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

[wendor.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I'm going to guess that you either have also "been living under a rock" since it seems unlike you to deliberately misrepresent the facts in order to increase the drama.

When you say "The witness reported to Paterno who... nobody's quite sure." it would imply that you didn't actually look at the information from the report issued by the Grand Jury at the end of it's investigation since there's no "nobody's quite sure" indicated with regard to what Paterno did next. According to the report issued by the Grand Jury, the witness reported the incident the following day to Paterno (his boss) who then reported it to Athletic Director Tim Curley (Paterno's boss).

The only part that would fall into "nobody's quite sure" is what the witness actually reported. The witness (assistant coach Mike McQueary) says that he reported hearing and then later seeing sexual intercourse between Sandusky and the 10 year old boy in the shower. Paterno says that McQueary simply reported inappropriate contact and horsing around.

But the bigger question I would ask is why Paterno is being singled out for failing to report the incident to the police when he wasn't the one who witnessed it. Why didn't the actual witness (Mike McQueary) contact the police?

If a friend came over to your house and told you "I saw a mother hit her child excessively hard at Costco yesterday" would YOU immediately grab the phone and call the police to report an assault when the friend who witnessed it firsthand, by not reporting it to the police, obviously didn't think it rose to the level of a crime?

McQueary bears the responsibility for failing to report a crime. I fail to see how that responsibility transfers to others who got unsubstantiated secondhand reports of the crime, especially when a question exists as to what that secondhand account actually consisted of. If the original witness didn't think the incident important enough to call the police directly, instead waiting until the following day to report it to his boss, then how is the person who got the account secondhand expected to treat it any differently?

Personally, I don't buy McQuery's version of events. He's basically saying "I witnessed a violent felony assault, and then not only chose not to call the police, I also waited until the following day to tell anyone, and chose to tell my boss rather than the authorities....but at that point I did describe the violent assault to my boss in detail". That doesn't pass a smell test for me. I find it far more believable that McQueary's report to Paterno the following day would have been consistent with the "not calling police" and "waiting until the next day" and probably involved a description that was not so blank and white....a description that would be appropriately handled by reporting it up the administration chain to someone with the authority to imitate an investigation....in other words, exactly what Paterno did.

John Scalzi's post is quite dramatic...but ignores most of the information from the Grand Jury report and instead chooses to assume the worst case scenario. He implies heavily that Paterno perjured himself to the Grand Jury with regards to what McQuery told him, apparently because somehow in his mind the person who witnessed the crime firsthand and chose not to report it is also the most believable of the four people who testified to the Grand Jury regarding what was reported. Dramatic, but also fails the most basic smell test.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

McQueary bears the responsibility for failing to report a crime.

That may be true, but it also doesn't pass the legal test; he's not legally obligated to report the crime up the chain of command. And McQueary is now claiming that he did more than what appeared in the Grand Jury report.

I agreed that it sounds like a lot of people are playing CYA with respect to the truth in this case. As for why Paterno is being singled out, I don't think he is; there's a lot of negative press for McQueary too. But Paterno is being pilloried for the half of Douthat's equation that he gets right: he had a metric ton of social capital and goodwill, and people who poured all that into someone are now realizing that he made a tragic and heinous error. Responsibility for institutional crimes goes to the very top, especially when the top knew.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

everyone from Paterno on up has tried to cover up the repeated assaults by their boy, Sandusky. Even if they just wanted it all hush hushed, they should have at the absolute minimum asked him to resign and go elsewhere, or face termination for some made-up offense. Over and Over Sandusky raped children. And over and over, Paterno (who knew all of them -- McQueary only caught Sandusky once) put the welfare of his oh-so-precious football program ahead of the law, of common decency, and simply keeping a rapist out of the football program.

As such, Paterno deserves far worse. Passing the buck forever and ever to avoid the law is no excuse. As a parent and a man, never mind a coach, he should not have tolerated Sandusky's presence in his program for one second more after learning what the sleezeball was doing to little kids. Over and over he failed the test of that "Sports creates Moral Character" theory. And I have no sympathy for him or anyone else who thinks it's okay to ignore children being raped, regardless of what the letter of the law requires as an absolute minimum.

I personally think that any sports program found guilty of hiding any crimes of its staff OR its players, is closed down for the same number of seasons that it can be proven that the program engaged in such shenanigans. Penn state hid the rapist for 10 years, so Penn State has NO sports program at ALL for the next 10 years. Make it clear that trying to hide crimes will bring more serious consequences than owning up to your responsibilities and doing what's right. Today though, a school sports program has every reason to hide crimes and pretend nothing is wrong -- what can it cost them if they are finally caught?

[wendor.livejournal.com]

"And over and over, Paterno (who knew all of them -- McQueary only caught Sandusky once) put the welfare....."

Ah, apparently you have evidence that the Grand Jury did not. I suggest that you either contact Linda Kelly (Pennsylvania Attorney General) with your evidence that Paterno knew about more of the assaults than the once incident which was reported to him.....or admit that you're making a completely bogus claim.

[tagryn]

Given that the leaked GJ report was just a summary, I suspect there'll be some substantial reevaluations of who-knew-what and who-did-what once actual testimony comes out. I'd be shocked if it cleared Sandusky - there's just too much "there" there in the GJ report, and his interview with Costas last night displayed none of the indignation one would expect from an innocent man - but the vilification of Paterno/McQuery for their actions could turn out to be a repeat of the Duke lacrosse case in terms of the court of public opinion reaching a verdict based on incomplete information, much of which later turned out not to hold up to scrutiny.

If it weren't college sports, I wouldn't be hearing about it.

[pakraticus.livejournal.com]

Here's my skewed perspective.
Sandusky hasn't screwed nearly as many kids in the past 15 years as the US Congress has.
Sure, one's literally and the other is figuratively, the the figurative screwing has been much more pervasive.
Which gets the coverage? The one with the college football coach, which by the NCAA and ACC guidelines, has been thoroughly screwing the players figuratively.

Tar and feather the whole lot of them including the reporters and the DA.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

I've only heard summations and talking head reports. But what I've heard was that Paterno was aware of multiple events both before and after the Mcqueary notification. If this data is incorrect then it is incorrect -- I do not have access to the secret GJ files as you appear to have. So you and I will have to both agree that neither of us were in the jury and thus all our data is piecemeal and probably error-filled. But no, I'm not fabricating data. I have no particular dog in this fight except the disgust that any university would choose to protect such a lout rather than get rid of him. In the environment in which we live today, where HR fires people for what they say on their Facebook page, a university overlooking child rape because they are in the football program incenses me.

[wendor.livejournal.com]

"I do not have access to the secret GJ files as you appear to have. So you and I will have to both agree that neither of us were in the jury and thus all our data is piecemeal and probably error-filled."

Uh, not even close. The Grand Jury report is not secret and was already released to the public. A relatively simple Google search will find it for you. Do your own research.

[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