Penn State Child Molestation Scandal...continuing discussion

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There are 44,000 students at this campus. That riot was a small percentage of that, it must be noted. I'm not the only sane one. Most are.
 
Hey guys, some party tonight, huh?

The Penn State board of trustees just asked me if they could use my likeness on the helmets next year to replace the Nittany Lion profile!


pedobear.jpg
 
How had I not seen this until now?

6a00d8341c630a53ef015392df38c3970b-320wi


The title of this fucking scumbag's autobiography was Touched? Really?

And reports are saying that this is going to get even uglier. Wow:

@MarkMaddenX: Don't believe this can get worse? Give it 72 hrs. People really digging into Second Mile. Even more shocking revelation is ahead. Yikes.
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Sandusky is married and has six adopted children. He also took in foster children.

I wonder what his wife has to say about any of this.
 
I have class in seven hours in a building right next to where some of the riots were. I'm not sure if that area is going to be fixed up by that time.
 
deep said:
Sandusky is married and has six adopted children. He also took in foster children.

I wonder what his wife has to say about any of this.
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Well seeing as his wife called one of the victims out of the blue after several years just before he was supposed to testify to the grand jury, one can only assume she has been in some way involved in covering it up for some time as well.
 
GirlsAloudFan said:
This really has nothing to do with sport.
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I'm going to have to disagree and say that this has everything to do with sport - specifically the ridiculous degree of importance that we as a society place upon it. Had these allegations been leveled at even the most prominent professor on campus, that individual would have been disciplined immediately; because the allegations involved the precious football program, however, all channels of the school were content to ignore the problem for over a decade. Universities with major sports programs consistently bow to the interests of their players, coaches, and boosters, which only serves to reinforce the attitude of entitlement and sense of being above the law that are already so heavily pronounced among those groups.

As these riots show, to me at least, sports fanaticism is able completely and utterly to destroy any semblance of logic, empathy, and, often, basic human decency. We as a culture need seriously to reevaluate the reverence with which we hold college and pro sports. This whole affair, but especially the pro-Paterno riots last night, is among the most reprehensible things that I have ever witnessed.
 
iron yuppie said:
I'm going to have to disagree and say that this has everything to do with sport - specifically the ridiculous degree of importance that we as a society place upon it. Had these allegations been leveled at even the most prominent professor on campus, that individual would have been disciplined immediately; because the allegations involved the precious football program, however, all channels of the school were content to ignore the problem for over a decade. Universities with major sports programs consistently bow to the interests of their players, coaches, and boosters, which only serves to reinforce the attitude of entitlement and sense of being above the law that are already so heavily pronounced among those groups.

As these riots show, to me at least, sports fanaticism is able completely and utterly to destroy any semblance of logic, empathy, and, often, basic human decency. We as a culture need seriously to reevaluate the reverence with which we hold college and pro sports. This whole affair, but especially the pro-Paterno riots last night, is among the most reprehensible things that I have ever witnessed.
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This is not about sport. This is about a community, my community, that has convinced itself that it's better than every other community. It's a microcosm of jingoism. It's got nothing to do with Paterno the football coach. It's got everything to do with "we are Penn State and no one else can understand what he means to us."
 
PhilsFan said:
This is not about sport. This is about a community, my community, that has convinced itself that it's better than every other community. It's a microcosm of jingoism. It's got nothing to do with Paterno the football coach. It's got everything to do with "we are Penn State and no one else can understand what he means to us."
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I respect your opinion, as you are right in the middle of everything, but the only question I would pose in response to the idea that it's not about football is this: why are the students rioting on behalf of Paterno and not on behalf of the ousted president? I would think that, if Penn State is anything like Wisconsin, football forms a substantial part of the school's identity. Sports infiltrate every aspect of social and cultural life at these schools.

And, again, I would argue strongly that the only reason that the sordid deeds were covered up for so long is because they occurred within the football program. Had they occurred anywhere else in the school, swift, decisive action would have been taken.
 
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."

After the news spread, Madden later explained via Twitter why he went public with the rumors.

"I normally abhor giving RUMORS credence," Madden wrote. "But whole Sandusky scandal started out as a RUMOR. It gets deeper and more disgusting all the time. One of state's top columnists investigating. That adds credence. I am NOT rumor's original source. [Why does] Sandusky deserve benefit of doubt?"

Madden also spoke more definitively on Dennis and Callahan to the cover-up efforts at the school and beyond that he expects will be made public soon.

"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?

"My opinion is when Sandusky quit, everybody knew -- not just at Penn State," Madden added. "I think it was a very poorly kept secret about college football in general, and that is why he never coached in college football again and retired at the relatively young age of 55. [That's] young for a coach, certainly."
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.
 
Without commenting on whether or not that could be true (obviously anything could be true at this point), Madden is a piece of shit who has frequently made things up.
 
iron yuppie said:
I respect your opinion, as you are right in the middle of everything, but the only question I would pose in response to the idea that it's not about football is this: why are the students rioting on behalf of Paterno and not on behalf of the ousted president? I would think that, if Penn State is anything like Wisconsin, football forms a substantial part of the school's identity. Sports infiltrate every aspect of social and cultural life at these schools.

And, again, I would argue strongly that the only reason that the sordid deeds were covered up for so long is because they occurred within the football program. Had they occurred anywhere else in the school, swift, decisive action would have been taken.
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first... sports infiltrate every aspect of social and cultural life period. not just at universities, but in society in general.

second... 44,000 students attend Penn State. if you go on the opinion that 1 out of 10 people you know is an absolute moron, that's close to 5,000 morons running around jumping up and down about football

50 kids showing up at joepa's house out of a total of 44,000 students? woooo... what a disgrace by the community!



i will agree that the only organization in the school where the cover up could have happened to this degree was the football program... not because it's football, but because of what joe paterno and the football program has meant to that community for 50 some odd years. much like how the catholic church is the only organization in ireland who could have possibly covered up the massive abuse scandal that has rocked that country in recent years.


this isn't about sports. this is about power.
 
He was dead on, though he was actually rehashing a news story that came out in March and basically editorialized it.

The vast majority of students have condemned the rioting. Most of those people are also defending Paterno. I can't wrap my head around. I've never felt more Philadelphian and less Penn State in my life.

I sent a tweet out today about what I said to a reporter when asked about the riots, and it's been circulating. Many circulating it are doing it as a "We Are" rally and continuing to defend Paterno. This whole thing makes zero sense to me.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
this isn't about sports. this is about power.
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Yes, and sports are power. They are one and the same at major universities. Trust me, having been around universities with these behemoth programs for many years, the athletes and coaches get what they want when they want it, and the reason that they get it is the fervor, and, hence, money, that they are able to drum up amongst the student body and the alumni. I firmly belief that sports influence the culture of universities far more thoroughly than they do the general population. If I am upset at the corporatization of the NFL, I can just not watch the game. Students at big-program universities have the sports programs forced down their throats at every turn.

This is ultimately a question of priorities. Paterno was lionized for nothing more than winning football games, which, in the long run, means absolutely nothing. If he had been a tireless advocate of the student-athlete but had never won a national championship, no one would have given a damn about him. My point is that it makes no sense to build someone up as a pillar of the community for something as trivial as being a football coach.

And, finally, I'm not impugning the entire Penn State community by any means. But those who were involved in these ridiculous pro-Paterno rallies deserve to be exposed as the ignorami that they are.
 
iron yuppie said:
And, finally, I'm not impugning the entire Penn State community by any means. But those who were involved in these ridiculous pro-Paterno rallies deserve to be exposed as the ignorami that they are.
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The problem is that this is not the discussion. Basically, there's one narrative: "Joe should not have been fired, but the riots were unnecessary and made us look bad." No one is saying, "Maybe our support of Paterno is what's making us look bad." No one.

There's a website called Onward State that is the main online news source by students. It has been just drilling the "Don't Blame Paterno" message into everyone, and it's sort of become a rallying cry at this point. They caused the riot just as much as anything else.
 
111110044839-penn-state-paterno-statue-c1-main.jpg


these guys should just go live in a park now
everyone knows that's where they'll spent the rest of their non-college life
 
It could be. Who knows. We're certainly going to find out.

As I've said many times over the past week, I really have no idea what to do now.
 
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