Joe Paterno, Ross Douthat, Right and Left.

[elfs]

It occurred to me this morning that the discussion this morning about the difference between blue state and red state expectations is exceptionally well-illustrated in an editorial by Ross Douthat about the Joe Paterno scandal.

Paterno, in case you've been living under a rock, was the coach of Penn State College. An assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, has been arrested and charged with sexual assault on eight boys, all under the age of 12, and at least four of those cases happened on Penn State campus, in the locker rooms and showers of the football team. Sandusky ran a charity for boys in desperate straits, and used his position as an assistant coach of one of the most highly regarded football teams in college football with access to the facilities to exploit vunerable boys. In the most egregrious case reported, a witness heard "sounds of flesh slapping," as Sandusky allegedly raped a 10-year-old boy in the showers. The witness reported to Paterno who... nobody's quite sure.

A lot of anger has been heaped upon Paterno and the witness for doing nothing while a sexual predator used their good names and facilities to prey on pre-pubescent children. John Scalzi's Omelas State University (and if that name doesn't automagically put a chill up your spine, it ought to) nails most of the reasons why quite succinctly.

But there has been an awful lot of hang-wringing, "But you don't understand..." excuse-making from the other end. The most poorly-executed example to appear in a nationally syndicated newspaper was Ross Douthat's NY Times op-ed, The Devil and Joe Paterno. Douthat "tries to come to grips" with what may have driven Paterno, when the answer is simple: he was protecting the church of Penn State Football. Jon Stewart nailed that one pretty clearly., but the most devastating takedown yet is Belle Waring's Shorter Ross "I Would Do Anything For Love, But I Won't" Douthat, followed on by Patrick Nielsen-Hayden's follow-on analysis. Douthat writes:

Bad and mediocre people are tempted to sin by their own habitual weaknesses. The earlier lies or thefts or adulteries make the next one that much easier to contemplate. Having already cut so many corners, the thinking goes, what’s one more here or there? Why even aspire to virtues that you probably won’t achieve, when it’s easier to remain the sinner that you already know yourself to be?

But good people, heroic people, are led into temptation by their very goodness - by the illusion, common to those who have done important deeds, that they have higher responsibilities than the ordinary run of humankind. It’s precisely in the service to these supposed higher responsibilities that they often let more basic ones slip away.

For Douthat, Paterno's success is not one of contingency: he didn't happen to be lucky to get in when he did, and his leadership of a football team is somehow viewed as "heroic."

Paterno is one of the elite. And for Douthat, that's all that matters. The elite are there due to merit, not contingency: there is something "special" about them, and so when they show signs of corruption there's a sense of tragedy there that doesn't exist among those who, for all their good deeds, somehow didn't quite come to the attention of the press. For those people, a fall isn't tragic, because they're fallen already. Only a man's relative social position matters, not the absolute content of that man's character.

Douthat's attitude toward the opprobium heaped upon Paterno is clear: "Silly liberals, hoping that if he did the crime he'll do the time. Equality before the law? That's one of your ridiculous equality-of-outcome things, isn't it? Don't you understand? Paterno used his opportunity to build enormous social capital with skill and facility, and now he's reaping the rewards. You had an equal opportunity and you blew it, so if you're caught covering up a crime, don't expect me to cry for you, you red-diaper crybaby you."

Comments

[amythis.livejournal.com]

The elite are there due to merit, not contingency: there is something "special" about them, and so when they show signs of corruption there's a sense of tragedy there that doesn't exist among those who, for all their good deeds, somehow didn't quite come to the attention of the press.

"When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal."--Richard M. Nixon