And now the rumors get uglier (via OTB):
In April, Pittsburgh radio host Mark Madden wrote a story revealing Penn State for much of the cover-up of Jerry Sandusky’s alleged child rape that has been exposed in the past week. While it didn’t raise many eyebrows back then, six months later it looks to be incredibly accurate.
On Thursday morning, just hours after legendary head coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier were fired by the school’s board of trustees, Madden was asked on The Dennis and Callahan Show what he believes the next piece of news will be.
What he said was twice as shocking as anything that’s been released thus far.
“I can give you a rumor and I can give you something I think might happen,” Madden told John Dennis and Gerry Callahan. “I hear there’s a rumor that there will be a more shocking development from the Second Mile Foundation — and hold on to your stomachs, boys, this is gross, I will use the only language I can — that Jerry Sandusky and Second Mile were pimping out young boys to rich donors. That was being investigated by two prominent columnists even as I speak.”
***“The other thing I think that may eventually become uncovered, and I talked about this in my original article back in April, is that I think they’ll find out that Jerry Sandusky was told that he had to retire in exchange for a cover-up,” Madden said. “If you look at the timeline, that makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?
Madden (who, btw, is a first class jackass) does make several good points- Sandusky was famous for his linebackers, yet just retired in his coaching prime? Why were there no other offers? Why did no NFL teams want him? Why did no other university chase after him? I think we’re about to learn that this was not only an open secret at Penn State, but across the ranks in the upper echelon of college football.
I don’t know how much I would trust the pimping rumors right now, but we are in the early stages of this and who knows what will come out before this is all over. Sandusky being charged was just the start of this- how many of his players knew? How many of them talked to other players in the NFL? How many boosters knew? How much did the board know? What about the Alumni Association? I wouldn’t be surprised when this is all over the NCAA will be scrambling to cover their asses and end up giving Penn State football a death sentence.
This is just getting started.
smintheus
A couple of corrections. It wasn’t Madden who broke that story but Sara Ganim at the Patriot News.
Also, she reports that both Temple and Univ. of Maryland offered to hire Sandusky, but he declined in order to spend more time with the kids in Second Mile. Yeah, yech.
srv
Stuff they gets hidden successfully for a decade or two had to involve a lot of people.
Sandusky is an old guy, start looking into the 60’s and 70’s.
Villago Delenda Est
Furthermore, it is (Kenneth Branagh voice here) far from over.
cathyx
Do you think that everyone knew about this and that’s why there were no other offers to hire him? If that many people knew, then it could not have been possible to keep it quiet this long.
smintheus
Oh, and she also reported this which I hadn’t known:
So clearly his behavior was widely known.
Robin G.
I honestly think this is the sickest sports scandal I’ve seen, by degrees of magnitude. Sure, these are just rumors, but the very fact that they seem plausible says something about how awful things already are.
Everyone who knew needs to be fired at the very least, and prosecuted if legally possible. I mean, knowing what Sandusky was doing and still allowing him access to the locker room while turning the other way — fuck, isn’t that conspiracy to commit rape under some statute or another? I want to see all these people in jail.
The game on Saturday is going to be scary ugly. I’d tune in to see it, just out of morbid curiosity, but that’s supporting PSU through viewership and I’m not gonna do that.
Just… ick. I need to take a shower.
Cacti
I think by the time all of the information comes out, Penn State is going to have to do a house cleaning along the lines of the post-WWII de-nazification program. Hire an outsider and completely sanitize the program of Paterno acolytes.
A clean break with the JoePa personality cult is needed.
CaseyL
Someone on Scalzi’s blog mentioned hearing this. I thought it was the kind of rumor people start to make themselves feel important (the original source, that is; most emphatically NOT the person who reported it at Whatever). I could not imagine even the puddles of moral mucous at Penn State knowing this and keeping it to themselves.
I shouldn’t be too shocked: these are the sex tourists who go to places like Bangkok and the Dominican Republic, when they’re at home.
But my god they should be skinned and staked out on a fire ant hill.
For starters.
Villago Delenda Est
While Madden may well be a jackass, this:
He’s right. It does make perfect sense.
The fact that there is a grapevine, and the word went out on what sort of man (I use that word with some trepedation) Jerry Sandusky is throughout the football world meant that he didn’t get picked up by anyone else. Too radioactive.
demkat620
As a Pennsylvanian, I can’t begin to tell you how horrifying and devastating all this is.
This was an institution that it didn’t matter where you lived in the state, PSU was something to be proud of.
Under the jail is not even good enough for everyone involved.
joes527
If this comes out to be true, they should of course leave no stone upon another stone and sow the (football) field with salt.
But until it is more than a rumor, it actually isn’t irresponsible not to speculate.
Without something solid behind it, it seems like just so much blog porn
John O
I will now and forever associate Penn St. with the Catholic Church.
Organized pedophilia. Lovely.
ruemara
One of the most interesting things I’ve learned from my own research on, well, evil things, is how often many people know about it. They often even participate in it. I hate, hate, hate to ask, but what demographics of Pennsylvania were served by this charity? It’s been surprising how often a group of others could be preyed upon without consequence, whereas a group of clean cut right side and shade of the tracks cannot. Please note, I am not calling Sandusky a bigot. It’s a calculation some of these predators make.
Cat Lady
Buzz Bissinger was just on Tweety talking about this, and suggested that all these big time football programs practice Omerta, but that the mafia has higher morals. It’s hard to argue with that. Mike Smerconish added that we’re still in the first quarter of this whole disgusting affair, and that the entire political establishment will most likely be implicated. This has got bionic legs.
demkat620
@Cacti: I think football is going to be over at PSU.
How the hell do you recruit and what happens if the NCAA decides, if a cover up is found, to stop the scholarships.
Lysana
Sadly, I would believe the pimping rumors. But I may be more aware than you of how often the rich and bored really can buy anything they want. Children being prostituted out like that happens more than I care to think about. The rich perverts get away with it because money buys lawyers and the rape culture we live in conspires against the victims. Sandusky proving to be a panderer alongside a pervert, considering his access, is a logical extension.
The Moar You Know
Sweet Jesus, I hope this isn’t true. Not because I’m some kind of football fan or anything, I just would like a world in which little boys rectums aren’t being bought and sold for the pleasure of wealthy perverts.
Too much to ask, but damn, don’t let this be true.
Gin & Tonic
@smintheus: You know, I’m not from the area, have no connection with Penn State and don’t give two shits about football, college or pro, so this is genuine ignorance. But I read that story you linked to, which was from March, and has pretty much all the details that came out this week, and can’t help wondering – why didn’t the shit hit the fan then? That was a well-written, detailed, well-sourced story with exactly the same explosive allegations.
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
The grand jury report seems to indicate that’s when the investigation got into full swing. McQueary (aka the anonymous “graduate assistant” who testified about Victim 2) was interviewed by the grand jury in December of 2010.
Steve
There’s at least a basis to believe the guy was forced to retire in exchange for a cover-up. But the pimping thing is the kind of scurrilous rumor that people shouldn’t be spreading in the absence of any evidence whatsoever. Yes, there are some truly awful people in this story, but try to use a little judgment.
smintheus
@CaseyL: Yes, the pimping rumor does not sound especially credible on its face. I wouldn’t put stock in it just because Madden is blabbing about it on air. It appears that Madden is now trying to take a lot more credit than he deserves for prescience in developing this story. As I said earlier in the thread, Madden just lifted his info in April from the lengthy report published by the Patriot News.
That’s not to say Sandusky could not have done that, or could not have imagined that he might get away with it. But it just sounds like the kind of fiction that people make up, more than a realistic scenario.
John
The pimping thing still seems outrageous to me. How, exactly, would Sandusky know which “rich donors” are pedophiles? This just seems like too much.
John O
@Steve:
Sorry, this story is so sick and wrong I find plausibility in just about anything I hear about it. We’ll see.
History demonstrates that this rumor is what I might call, “not exactly a stretch.”
Hill Dweller
@Cat Lady: Including the current Governor.
Tom Ames
His Frothiness seemed to buy the wholesome act as late as 2002.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/11/rick-santorum-sponsored-honor-for-accused-psu-coach-jerry-sandusky/248234/#
Mnemosyne
@Gin & Tonic:
Probably because that story was reporting the rumors and allegations about the grand jury investigation (which was still secret at that point). The grand jury presented the actual indictments this week, including the ones for perjury.
Cacti
Last night when Paterno came out of his house to thank the
mobfans, was anyone else waiting for the part where 10,000 balloons popped out and he flew away to Paradise Falls?Adolphus
Just remember a couple of things:
1. The pedophile witch hunts of the 80’s and 90’s also included lurid accounts of sex rings and turned out to be crap. I think prudence is called for with independent investigations. I hope it isn’t true and if it turns out not to be these journalists need to be locked away.
2. The Omertà thing. Google Abar Rouse. Did the right thing. Snitched on the Baylor coach and he never worked in college basketball again. That he stood up for what was right when taping and turning in his boss is irrelevant. He went outside the family.
kindness
Snark won’t cut it on this one. I’ve tried but I can’t.
Consenting adults people, consenting adults. Kids are off limits unless you are also a kid.
CaptainFwiffo
Nuke it from space; it’s the only way to be sure.
cthulhu
PSU really needs to cancel the rest of their season. To try to carry forward until they can do the due diligence they should have done years ago (no later than 1998, if not earlier). I know people will argue that this hurts innocent players, etc., but basically everyone with a shot at the pros has already been scouted and I can’t see supplying the fans with their entertainment as sufficient justification under the circumstances.
Oh and I can bet that if they do play this weekend, the on field, get-in-your-head taunts from Nebraska are going to be at a level of, well, I can guess but don’t want to think about it too much.
smintheus
@Gin & Tonic: Exactly my reaction. The story was a bombshell…that didn’t quite explode. Why?
and
Mnemosyne
As far as the actual allegation, some people pointed out in the other thread that it’s not unusual for socially connected people under indictment to try and claim that prosecuting them would cause more damage than the case would be worth, so I’m withholding judgement on it. There’s a chance that this could be a claim by Sandusky to try and quash the prosecution (or, alternatively, cut a better deal for himself by accusing others). So I’m going to wait until there are a few more facts, especially since the county prosecutors seem to be doing a damn good job so far.
That, and I want to be able to sleep tonight. The actual, factually known scope is already bad enough.
befuggled
@Steve: I’m with you. While I wouldn’t be all that surprised, I want to see some evidence before we start hanging people outside of the ones that are already involved now. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a nation-wide college football pedophilia ring, but this could just as easily end with Sandusky and the PSU coverup.
Also, Sandusky apparently did interview for other jobs shortly after he “retired.” He interviewed for the Virginia job and apparently Virginia didn’t think he had his heart set on football. If there were pedophilia rumors then, I don’t think he gets an interview at all.
Litlebritdifrnt2
My poor DH is still trying to defend JoPa and it is quite sad to see the scales fall away from his eyes. He was abused as a child and this hits home for him. The thought that someone witnessed a child being abused (raped) (in my DHs case it was beating, not sexual) and the person WALKED AWAY to let it continue has really busted his gut. The fact that one of his heroes (JoPa) knew that a little boy had been raped and DID NOTHING is another gut punch. I think alot of people are like that right now, but as more details come out I think those protesters at Penn State are going to be changing their minds. I hope so, because I sure as hell don’t want to believe that there are people out there who think that winning a fucking football game is more important than punishing people who enabled a child rapist.
Robin G.
@cthulhu:
PSU aside, it’s not fair to the teams who are scheduled to play them. Nebraska shouldn’t be penalized for the sins of Penn State.
Rommie
@cthulhu: And two road games at Ohio State and Wisconsin, both places not known for kindness to visiting teams. Circus is a polite way to describe what the last 3 PS games are going to be, let alone a Big10 Championship Game and/or the Bowl Game.
scav
Bowl Games. Isn’t that the problem where you start running up against the money issues? (or, at least still more money issues. I was reading something yesterday about a lot of teams actually lost money by participating in smaller bowls.)
Villago Delenda Est
@Adolphus:
They also included a great deal of “Satanic cult” talk as well that was even purer crap.
I remember one of the Seattle TV stations in the mid 80’s pushing a “Satanic cults around Puget Sound!” storyline, appropriately, during November, that is, sweeps month. It was all utter crap, but I’m sure it helped their ratings.
Speedy
@Steve: At first glance , I find the pimping story to be most likely bullshit. But then again , if you told me a week ago that JoePa would be getting fired for sheltering a serial child rapist for years , I would have called that bullshit too.
Mark S.
@Cat Lady:
Huh, a little surprised Buzz said that, because Buzz is usually a dipshit.
It’s interesting that Sandusky had just won a national award for assistant coach of the year (scroll down to 1999). You’d think other schools would be beating down his door. I guess he got offered a couple jobs, but it’s still kind of fishy.
t jasper parnell
@Robin G.: Really? The shutting down of a clearly corrupt and disfunctional athletic program with a university attached ought to be about fairness to other athletic programs with universities attached.
Jay C
The gents at Lawyers, Guns and Money have been all over this from the get-go: it was Paul Campos, I believe, who pointed out in what I think was his first post on the PSU scandal, that there was some sort of malodor about Jerry Sandusky’s “retirement” back in 1999, that in retrospect, might have provided a clue about the coach’s – ummm, “behavioral” – problems. Of course, hindsight isn’t always infallible; but my guess is that there was another boy-in-the-shower-room-type incident that got tidily covered up, and I’m guessing evidence of that will emerge sooner or later: yes, I agree we’re still in the first stage of this disgusting affair…
Gex
The reason I think there may be something to the pimping rumors is this: If they found out about him in 98 but did nothing but force him to retire, but STILL kept and office for him, handed him keys, etc. you have to ask why. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised (if the pimping rumors are true) that many of them knew before 98 and only severed official ties to give themselves plausible deniability for anything that happened down the road. Which got blown to hell when he got caught in Penn St. facilities.
Mark S.
@Rommie:
Oh, I don’t think Penn St. has to worry about that game. I don’t think they’re going to win another game this season. They aren’t very good and they’re playing the three best teams in the conference.
West of the Cascades
@smintheus: my god — that March 2012 article pretty much hit all of the salient points about one of the victims and even referred to the 1998 investigation.
It seems to raise more questions — why didn’t Penn State’s Trustees launch its own investigation at that point? Yes, I know “don’t interfere with ongoing grand jury investigation,” but anyone with half a mind on the board, reading that article, should have asked Spanier for information about the grand jury testimony of Paterno, Curley and Schultz referred to in this March 2012 story.
That’s pretty basic fiduciary duty stuff: “several of the highest profile employees at the University have recently testified before a grand jury about allegations that a former high-profile employee indecently assaulted a teenager. What is going on, President Spanier? It’s conceivable this could have negative repercussions for the University.”
Also, it seems to be an odd coincidence that Sandusky wasn’t arrested until Paterno won his 409th game when the investigation had gone on for at least two years. I know it takes time to build a case … but until now it hadn’t been clear that this was in the news eight months ago. What was up with the timing by the AG’s office?
As to this pimping rumor, it’s just too horrible to imagine, and it doesn’t seem to have any factual foundation yet, so I hope that it’s false. It’s not as if this story needs anything more to make it worse.
Suffern ACE
@Steve:
I tend to agree. This is how scandals turn into moral panics like we had in the 1990s at the day care centers. This isn’t to say that there aren’t reporters looking into this (but who are their sources), and we shouldn’t be prepared for worse details to come out than have thus far, but it is probably best not to run with every rumored story. So far, all we have is the grand jury evidence to support charges against Sandusky and none of the testimony from the boys has been about Sandusky introducing the boys to other pedophiles or vice versa.
Elisabeth
@Rommie:
I’m torn on this. It is my duty as an Ohio State fan to boo opposing teams lustily. But in this case I feel sorry for the PSU players who are caught up in a situation they really have nothing to do with.
Therefore, I’m going to pretend that the booing will be directed at McQueary if the interim coach’s decision to let him on the sidelines remains in place.
t jasper parnell
@Villago Delenda Est: It’s worth reading the Slacktivist on the absurdity of the satanism claims.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
And isn’t it just weird that the County Prosecutor (or District Attorney or whatever PA calls theirs) who didn’t file charges in 1998, “disappeared” in 2002 and has been declared legally dead? I saw that at LGM and thought, “hmmm, quite odd.” You cannot make this stuff up. Public people do not just disappear that often – anyone wonder how many files went with him?
Mark S.
@Jay C:
I think I read at LGM that at Sandusky’s retirement party, Paterno gave a speech or whatever that lasted less than a minute. Not exactly a warm send off to a loyal assistant of thirty years.
Of course, Joe almost certainly knew the real reason Jerry was retiring.
Robin G.
@t jasper parnell: No, it’s about fairness to the students and professionals associated with these other athletic universities. They’re real people who need to do their jobs and work for their futures, and they shouldn’t get screwed because PSU is apparently full of sociopaths.
Anniecat45
Anybody want to speculate about what happened to Gricar, the prosecutor? Apparently he hasn’t been seen since 2005 . . .
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45244328/ns/local_news-philadelphia_pa/?GT1=43001
Jade Jordan
Why is McQeary getting a free pass. He saw a child being raped by a man and did not physically intervene. OK I get that not everyone is that strong or brave. However, he should have called 911 once he got outside or to his car. That child could have been killed after the rape.
He gets promoted from Grad Assistant to a coaching position. Isn’t that convenient. Was it a case of you keep your mouth shut and we’ll take care of you. Is this why he is still employed?
I think this is going to be bad, even worse than the pimping and a dead DA who was investigating the early case.
Speaking of ethics, what do the Coach Paterno fans think of him racking up wins without even coaching? I can’t remember the last time I saw him engaged in the game or wearing a headset.
Villago Delenda Est
@t jasper parnell:
Wow, that is a very interesting read.
I certainly hope that the entire notion that Sandusky was pimping out young boys turns out to be as bogus.
What we’ve got pretty solid evidence of him doing was bad enough…
Cat Lady
Everything about big time college football is a lie and rotten to the core, and the only “good” that can come out of it is that another rotten institution fails. Lies, cover ups, stupidity, tyranny, fraud, duplicity, cheating, bigotry – are all slowly being exposed as 2012 approaches. It’s almost like the Mayans were right.
Robin G.
@Elisabeth:
I can’t imagine he really will. There’s too much outrage.
(That being said, I think we’re likely to hear more about McQueary’s story, because the big question of “Why?” isn’t going away any time soon. I really think there’s another shoe to drop there.)
Flugelhorn
Interesting that all of this hits the public eye only after Paterno gets the record for most wins in CFB history for Division I. Makes you wonder… Coincidence or was someone sitting on this until Paterno got the record?
DaBomb
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Also, apparently that DA had a bad taste in his mouth for Penn State and the coach.
Samara Morgan
@Anniecat45: that is fascinating. Gricar has just been declared legally dead after being missing for 7 years.
this whole thing reads like a Jonathan Kellerman novel.
bought off or killed off?
t jasper parnell
@Robin G.: Assuming, of course, that the athletic departments of aren’t, you know, complicit in widespread corruption. Why, as I recall, just a few weeks ago another great and honorable coach resigned because he was, in fact, a corrupt and dishonorable lout. There are millions upon millions of dollars at stake in the “honorable” world of college sports and the covering up of the mendacity and corruption of its beneficiaries isn’t limited to sexual predators.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jade Jordan:
Jade, those very points have been exhaustively discussed in several threads over the past few days as this scandal has unfolded.
scav
@scav: Here, found the article about Bowl Games in case people want to talk about things that are slightly less disturbing for a while: College Football Winners Still Lose as Bowl Costs Exceed Payout. Bloomberg, Dec 2010 so rather handily up-to-date. It does feed into the whole cost-benefit aspect of college football.
The Thin Black Duke
Problem is, although I think the “pimping kids out to rich donors” rumor is bullshit, nobody is going to give Penn State the benefit of the doubt ever again. Non-decisions have consequences.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Does anyone else find it monstrously ironic that Sandusky’s autobiography is called Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story ? The whole thing is sordid and I hope they all lose every penny their grandchildren might ever have had to several awards of damages.
DaBomb
Another victim has came forward.
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/state_police_man_comes_forward.html#incart_hbx
Mark S.
@Villago Delenda Est:
Dear God, they have. Let’s not get Mnem started up again.
Just kidding, Mnem!
handsmile
@West of the Cascades: (#46)
t jasper parnell
@Villago Delenda Est: Fred Clark is generally very good, although his long running demolition of the “Left Behind” books is a bit much. What I can’t understand is how he is out of work and Yglie has a job.
Robin G.
@t jasper parnell: I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be the case, but there’s no evidence whatsoever yet to suggest that these other institutions knew anything about Sandusky. It’s not fair to just start dismantling college football because of PSU.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
OT: The mayor of Portland has announced that Occupy Portland will be removed from the parks they occupy at midnight Saturday night/Sunday morning.
smintheus
@West of the Cascades:
Agreed. However, I think Spanier must have informed the Board long before the grand jury info was published in March. Otherwise I’m pretty sure he would have been sacked right then.
But that just pushes the underlying question back farther into the past. Why did the Board take so long to act against anybody? Most of the Board members should be replaced as well…though since internal deliberations are no doubt secret, it would be difficult to say which ones.
I recently worked for another PA college where the president was totally out of control for a decade, doing absolutely bizarre stuff. And he had the full backing of the Board of Trustees right up until they learned about some of his behavior and sacked him on the spot. The Board was of course negligent in knowing so little about what everybody else knew, and their negligence was the real underlying problem at the school. And they did not sack themselves. Instead, they just promoted some of the former regime’s hacks and the rot at the core of the campus culture went (pointedly) unaddressed.
Gex
@Flugelhorn: And if so, why bother? This will always be used to asterisk that record if the fact that he was just a figurehead for the last years isn’t used first.
Elisabeth
@Robin G.:
Agreed about the “why.” And I have to wonder why McQueary would want to be on the sidelines. If I was in his shoes I’d be in Montana or North Dakota by now hiding out.
Speedy
@Robin G.:
One of our local sports talkers was saying today that McQeary’s dad is saying that his son is “chomping at the bit” to tell the true story of what he knows , which strikes me as strange because he already supposedly did that , under oath , to the Grand Jury. So either he lied , or more likely , he held something back.
willard
The reason the pimping ring seems plausible is because Sandusky created a multimillion dollar charity of the most vulnerable children to feed his sick twisted sexual appetite. Apparently all the adoptions and foster kids wasn’t enough. Kay pointed out in the other thread that Sandusky and his wife couldn’t have kids. They were foster parents.
Robin G.
@Elisabeth: Yeah. I definitely don’t want to make this thread into another debate over McQueary’s culpability or lack thereof, but I think everyone can more or less agree that we’ll be hearing more details about his story as this thing unfolds.
joes527
@Robin G.:
Yeah … well they need to get in line behind the 10 year old(s) who shouldn’t get screwed.
Bad things happened here. People got hurt. Badly.
The real people who get screwed (or will get screwed) because PSU is apparently full of sociopaths are all victims. But that doesn’t mean that “business as usual” is the right path to take at this point.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Mark S.: Well, after all, those officials at Penn haven’t even done anything yet!
smintheus
@DaBomb: I saw a report yesterday that said, without documentation, that another 17 reports had come in from further alleged victims.
The Thin Black Duke
One of our local sports talkers was saying today that McQeary’s dad is saying that his son is “chomping at the bit” to tell the true story of what he knows
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think McQueary’s Dad needs to shut the fuck up.
t jasper parnell
@Robin G.: Yeah, right, after all there wasn’t huge scandal down Florida way involving sex and money, was there. They don’t have to know about Penn State’s current scandal to know about, you know, the long history of scandals involving big time collegiate sports scandals.
JPL
@Jade Jordan: McQueary might have whistle blower protection. At least that’s what is being speculated. Type in McQueary and whistle blower on google.
Unfortunately, this story is just beginning.
Villago Delenda Est
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Yeoch!
Those poor people at Penn, getting confused, now, with Penn State continuously by the football/college casual public…
JPL
@The Thin Black Duke: Seems to me that his dad gave his son poor advice in the past and now he just needs to go away.
Martin
@smintheus:
As I suggested last night. State College is a quite small town. Like every small town, there are no real secrets. And even big universities have small faculty populations, and they know everything given they run the place.
Usually when someone vanishes like that, they decided to end their own life. If we assume that, then the speculation becomes why he made that decision, and that could go anywhere.
Robin G.
@t jasper parnell: Is PSU scheduled to play Florida in the rest of this season? By all means, cancel that game.
t jasper parnell
@t jasper parnell: link But I am sure this a few bad apples scenario. Which is to say, it’s systemic.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Villago Delenda Est: It had never occurred to me, until that thread, that anyone could ever have confused the two schools – one has Wharton, the other has linebackers. I forget not everyone is the geek and sports enthusiast that I am.
Xecky Gilchrist
Jerry Sandusky and Second Mile were pimping out young boys to rich donors.
Holy fuck. If this is true, it’s going to make the dumbass mob rioting in support of them look like even bigger chumps.
t jasper parnell
@Robin G.: Come on, stop pretending that big time college sports is a haven of honorable men and women working for the good of college athletes instead of a swampland of corruption and cupidity. Remember, old pal, Joe Pa was one of the honorable men who trained his players to be the kind of men of honor and integrity who would never do the kind of thing he is accused of doing.
Trainrunner
Breaking: Paterno hires criminal defense attorney (via Thinkprogress).
Joel
Dennis and Callahan are also first class jackasses. This does bring to following to bear: How was a low-rent sport radio jock the first guy to make significant public noise about this? Leads me to agree with Cole that there were more people in the know than initially let on.
Cat Lady
@Trainrunner:
That’s smart. He’s gonna need one.
ajr22
I think it is absurd that McQueary is still coaching. It is shady enough that he was promoted right after he reported this information to Paterno, how do they explain the fact that he is the only person not removed from his duties? He is a key witness in this case, and his testimony (specifically what he told Paterno, the AD etc…) is important not only to the criminal convictions, but to huge civil litigation against the university. If he felt the shame that he should, he would resign his position effective immediately.
MCA
There’s no way this is true. First, because I need to maintain some faith in humanity, and this would just be too much to take. Second, because I don’t consider myself terribly naive and even the concept is shocking to the senses, so I just can’t believe this is the sort of thing that actually happens in the real world.
But mostly, I just can’t believe there’s anything to this, since investigators just spent 3+ years tracking Sandusky down and bringing 40 counts against him. If there was anything to the prostitution ring angle, I’d expect they’d have stumbled upon it. Perhaps they did and didn’t find enough evidence to indict on it, but if there was anything at all, I’d think if they had solid enough evidence to indict on the basic charges, they’d throw this in, too, given the lower bar of evidence at grand jury level.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
My brain is still trying to wrap itself around this; were does child rape come into football??? You would think he was doing something like sleeping with the cheerleaders, not having children delivered to him for sexual abuse on campus. And that bit, he was brazen enough to do it on the collage campus, it’s not collage kids are noted for their passiveness.
debit
ThinkProgress just tweeted that Paterno has hired a criminal defense lawyer. Yeah, ya think?
ETA: comment 91 beat me to the punch.
t jasper parnell
@Robin G.: Just as by the way, Barry Alverez of the UW-Madison, who makes 1 million per year as AD, invested how much he won’t say with the crook buying prostitutes for college football players. I am sure, of course, that Barry had no idea of the shenanigans. Which is too say, sure he did or sure he should have. Also too, Big Ben’s proclivities and sense of entitlement began when he became a professional, right?
Joel
@t jasper parnell: Let’s also throw Tom Osborne (R-Nebraska) in the mix. The fucked-up-ness of college football runs a lot deeper than boosters and gambling scandals.
Martin
@JPL:
Well, that’s not how whistleblower protection works. Whistleblower protection would cover him against institutional retaliation for reporting the incident, which isn’t at issue.
But if it’s determined he did properly report the incident and has no responsibility for followthrough, then yeah, he’d be clear. I don’t think that’s the case here, though. JoePa ain’t the cops, nor was McQueary’s dad. If I witness a crime, I don’t get a free pass if I tell my neighbor about it, my boss about it, or my dog about it.
jayackroyd
I emailed John expressing doubt about this pov, referring back to a similar horror at my high school. But I was wrong, and it’s pretty clear at this point that is indeed just getting started.
Evil. Exploitation. And, as t jasper parnell notes, not all that far removed from other aspects of college sports programs. “corruption and cupidity.”
bin Lurkin'
http://www.wowt.com/home/headlines/NU_Regent_Scared_133616598.html
A University of Nebraska regent said Thursday he fears for the safety of the Nebraska football traveling party and fans attending Saturday’s game at Penn State. He wants assurances a security plan is in place to protect them.
Regent Tim Clare of Lincoln said he began worrying about safety while watching televised coverage of the scene in State College, Pennsylvania after coach Joe Paterno’s firing was announced Wednesday night. He said Penn State has a raucous atmosphere on a normal football Saturday and the school owes Nebraska answers.
cthulhu
@Robin G.:
That sounds fair on the surface but let’s say the PSU team plane crashed killing everyone on board. Is your first thought, “Man, that sucks for the teams they were supposed to play!” Sometimes things are serious enough to require a full stop. And if the programs at NE, WI and OH State can’t see that, then they are part of the problem too. But actually I suspect that the players, coaches and staff of those schools would be largely understanding.
And what the BCS being the way it is, who could even predict if dumping those three games would even matter.
smintheus
@Martin: I saw your comments on the other thread. I mostly agree, though I wouldn’t be too confident about how much faculty as a whole knew. Have one friend on the PSU faculty and I’m pretty sure she wasn’t aware of this.
My guess is that at a place like PSU, the only faculty allowed to meddle with the athletic program would be either very junior, untenured nobodies or very senior and reliable hacks, esp. jock wannabes. Their ‘oversight’ would be limited to a narrow scope of things, mostly cheerleading dressed up as faculty governance.
When I taught at Ohio State, I was told that Woody Hayes for many years sat in on all faculty hiring interviews to make sure that new faculty realized they were to treat athletes with kid gloves. The faculty didn’t dare rebel. That’s the power relationship in a big football school.
Mnemosyne
@Mark S.:
:-p
Though, yes, even I think that particular topic is pretty much completely exhausted at this point, at least until any new information is released.
J.W. Hamner
I doubt it… all they care about is preserving the sham of amateurism. In their eyes getting tatts for memorabilia is a far greater crime than the raping on children.
Or, if you want to be more charitable, breaking laws supersedes NCAA rules violations… and I would not at all be surprised if they violated no NCAA rules. Paterno was famous for it after all.
Robin G.
@t jasper parnell: Did I say it’s a haven of honor? I never said anything of the kind. The only thing I have said is that until evidence is shown to the contrary there is no reason to believe that Nebraska, Ohio, or Wisconsin were in any way involved in the Sandusky scandal, and therefore should not be unfairly penalized for said scandal.
Mnemosyne
@Robin G.:
PSU forfeits all of the remaining games and their opponents each get a free win on their records (not to mention an extra week off). Problem solved.
t jasper parnell
@Joel: Exactly. The wide-spread and appropriate horror at the horror show horror of Penn States’ obvious corruption and wretchedness is an opportunity to rid out lives of one of the massive corrupt and corrupting forces of money and power. Or so it seems to me.
t jasper parnell
@Robin G.: And all I have been arguing is that Penn State is one of many know scandals and evidence that the worse scandal imaginable can be covered up for at least 9 years. What other wretchedness awaits discovery, well, awaits discovery. The record seems pretty clear: big money corrupts.
Robin G.
@cthulhu: Of course that wouldn’t be my first thought, and it wasn’t my first thought here (or my second, third, fourth…). That being said, it’s not exactly the same as a plane crash taking out the entire team; after all, there would be the problem of there being no one to play. (I tried continuing the analogy in my head, but it got very confusing. And then I started thinking about “Alive”, which I rewatched a few days ago, and it just got more confusing. I digress.)
Regardless, while there are things that involve a full stop, those things are usually tragedies. This isn’t a tragedy (which implies a lack of a guilty party), it’s a disgrace. And when there’s a disgrace, it doesn’t seem fair to penalize these other institutions who weren’t involved.
Splitting the difference, I think that it would be fair for Saturday’s game — which was scheduled to be the last home game of the season for PSU — should be played in Nebraska instead. No parties for the rioting morons, tons of money lost.
Gex
@Mnemosyne: I’m sure the money is part of the issue. And for BCS contenders points for/against, etc. Stupid, but true. Whenever there’s a lot of money behind trivial things, those trivial things seem to gain a ton of importance.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
sandusky had the perfect set up, unlimited access to the program, where he was once, and its weird to think about it, thought of as being more important to their success on the field than paterno himself, by not just a few people.
he had his access to children, he had cover, he wouldn’t go anywhere else. his connection to football, which if it were without child rape would be more than enough for most people, was a means to an end.
sandusky didn’t go anywhere, because he didn’t want to go anywhere.
you have to start wondering about guys like galen hall, who was once head coach of florida, who took a grad asst job at penn st, which for the uninitiated would be like an apple exec studying to become a microsoft cert. he got hired, and has been there without thought of leaving, since.
other coaches go to penn st, and never get on the coaching carousel again, it was once admired, but you have to wonder. the coaching profession is by nature, itinerate.
Robin G.
@Mnemosyne: I think everyone except the three teams getting the free wins would have something to say about the fairness of that. It does have a certain appeal, though.
Martin
@smintheus:
Yeah, I’ve heard things at OH State are a bit different, but I kind of expected that. PSU is a larger system, in a larger state, and I thought quite a bit less dependent on athletics.
cathyx
There is a safety in numbers aspect to the victims feeling more confident to step forward and speak up about their abuses. There are 15 now? And that also would make it more likely that if the scandal does implicate the Second Mile in the pimping out of the children, then that also will come out.
befuggled
@Joel: The grand jury has been going on since 2009. I would assume that he knew somebody who knew something.
@Mark S.: I think it’s more likely that Sandusky didn’t really want a job. He’d have to move, and presumably rebuild all the connections that allowed him to get away with what he’d been doing for probably 30 years.
Gex
@befuggled: Ugh. That’s the worst part about what the Penn Staters did. They didn’t just do nothing or do the minimum. They also created a safe place for Sandusky to rape children for about a decade after they had reasons to be suspicious. Penn State became the “I can even get caught here and I won’t get in trouble” place.
Mnemosyne
@Robin G.:
Well, I went to a football-crazy school where we were banned from bowl games for two years and none of our coaches were molesting children on campus (at least as far as I know, I don’t really keep up) so PSU forfeiting their last three games seems more than fair to me.
tavella
The Penn State players had zero to do with this; there is no reason to penalize them for their coach and administration’s malfeasance.
I sincerely doubt McGreary will be on the sidelines, though, no matter what is being said now.
Mnemosyne
@cathyx:
I think that’s the next shoe to drop, especially since (IIRC) the counsel for the Second Mile also works for PSU and is implicated in the cover up there.
ETA:
Here it is — it actually pertains to the 1998 accusation that the DA declined to prosecute:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11313/1188544-298.stm
Robin G.
@Mnemosyne: If the position is that this scandal justifies a full-stop of college football, then cancel all the remaining games of the season for everyone. It could be chalked up to possibilities of Sandusky having had contact with other administrations over this whole thing (which certainly could be) and needing time to investigate properly. Make sure everyone is paid their salaries as they should have been. At least everyone’s in the same boat that way.
Emma
@The Moar You Know: You know it’s bad when an agnostic like myself is propelled to her knees, damn near literally.
Speedy
@J.W. Hamner:
I’m pretty sure the NCAA rules committee never considered the need for a rule banning assistant coaches from raping little boys in the coaches shower.
t jasper parnell
@tavella: Of course a program and administration that failed to expose a serial child rapist would never engage in any unethical behavior like grade fixing or the like. To think otherwise would be as silly as thinking that the various traders at Enron, Goldman-Sacks, etc had any notion that they were engaged in corrupt activities. Pure as the driven snow, all of them.
Mnemosyne
By the way, I think I found the hero kay’s been looking for in the story I posted at #121:
It looks like her insistence on reporting her son’s abuse in 2008 triggered the grand jury investigation.
lamh35
So this incident that is “attached” to Paterno happened in 2002 right? I read somewhere that Joe P was obsessed with beating the record of Eddie Robinson from Grambling U as the winningest coach in college football history* (did he beat Eddie Robinson record, btw?). I don’t know if most people know that E. Robinson even holds the record since, IMHO many college football enthusiast don’t seem to consider SWACM as a part of collegiate sports.
Anyway, I read that Joe P was obsessed w/ beating Eddie Robinson’s record, and in 2002 he wasn’t even close right? I could see a scenario where ego could lead to being complacent in covering up something like this. Is this a possible reasoning?
*the actual winningest coach is from a small Division III school and he has 471 I believe, but in terms of “big schools” coaches of which Paterno would possibly compare himself to, Eddie Robins is/was (?) the winningest.
Joel
I think the Penn State Football team, minus any coaches implicated in the scandal, should be allowed to fully participate in the remainder of the season. With notable caveats for a high security detail to ensure the safety of the players (both home and visiting), especially in this upcoming game.
As for punishment, I reckon that there will be plenty, both criminal for the wrongdoers and the conspirators, and civil to compensate the victims for their immeasurable damages.
Robin G.
@Mnemosyne: Jesus, I hope they have the names of the school officials who told her that. That reads almost like a threat. (“Do you really want to see your son’s name all over the papers as we call him a liar with some sort of sick grudge against a sports icon?”)
cathyx
Sometimes grand jury investigations take a lot of time because the criminal activity is so vast. The further they investigate, the more they uncover. I’m sure this is one of them.
tavella
@t jasper parnell:
They may have done many things; however, there is zero evidence of such. Sanctions generally require a fragment of evidence.
MCA
@Robin G.: Well, it’s not like Michigan’s or whoever’s going to allege that it’s unfair for Nebraska to get a “free” win against a forfeiting Penn State under the circumstances.
Mark S.
@befuggled:
You’re probably right. His career in pedophilia seems more important to him than his career in coaching.
Robin G.
@MCA: I’d take a wager on that.
The Thin Black Duke
John Scalzi nails it.
MikeBoyScout
Correlation is not causation, but…
Joe Paterno is a conservative Republican, and his son and mouth piece for over a decade, Scott Paterno, is a right-wing-whack-job Republican.
Thymezone
So now the gratuitous and senseless bashing of the entire state of Pennsylvania will begin, right John? I mean, like you did for Arizona when SB 1070 was in the news? Really, this is different. Arizonans never voted for anything like SB 1070, most never saw it coming … it was a stealth operation of national rightwing agenda pursuers, and foisted off on the people of Arizona as an act of political vandalism which surprised us as much as it surprised the rest of the country. But that didn’t stop the bullshit Arizona bashing here.
So now we must assume that the entire state of Pennsylvania and its educational institutions are all corrupt and venal scum, right? Isn’t that how it works here on the “communications professor’s” blog? Surely the entire state is now seen as a huge herd of self serving criminals covering up this monstrous crime? What is wrong with the people of Pennsylvania? Or with the entire region?
Let’s get our bullshit on and really give PA a going over!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@t jasper parnell: Big Ben was pretty widely rumored to be, ah, averse to hearing the word ‘no” from women during his college days, and quick to offer alcohol as persuasion. I’d long given up following football in earnest, and I heard those rumors. Granted it was kind of local, but still, hardly a secret. Sigh.
Mnemosyne
@Robin G.:
It absolutely was a threat, and yet she told them all to go fuck themselves. Completely awesome.
Mark S.
@lamh35:
He just passed Eddie Robinson but is behind John Gagliardi, who coaches at Division III.
I never heard Paterno was really obsessed with Robinson, but I know both he and Bobby Bowden were obsessed with getting more wins than the other. Then Bobby had a bunch of his wins taken away because of violations and Paterno basically won by default. Neither of them have been really mentally with it for the last decade, but remained coaching out of pure ego.
JR
Watching TV with the wife, and we both said at the same time, there are other people involved with this, it has to be bigger than one lone sociopath.
Otherwise, why the missing DA, why the coverup from back in the 1990s?
When cops bust people into child porn, they can do it because there are groups, trading videos and pictures. I don’t know how they get together, find each other, but they do.
I’ve served on Grand Jury myself, and seen things that would turn your stomach, and they were caught because they can’t really do it the way they want to alone. There’s some sick streak of show off in a lot of these guys…
And the
deadmissing DA, that cost a lot of money, they can’t take out a DA for chump change. Especially as smoothly as this appears to have gone. Usually it’s a bomb in their car, which happened in northern WV a couple of decades ago.A bad, bad smell in “happy valley” tonite! Those kids demonstrating in support of their beloved coach, what a bunch of – what? bananas, nuts, asses? somewhere in there.
So sad. Glad WVU doesn’t have to play PSU any more.
t jasper parnell
@tavella: Sure and of course and it would be foolish to, foolish I say, to look over the long history of financial shenanigans of a few bad apples and demand the regulation of the many that haven’t yet been caught. Similarly, it would be foolish to look over the long history of big time collegiate sports shenanigans and demand some kind of a across the board regulations. Right? Let’s not jump to conclusions based on a long history of shenanigans in collegiate athletics, Wall Street, Banking, and related etc. Nope until beyond a shadow of all doubt that those involved in an industry rife with corruption and cupidity we must wait. Right?
virag
whatever comes out now will not be such a shock, unfortunately. at this point people are primed for any sort of sick details that emerge from the pennsyltucky vatican.
cthulhu
@Robin G.:
I suppose the definition of tragedy is somewhat arbitrary, but I think a preventable horror would fit the bill. Further, if ongoing investigation shows that more of the coaching staff knew or had some inkling, it gets worse for PSU if they go forward now with those people in place. If you read the grand jury report, Sandusky regularly showed up to PSU events with young boys in tow (both at home and on the road, where they often stayed in his room, btw). And while I can understand no one thinking much of this, say in the 60’s, by the 90’s it must have been raising some eyebrows.
t jasper parnell
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Kinda my point. Collegiate athletics, and not just in PA, are a cesspool of corruption and the time has come, as it has for the other cesspools of corruption and cupidity, to be reigned in, isn’t it?
Arm The Homeless
Since I have tried to stop thinking about how mad this makes me, I turn to my one constant in life: Hypotheticals!
How does this blow to the psyche of Pennsylvania affect political engagement? 1)Does this enrage social activists and child advocates to push for reform measures; perhaps riding a wave of introspective priority re-organizing? 2) Does it mobilize religious sects eager to make hay from boy-raping-homo-buttsecks? 3)Does it lend credibility to beliefs in an atmosphere of liberal academic institutions as morally-relativistic, corrupt, and hedonistic? 4) Perhaps there is no discernible change in the public political thought-process. A few bad apples, I suppose…
Canuckistani Tom
@J.W. Hamner:
Really? I’m sure there’s a section (usually somewhere in the back) of the rulebook about ‘Highest moral standings’ or ‘must be of good character’ or some such mealy-mouthed BS.
If the NCAA needs to, they’ll figure out a way to dump PSU. It’ll be a case of amputation in order to save the patient
Mr Stagger Lee
Pimping children? Missing DA’s? Can you walk into a Hollywood studio, with a script like this? Joe Pesci as JoePa? DeNiro as Jerry Sandusky!
tavella
@t jasper parnell:
That’s a lot of blah blah there, saying nothing. It’s the same for PSU as Wall Street and everyone else: proof before sanction.
Gex
@Mnemosyne: Holy Shit. School officials tried to talk the mother out of reporting it?!?! That’s not going to help them at all.
beergoggles
@Villago Delenda Est: The accusations of satanic cults pimping children out must’ve come from the catholics – just a case of projection.
These things shouldn’t just be dismissed out of hand, or left the to advice of fathers and supervisors.
On a slightly oversharing note; one of my frat bros that played college football (not at PSU) narrated a story when he came back from a meet-the-alumni/funders function where a few of the players had drawn the short straws to walk on one of the guys so he could get his freak on. Yep – apparently he just wanted several big people to walk on him in their socks. No word whether the coach was involved.
Rommie
Joe Posnanski is very upset that JoePa isn’t getting legions of defenders from all the people he did good by over the years.
Pariah-hood is what happens when you do what JP did (and all the other people involved as well) and shame on YOU, Joe Posnanski. These people gambled this would never see the light of day, and LOST. They deserve every ounce of scorn.
Gilles de Rais
@Mnemosyne: You did. UNBELIEVABLE that the officials point-blank threatened her. Good for her to stick to her guns and knock the whole sick house of cards down.
Robin G.
@cthulhu: Frankly, I think the entire coaching staff should be suspended pending further investigation. Every last one of them. Surely they can bring in some people from lower levels or something to do what’s needed for the remainder of the season.
For myself, “tragedy” has a faultless connotation, like a hurricane or plane crash or other accident or act of God. If a football personality were to stand up there and say, “This is a terrible tragedy,” I’d blow a gasket. To me, it sounds like there were no bad actors in the event, which there obviously were in this case. My preferred terms would be “disgrace”, “atrocity”, etc. But, yeah, I think it must be a person by person thing. If “preventable horror” fits the “tragedy” definition for you, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just not where my brain goes with it.
Linguistics are interesting.
Julia Grey
O gaud, wouldn’t we all?
Mnemosyne
@Gex:
To be clear, it was the high school that told Victim 1’s mom she should think twice about reporting her son’s abuse, not someone at Penn State. But that probably means that any grade school or high school that was associated with Sandusky in any way (and there seem to be a lot of them) is going to be getting a visit from the DA’s office, if not a subpoena.
G
the evil that men do live after them. the good too oft interred with their bones.
and truthfully, many of the kids who grow up to molest, or even just as older and bigger kids molest kids were molested themselves.
this isn’t somrthing that most kids can just grow up and get over it without some serious help
and the former GA, who simply told paterno and then went along to get along was no paragon of courage. San ducsky was caught when he started in at a local high school and the investigation started there, not at PSU. it lead to PSU, and he aparantly testified some 9 years after the fact truthfully. to me his actions seem really self-serving, complicit in the cover-up and then when the thing blows up, he tries to save himself.
t jasper parnell
@Canuckistani Tom: Exactly. And, as the refusal of some to see this as a systemic problem, its in the NCAA interests to pretend that this is an isolated incident not the worst possible instantiation of a corrupt culture of privilege, wealth, and power.
David Koch
This is a high-tech lynching of Joe Pa!
aimai
@smintheus:
Yes I have a friend on the faculty there too–the notion that the faculty, the academic faculty, have any connection with or information about the athletic departments seems crazy to me. The faculty sound entirely beaten down by the abusive approach of the administration which is turning them into widget manufacturers instead of educators and forcing continuous quality improvement models of efficiency on them. The idea that they had any time or even connection with the athletic department and tits goings on seems weird, to me.
On the subject of “pimping out to donors” I don’t think its likely that it was real prostitution but I would be very, very, surprised if among all those football boosters and donors there weren’t a few fellow travellers in pedophilia who received favors from Sandusky. They should be looking very carefully at the entire board associated with his charity and at all the donors affiliated with the charity as well as his social/business acquiaintances.
As for how one pedophile knows another–how do furries and fetishists get together? Its really not as rare as people seem to want to believe for important and well respected upper class and wealthy men to exploit children and youths sexually and with impunity. Its as likely that they are drawn to sports, sports camps, and at risk youth because of the pedophilia than that they end up pedophiles because of their exposure to youth through sports.
aimai
Gex
@Mnemosyne: It certainly speaks to the scope of people who knew and tried to/wanted to cover it up. That high school should have no stake in Penn State football. Certainly not over the welfare of their own students.
I’m beyond disgusted.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Sandusky named his program “Second Chance” appropriately; every time he got caught in a compromising position with one of the children of his foundation, he got a second chance.
With the sex tourism around the world that the wealthy engage in, I wouldn’t be surprised if Sandusky was passing kids along to some wealthy supporters to ‘expand their horizons’.
G
@MikeBoyScout:
If you want to have a tin foil hat about JoPa and the GOP, he spoke on behalf of GHWB at the convention
http://athletes-celebrities.tseworld.com/sports/coaches/joe-paterno.php
and if you have strong tin foil search for the washington times call boy sex scandal article on GHWB
I do have tomorrow off and I have had a strong IPA
beergoggles
@G: Quoting shakespeare in the comments.. tsk. I think that might be a bit too highbrow.
Mark S.
@Rommie:
Give Posnanski a break! He was almost finished with his 500 page
blowjobbook on Paterno, and now he has to re-write the last chapter.Penn St. actually has a class called “Paterno and the Media”? This is getting into some Kim Jong-il territory.
Omnes Omnibus
@beergoggles: We do both high- and lowbrow here. It is middlebrow that gets missed.
scav
@beergoggles:
Martin
@aimai:
Not crazy at all.
This is a faculty committee. Membership is comprised of faculty from various campuses and academic programs.
Every public university like Penn State works this way. The faculty are responsible for everything. They oversee everything. The campus leadership are faculty. There’s no way something of this scale could have taken place without faculty knowledge. No way at all. Now, that might have been officially limited to just a handful of faculty who were serving at the time, and were part of the administration, but at least some of the faculty had to know.
Julia Grey
Not at all. The potential “revelation” in the post above made me feel like I’ve been shot in the forehead.
t jasper parnell
@Martin: This claim
Isn’t strictly speaking true. Shared governance, as it is called, is complicated and increasingly the “professional” administration ignores faculty and, often, dictates to it. It’s a real problem for faculty and, I would argue, one of the reasons that universities are increasingly mismanaged. The administrative side of things is dominated by Mitt Romney like technocrats who have little interest in universities core mission, which once was education.
Martin
CNN poll: “Did Penn State make the right move in firing Joe Paterno, effective immediately?”
Percentage voting no: 27%. Coincidence?
magurakurin
@Villago Delenda Est: And if you read the full Grand Jury report the rumor makes perfect sense as well. He was running a training camp. His patterns were the same with all 8 victims. Yeah, there are 8 victims in the current charges. He had the one boy basically living at his house and the boy traveled with him around the country to go to football games and other events. This pimping story, it’s going to be found true. Fuck college football. The NFL can make a farm system like professional baseball instead of grooming players on the taxpayer’s dime. Fuck it all. Burn it to the motherfucking ground.
aimai
@t jasper parnell:
I agree with this. I’ve been faculty, admittedly for a very brief while, when you sit on those committees the majority of the work is done by admin staff and people who’ve been around for a long time–the equivalent of University Civil Service. I find it very hard to believe that a multi million dollar sports team/complex setup like the one at Penn State was anything other than largely autonomous–from fundraising to who they gave “keys” to at the sports center.
Sure, faculty may have had a rotating job supervising some aspects of the sports program but I very much doubt taht they had any real input into the day to day workings of the vast buildings, grounds, janitorial staff, offices, and donors of the sports franchise. Faculty have zero pull compared to sports legends because they very seldom have their own billionaire backers (except the lucky few who have their own institutes and donors).
aimai
beergoggles
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t think you care about the middle; you just go for the low hanging fruit ;)
+5
HyperIon
@Thymezone wrote what i was thinking
Thanks. I hate this perpetual rush to judgment.
This post should get the “It would be irresponsible NOT to speculate” tag that is usually awarded to republican douchebags.
magurakurin
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): ****sorry, I miss read the thread, disregard this post******just a quibble, but as someone raised in the Philadelphia area “Penn” does not refer to Penn State. “Penn” would be the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
AA+ Bonds
OFF-TOPIC:
So, are you people just going to wait around for the mainstream press to get hard on Mitt Romney so you can write about it or what,
because checking TIME’s October 31st issue which contained,
1) a Joe Klein piece where he attempts, unconvincingly, to attack Obama from the left on financial reform and concludes pointedly that Obama is no different from Romney on the issue,
2) a Joel Stein (!) piece that is half-seriously, maybe three quarters seriously, rabidly anti-OWS, and
3) a Fareed Zakaria piece semi-endorsing 9-9-9,
realize that the asshole press is in the bag for Romney.
As content-churners for the left y’all better find some alt-press shit on Romney and start working on it instead of this Cain/Sandusky porno story which is all in Romney’s favor
t jasper parnell
@aimai: Yeah. Worse even, in my experience as faculty on various committees, is that faculty is ignored and punished by the administration if and when it faculty insist on doing what’s right.. It’s worth pointing out PSU’s president got 620,00 per year, which is considerable more than your average faculty, and dog backwards knows what Joe Pa got. Money, power, and privilege cluster together and ruin the world for the rest of us.
AA+ Bonds
See:
Alt press writes story on how Republican sucks
v
Left blogs blow up story
v
More important left blogs hammer story
v
24 hour media panders to media addict partisans by running 1 hour a day on story
v
“National conversation” becomes about how Republican sucks
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@magurakurin: It’s not a minor quibble! Penn is not Penn State. That was my point – it was a bit of inside baseball winking at people who read the earlier thread in which a commenter kept confusing them, repeatedly. You had to have been there to know what I meant.
t jasper parnell
By the way, child rapists and sport aren’t limited to football.
Martin
@t jasper parnell:
No, I understand that, but that cannot stand as an excuse, nor can it stand as an explanation that the faculty could not have and would not have known. Yeah, they may have been powerless to change the course of action, but they should have known that something was going on.
And quite commonly, particularly around things like athletics, the faculty don’t want to uphold their side of that shared governance because it’s high profile, complicated, perceived as trivial, political, or any of a number of other excuses. That doesn’t mean they don’t know what’s going on, just that they don’t want to be seen stirring the pot, making a mistake, etc.
Either way, it’s an institutional failing and not something the faculty can merely brush off. They can’t insist on shared governance and then just excuse away their share.
AA+ Bonds
RSA
@scav:
I think money issues are a big part of the cover-up. Penn State’s endowment is $1.5 billion today, and the news stories I’ve read say that it was largely built up during Paterno’s tenure; sports pull in a lot of alumni giving.
Martin
@aimai:
Why is that? They don’t vote. They don’t set policy. If they’re doing all the work, it’s only because the faculty favor that arrangement.
I’m sorry, but this sounds awfully like “I didn’t do my job because it was hard.”
t jasper parnell
@Martin: Sure and faculty ought to be as aggressive as they can be; however, it’s the case that they are generally ignored. It’s not, in my experience, that faculty don’t want to reign in athletics it’s that they can’t. It’s not the case that faculty insist on shared governance and then refuse responsibility it’s that their share of the shared governance is ignored. To be clear, however, I would argue that faculty need to be more aggressive and, whatismore, the Penn State child raping imbroglio offers a perfect opportunity to increase their power should we decide to take it.
Big City Mary
But the most incredible thing, Mr. Sandusky is out and about, free as a breeze, on a $100,000 bail, although not allowed to be around children (really?). That is a little more than $2,500 for each currently verified charge which was FORTY in number. WTF, what is known about the judge?
I have not got the energy to search, but how would this rate with average bail for similar suspected crimes?
magurakurin
JoePa is lawyering up?
srv
@RSA: This made me wonder, and I found this:
It would seem these institutions can financially withstand their negligence.
t jasper parnell
@Martin: This
is simply not true. There has been a war between faculty and admin for some years now and because admin controls the purse strings and refuses, for example, to open new lines and relies on ad hoc faculty, which is to say temps, the admin, much like managers everywhere, have created an employee pool that is insecure and unable to resist the admin. To repeat myself, this moment could be a chance to reverse the order of things; however, only to the extent that, like the financial crises and its criminal masters minds, the broader public recognizes that technocrats are the problem and not the solution.
AA+ Bonds
zat sound familiar?
J.W. Hamner
@Canuckistani Tom:
Maybe there is, but when there was that murder of a player by another player at Baylor when The Hammer came down it was for typical NCAA violation type stuff… not the actual crime committed on the University’s watch. Though I suppose you could argue that where there is smoke there is fire, and an athletic department that covers up child rape is very likely to be covering up a lot of nickle and dime type stuff as well.
I agree though, that based on what I’ve heard about the thickness of the NCAA rule book, it’s very likely the NCAA could find something to charge them with if they really want to.
Omnes Omnibus
@Big City Mary: Bail is supposed to be just high enough to discourage flight.
Nutella
It really bothers me how much of the discussion about this has centered on the celebrity coach and PSU football. They’re important to the story but the center of it is Second Mile which has known since at least 1998 that Sandusky is a pedophile procuring boys from their organization. The management of that organization needs to be dragged out into public disgrace too.
AA+ Bonds
Ammo drop
elftx
Then Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum thought enough of Jerry Sandusky nine years ago to sponsor the former Penn State defense coordinator for a “Congressional Angels in Adoption” award, citing his work with a non-profit group he founded to provide care for foster children.
Santorum, a 1980 PSU graduate, is one of the school’s most distinguished alumni
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/11/rick-santorum-sponsored-honor-for-accused-psu-coach-jerry-sandusky/248234/
Someone should ask this fuk where the gavel touched him.
Omnes Omnibus
@AA+ Bonds: Pressure Drop.
Percysowner
To be fair to the judge, bail isn’t supposed to be punitive, it is supposed to guarantee that the accused will show up at trial. Mr. Sandusky’s attorney probably argued that he has strong ties to the community, a family, a job with an as of now respected charity. The lawyer would argue that Mr. Sandusky isn’t a flight risk.
This guy sounds guilty as can be, but our system is still based on innocent until proven guilty and bail isn’t supposed to be used to put someone who has not been proven guilty in jail. So as of now, I can’t fault the judge.
Ed Drone
@CaseyL:
After the starters, stake ’em out above a bamboo plant. That spike will grow right through a human body in a few very painful days. If you want details, look up the Myth-Busters story on it.
Ed
catclub
It is interesting to note that 10 days after this broke, Paterno was fired.
How many Catholic Bishops or Archbishops have been Fired
in a similar scandal? Zero?
Mnemosyne
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I knew that would come back to bite me in the ass. (red face)
Wednesday
@Mnemosyne:
To be fair to the high school staff, they did notify the authorities with regard to Sandusky and Victim #1. I expect if they hadn’t, they would also have been brought up on criminal charges alongside the Penn State officials because they’re mandated reporters.
I hate saying this, but that whole “think about what you want to do” sounded to me less like a threat and more like a warning, something that might be said to a young woman accusing a powerful man of sexual assault or harassment. (“This is going to be a nightmare. Are you sure you’re up for it?”) Not that that’s any less appalling; I guess I just don’t want to think even the high school staff were willing to look the other way. In any case, good on Mom #1 for not even blinking and going right to CPS.
I really hope the new rumor isn’t true. This is already bad enough.
RSA
@srv:
Given that a single, minor piece by Michelangelo might be worth tens of millions of dollars in the private market, yeah, I think some institutions have no good cause to cry poverty.
smintheus
@Martin: The committee’s bailiwick is pretty narrowly academic…that is, guaranteeing that athletes are students, that athletes are able to study, and that the athletic programs don’t interfere too much with academic programs.
It has no apparent authority over the athletic programs as such, much less over their personnel. I wouldn’t be too surprised if this committee knew nothing about the whole sordid story until this March.
OTOH there may have been some well connected faculty who heard gossip from administrators in informal ways.
suzanne
@Thymezone:
I’ve lived in Arizona for over twenty years, jackass. Any bashing was entirely deserved.
You know what, though… I honestly can’t say that this story surprised me much. I’ve always found the cult of sports worship to be repugnant, and this is merely its logical conclusion. Loads of people and thousands of fans happy to overlook the suffering of innocent children because winning a stupid, meaningless game is more important. Wow. It’s almost like all that blather about team sports encouraging honor and teamwork and fair play and moral fiber is… TOTAL BULLSHYTT.
I could never again watch a pro or NCAA sporting event, and my life would probably be better for it.
Mnemosyne
@srv:
I didn’t know this when I was first defending McQueary’s freaked-out reaction to stumbling across Sandusky abusing a kid in 2002, but apparently McQueary has known Sandusky all his life. He was friends with one of Sandusky’s kids.
I further noticed that it seemed as though most of the people empathizing with McQueary’s reaction (including myself) had themselves been molested by a trusted adult or caregiver.
This is completely 100% speculation on my part, but for me a revelation that McQueary was himself abused by Sandusky as a kid would be the least surprising twist ever.
amused
@Mnemosyne: Conversely, the revelation that you empathized with the guy who walked away from the rape, rather than with the victim, was the most surprising twist so far.
cynn
The good news is that I can use this sick crap to convince my kid not to go to college, but rather a trade school. “Educational” institutions are monstrous industries that produce nothing but debtors.
Mnemosyne
@amused:
I was not the only one who had that reaction to McQueary, but I realize that you’re so invested in your view at this point that you probably skimmed right over similar comments from other people in that same thread. Though I did think it was pretty ironic that one of your denouncements of me as the worst person in the world appeared directly underneath a comment by another sexual abuse survivor saying the same thing I did.
smintheus
@t jasper parnell: Very true. What Martin is describing is the European/British model, which American universities began abandoning more than a century ago. And for decades now, administrators commonly treat uppity faculty in punitive fashion. They also hold all the purse strings, and have faculty and departments divided against each other. I’ve never seen much unity in college faculty, and I’ve taught at 9 different institutions.
Here’s a relevant anecdote. As chair of a library committee I thought we needed to do several basic things that hadn’t been done for decades (such as compare the library holdings to those in colleges we competed with; and ask dept. chairs what they thought needed improvement). The administration didn’t want these things done, tried to block and then undermine them, and interfered in the committee. And at the end of the year, it suddenly decided without explanation to eliminate the program I was hired to create, and with it my own job. This was a college where most faculty never dared to stand up against the administration over anything, no matter how basic, out of fear.
rikyrah
when I was freaked out at this ‘ rumor’, then I read about the first person who investigated this rapist ‘ disappeared’ – that’s some John Grisham shyt right there.
amused
@Mnemosyne: Even though you were the one most strenuously arguing for the extenuating circumstances of the guy who walked away, no one said you were the worst person in the world for it. It all comes down to you feeling empathy for the “witness” rather than for the poor kid being raped. Maybe you have your reasons, but geez, can’t you just admit that your empathy is for one of the people who covered for a child rapist and that that is pretty fooked up? How hard is that?
Gin & Tonic
@cynn:
I’ve put three kids through college at a total cost, if I stop to think about it, of about a quarter of a million dollars. I do not regret it. They are good, well-educated human beings.
Rome Again
@suzanne:
Suzanne, Thymezone is my guy. He’s been in Arizona for a lot longer than 20 years. He’s not saying sports is more important than the lives of innocent children (I know him very personally, including his values and I know that’s not what he is saying at all) – he is merely saying that the general public of an area shouldn’t be blamed for what happened in a situation. He also knows very well about the way people in AZ vote. He’s the one who taught me what I know about Mesa voters (the large Mormon population voting R consistently). I’m a transplant from the east coast, he is a native.
Rome Again
Define death sentence. Penn State not having college football surpremacy as they’ve had for decades? The end of the football program? Something in between? Personally, I think this is a permanent blemish, but while they will not rise to the level they were once at, the program will find a way to go on.
cynn
@Gin & Tonic: @Gin & Tonic: I don’t dispute that your children are a superb investment. I simply can’t afford it. What’s the point?
Angela
@Mnemosyne: I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I think maybe that sexual abuse survivors who have done some work on recovery, don’t see life in such black and white terms. I know for me, there is more of an ability to be able to hold conflicting and opposite emotions and know them both to be true. Maybe that is also true for most who have done some emotional work. I don’t mean to exclude anyone, I only know what has triggered this difference in me.
Before I started doing therapy and recovery work, I engaged in a lot of black and white and wishful thinking at the same time. And I had no desire or ability to feel more than superficial compassion or empathy. I was riven with ambivalence and rigid self-protective ways.
That’s changed and I have watched it change in others too.
So I can be angry at McQuery walking away and grateful that he reported. I can be angry he did not do more and have empathy for the position he found himself in, and the freeze that might have occurred.
And I know that because he is the one who reported, he will also be the lighting rod for breaking the culture of silence. Nobody is hammering on the janitor for not reporting what he saw to an administrator. Yes, he has dementia now but he did not have it then.
It’s a lot to hold, and it is a lot of powerlessness to take in. Maybe survivors have dealt with those issues in ways others have not needed to?
And none of what I stated above lessens the pain I feel for these once boys who are now young men and older men. They have been betrayed in multiple ways. And nothing I can do can lessen that pain. It is a lot of powerlessness to take in. A lot of vileness to read about. And it is certainly deserving of the anger and the grief that it provokes.
G
@Mnemosyne:
My issue with McQueary, when I get past the intial walking away, and then reporting to JoPa
is that he did nothing afterwards. He stayed there, I presume he knew the guy had a parking space and office, he took the promotions, he didn’t simply ask for a letter of rec and move on to somewhere else.
In his conduct I see a lot of acting in self preservation, even in the grand jury testimony.
I don’t know what kind of childhood he had as a kid, did he come from an intact and functional family? WIth a predator who’s at all concerned with getting caught, that means a freaking lot.
the Church my folks brought us to when I was a kid had a pastor who molested kids. My folks were active in it, and the guy never tried to touch me. I never knew of the scandal until decades after. And I was in that town from about 5 to 15. I may also have been the fact that my dad was much younger then, and a viet nam vet who was an airborne ranger, and I expect this guy knew the reaction might be violent.
Sume 200 miles away from that my uncle let the priest in his house (and go upstairs) with my female cousins (differnt town and priest) who are roughly my age.
At it’s core, it’s an act of extreme violence and betrayal of trust done to people who really hadn’t learned a lot of distrust.
What bugs me most about the GA is that he went along to get along after the fact. I can see and understand the walking away out of shock and coonfusion. I can’t see going to work for nearly a decade in the same place as the guy I saw doing it, keeping my mouth shut and getting promoted. Hell I wouldn’t know if the promotions were for my ability, or my silence, right? I mean shouldn’t that wear on a conscience? So when I look at his conduct immediately after, in the light of his decade after conduct, and grand jury testimony
I see a dude out for #1 and the hell with the rest.
Gin & Tonic
@cynn: The point? You said they are monstrous industries. I have found the opposite. I have found faculty that care deeply both about their work and about their students. I have found deep commitment to education for education’s sake, both at an Ivy and at a Big 10 school.
Yes, I have been fortunate to be able to help with the costs. Yes, the costs have gone up faster than any other consumer good in the last 20 years. But I still think there is value in a college education. Some of my kids might be making more right now as electricians or plumbers or HVAC mechanics, but they’d likely not know Italian or French, or know the difference between Virgil and Mozart. I think the world is poorer if people don’t know that sort of thing.
Angela
@Gin & Tonic: Thanks for saying this. We have three sons in college right now and the cost gets daunting. It is good to be reminded of why education is important.
cthulhu
@Robin G.:
That is interesting in that I would generally call those disasters. I guess I have largely picked up my definition for tragedy in a Shakesspearean-way: a situation where various people’s moral failings/bad decisions interact to make one or all suffer. In my mind, a tragic figure is someone who could have very well avoided an early death or great trauma had they taken a different course of action at certain key points. So Joe Paterno would be a tragic figure in my book. Sandusky, on the other hand, is a predator.
Anyway, it goes to show how easy it can be for people to end up talking past each other because of these variations in how people approach common words. Also consider to word “welfare” for example.
srv
@Mnemosyne: I would not be surprised either, and if so, his attempt at exposing it fell on deaf ears who wanted to pat him on the back and reward him with his silence.
I honestly do not know how anyone over 50 in the Catholic church did not know what was going on back in the day. I’ve since learned that many of my elders knew of the “scandals” and it was just something never talked about.
We may never know the truth about this. This bothers me to no end, but McQueary should be on suicide watch right now. If he offs himself, there’s a lot more that happened to him than we’ll ever know.
Jebediah
@Mnemosyne:
I have been thinking that exact thing. It would make his seemingly odd reaction a lot less odd.
Angela
@srv: In the early 1980’s my sister worked as a receptionist at a Catholic Retreat Center staffed by nuns. She said they used to talk about the abuse by priests. Because of the power of the church and the culture of silence, they never talked about it to an outsider.
Mnemosyne
@amused:
I feel empathy for both of them. I realize you can’t understand that, but I do.
ETA: Angela said it better.
I can empathize with the reason he froze without excusing his later actions.
srv
@Angela: If I were a sick fuck, I’d almost think the current Vatican regime’s hostility towards convents is a strategy to bring back the good old days…
I do have to say my first exposure to Opus Dei back in college was that it was filled with hot blonde coeds. But JP had not yet excercised his authority over US diocese.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Angela: Very well stated.
Darkrose
I’m waiting for the GOP statement in favor of raping children.
keestadoll
Innocent players eh? Team above reproach? All that time and never, not ever, did a PSU football player stuble upon this scumbag getting his pedophilia on? No, of course not. I mean, athletes only go to the gym on game day right?
Admiral_Komack
“I wouldn’t be surprised when this is all over the NCAA will be scrambling to cover their asses and end up giving Penn State football a death sentence.”
I don’t think a death sentence will happen, but I could be wrong (of course I’m thinking “death sentence” means Perp State football is disbanded).
Admiral_Komack
@The Thin Black Duke:
Seconded.
Li
If the pimping rumors prove true, then this is beginning to look a lot like Boys Town Part II.
And if that is the case, I’m sure we will start seeing some convenient ‘suicides’ and plane crashes soon. There are a lot of power mad sociopaths amongst the political and economic elite, and they like their sex to reflect the lopsided power relationships that they cultivate through the rest of their lives. Also, they don’t like having their dirty laundry aired in the public square. It’s bad for the cult of personality; it might make their toadies question what, exactly, they are supporting.
shortstop
Let’s not make the mistake of conflating Angela’s and Mnemosyne’s positions here. Angela has commented in good faith, rationally and honestly. Mnemosyne has engaged in world-class strawmanning, blatant misrepresentation of others’ words and the same binary thinking she’s now, with enormous gall, accusing others of employing. They’re not even in the same ballpark.
ScottF
As I understand it, the 2002 incident occurred at the beginning of Spring Break. Sandusky presumably assumed that he had free reign, because everyone was out of town.
REN
Penn State is not the Vatican. The civil suits that are coming, which the University is going to be forced to settle out of court, will be huge. This place is in trouble which will have long lasting future implications. And I believe the NCAA should give this program the death sentence.