<p>Sandusky is scum. But this isn’t a thread about him. This is about paterno the face of Penn state who by all accounts had power, control, and the adulation of many. He was responsible for what happened at Penn state. It was his realm, he took credit for all the football plusses, and he and his cronies chose to ignore a serious problem. </p>
<p>And if he felt awful well, it was about time. Of he felt pain, imagine what those
Those little boys felt.</p>
<p>Paterno was king and he knew better. If he died knowingnhe blew it, good. Too bad he didn’t do the right thing when he had the chance.</p>
<p>So by chance I decide to take a look at this thread tonight and the first post I see is this gracious, bighearted, classy post by Seahorse spewing her/his venom on Paterno’s grave. Nice! Don’t bother responding because I already know what your response will be.</p>
<p>EPTR- can you show me a link where it is confirmed that Paterno came across Sandusky on the grounds of PSU.</p>
<p>We have articles that say Sandusky still had use of the facility but I do not recall any article saying that he and Paterno would see each other on campus. Now you may be correct and they may have interacted but it is also possible they did not run into each other.</p>
<p>Seahorse-- this thread titled “Penn State Sandusky scandal” isn’t about Sandusky?? Says who? Why do you get to deem what the “real” focus of this thread is.</p>
<p>Tom, I was basing that statement on a picture used frequently in the press. It is the one with Paterno and Sandusky walking on the field. I went back and looked at the credits and it is from 1999 so I was making a false assumption based on that photo. My apologies.</p>
<p>Having said that, I cannot believe that Paterno did not run into Sandusky at PSU after 2002. If S was there, it stands to reason that Paterno knew it.</p>
<p>I felt compelled to respond to some of the above posts. I am the original thread starter. My intent in starting this thread was NOT Paterno. My focus was Sandusky, his actions, and the actions of the administration of Penn State and the possible impact on the institution. This was never intended to be a bash paterno or take up for Paterno thread. I have not posted here in quite some time because, honestly this went so far afield that it bears no resemblence to the discussion I was interested in.</p>
<p>hops, you still refuse to acknowledge that there was a whole lot of “in between” he could have done between absolute legal minimum and the extreme you put out there?</p>
<p>Paterno is being discussed here right now because he is being discussed everywhere right now.</p>
<p>Sandusky will go on trial, and the Paterno thing will likely be forgotten in that context. There are plenty of other characters whose behavior and motives will be dissected, Sandusky’s at the top of the heap, make no mistake.</p>
<p>momofa12–thank you for your post, I had the same thinking as you did about your intention in starting this thread. Clearly threads go in many directions, but even in the larger media Paterno became the lightning rod…imho Spanier, Curley and Schultz held more responsibility and they are mostly off the radar. </p>
<p>Frankly I am incredulous at how little focus has been paid to the victimizer Sandusky. the two sides expressed on this thread are quite polarized, I am surprised that folks can’t see the gray areas.</p>
<p>And it was the first day of the “news”. I think that this thread has morphed as new information has been reported. But I would definately put Joe Paterno in the “admin” category you state above. Although I am not sure he deserves quite the level of condemnation he is getting here (and elsewhere). </p>
<p>I do think he made an error, I feel that it is sad his career ended this way, and I do not think he died of a broken heart. I think he died because chose not to treat the lung cancer he knew about until after the end of the football season. If the investigation had anything to do with his death, I believe that it was guilt. All in all, I do think that Paterno wishes he had done more, and knows that he screwed up. But he is not the main bad guy. I see him more as a bystander that did not jump in when another citizen was in trouble. Like someone who called 911, but drove by a car accident instead of stopping to help. I am not sure if Paterno was like that in all of his life dealings, but that is how I see this incident.</p>
<p>Again, look at all the news outlets. Who is being featured right now? It’s Paterno! Because he just died and his life is being examined, both the highs and the lows.</p>
<p>No one here has suggested that Paterno’s acts or omissions, whatever they may have been, are as grievous as Sandusky’s.</p>
<p>it may be revived right now in the news because Paterno just died, but there have been articles written discussing how Paterno has been scapegoated in the media, largely because his name was known and thus was sensationalized…as all news is. </p>
<p>I was disgusted by Sandusky’s NYT interview…and his bashing of the victims, barely discussed here…just saying</p>
<p>momofa12 - of course. But then you take the ‘fun’ out of the thread. Folks are much more interested in trashing a dead man, not yet buried. It’s more fun to play to conspiracy theories and trash someone’s good name. It’s more fun to take the moral high ground.<br>
Keep it classy folks. </p>
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<p>Have opinions but folks should at least make a thinkly veiled attempt to base them on facts.</p>
<p>The fact is Paterno and Sandusky were not friends. They were not social. They did not get along well. Their age difference was nearly 25 years - they were not peers.</p>
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<p>Fun fact: AD Corbett (now Gov) said his office took years because they needed to corroborate more cases. They actually told this boy’s mother that they would not press charges on her son’s testimony. They needed to find more victims to build a case.<br>
How would that make you feel as a parent?</p>
<p>I think the media, with the help of Sandusky himself, has shown that Sandusky is just not right. OK, he is down right nuts, and possibly true evil. He seems to have kept a low profile the last few weeks too. So not as much to “report” right now. If he shows up at Paternos funeral…that will be interesting news. </p>
<p>I think that the whole Paterno focus is the fact that he held himself in such high regard, as did many others, and the fact that he was head of a successful athletic program. It’s the celebrity factor.</p>
<p>And I for one see the gray areas, as well as the black areas of this. And am open to both sides. Plus I have a healthy distrust of almost everything I read in the papers or online, and do not trust politicians/businessmen to be truthful.</p>
<p>^check out how Sandusky was treated as a saint when he retired from PSU, he too and others held S in high regard as well. which honestly is largely how he got away with his criminal actions for so long…because he had a public persona as a pillar of the community. and to say S is down right nuts is inaccurate. crazy as a fox and lacking a conscience.</p>
<p>^^ I guess that in my quest to have some level of faith in humanity, I feel that most evil people are also “nuts”. I refuse to believe that evil can exist without someone being completely wired wrong. It may be denial, but it helps me deal with the terrible things in the world.</p>
<p>And by the way, I do not think that Paterno was evil. Maybe a little narcisistic, but not evil. </p>
<p>I agree about Sandusky’s retirement. But the estabishment was still putting up a good front to prevent public scrutiny.</p>
<p>Sandusky can’t be at the funeral, he’s under house arrest still. Thank God.</p>
<p>I think Paterno became a lightning rod because there’s not much to discuss about Sandusky other than guilt or no guilt, and it certainly seems that he’s guilty. Past that, there’s not going to be a diversity of opinion about whether the crimes are horrendous or not. </p>
<p>I am disappointed there has not been more conversation about child abuse in general – what ordinary citizens can and should do to combat it, how institutions fail at preventing it, how to treat revelations. I still maintain that the message of this mess is not (as some of you seem to feel) “you’d better report everything yourself” but instead it’s “we’re going to hold you accountable, even if courts don’t, even if you admit you didn’t know what else to do, even if the perp is not your employee, even if you did follow policy and OTHER people didn’t — even with all that, we’re going to fire you. Drag your name through the mud and generalize wildly” </p>
<p>Why on earth, given that attitude, would anyone report abuse? You are much better off preparing plausible deniability. Only people who know nothing at all would be safe. And if we can agree on nothing else, I think we can agree that creating a climate of silence is not what anyone wants. </p>
<p>Joe was not bitter, he was not broken-hearted. He was smarter than that. He knew how the world works, how it turns, what counts. He told his kids to take care of their mom, told them to build PSU back up to what it should be, and he died peacefully, accountable to a God he knew well enough to trust to judge him.</p>
<p>^^ admin had been trying to get Paterno to retire for some time. When this happened, they went into damage control mode. Firing Paterno served both purposes.</p>
<p>Paterno is mostly what we talk about because there are ample voices from both sides that are willing to weigh in on him. Talking about Paterno does not at all diminish the gravity of heinous nature of what Sandusky is accused of doing. So let’s not try to squelch any talk that are related and relevant to the case.</p>