sandusky's "Second Mile" operated on similar principles -- against the feminization and over-senstization of young men that happens too often in female-headed single-parent households. It turns out that we were duped -- but it doesn't suprise me that a lot of older alumni, raised in a time when "locker room cameraderie" wasn't viewed with instant suspicion, wouldn't catch it -- or that the New Puritans would seize upon it for their own purposes.

Sixty years passed between Joe Paterno's first affiliation with Penn State and his jaded departure -- and college sports is a culture in which most of the participants can't recall events from more than ten of those years. The difference in perspective increased the polarization and harshened the punishment. But snap judgements by sport-politicians have been questioned with the passage of time previously -- the penalties imposed on Jim Thorpe by the Olympic games, and again in 1972 on several Americans by the senile, opinion-conscious Avery Brundage come immediately to mind.

Time favors the truth, and at this point, it is the Board of Trustees who seem most indisposed to some additional questions. And as I've said before, the role of Paterno's associates and family, positive or negative, ought to be brought closer to the light.

But I refuse to cheer the impulsive actions of a collection of outsiders, sensationalists, ideologues and those still obsessed with old scores.

Last edited by 2nd trick op; 09-20-2012 at 04:45 AM..
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