...There'd be no ratings here if certain individuals were excluded.
There'd be no calling for the crucifixion of Paterno if the PSP commander or esteemed governor wouldn't have said he should have done more. Forget the AG's statement that he did no wrong, I'm sure she wasn't in on the proceedings. McQueary puts out an e-mail to say that's not how it happened - wrong. Paterno says nothing to clarify the summary of his testimony - wrong again.
Political games are afoot, my posting friends. One non-profit donates $600k+ to the gov's campaign while ALL big gas co's in the state combined donated only $1M. Big gas had a lot riding on this guy. What did Second Mile have riding on this guy?
They say all politics is local, and I'll leave it to you, since I know nothing about the goings on in Pennsylvania.
And I agree that it was all political, but on a more human scale at the university level, and that leads me to a different conclusion than you are drawing here.
:cow:
For me, the real political moment in this case was when the Penn State bureaucrats (Paterno included) chose to take cover and protect their reputations and protect football while letting a known child-rapist use their facilities for years after he was let go from his job, and where he was known to take other children.
Whatever was leaked from the Grand Jury or from McQueary, politically motivated or whatever, it doesn't change the fact that Sandusky felt right at home in that football program to the point that he wrote a book about it with children on the cover, had his charity connected to it, convinced people he was still scouting high school players (ahem), and had people still calling him a "great man" (like that local high school principal who tried to cover up the abuse of one of the victims).
What we really have here isn't state-wide politics, as much as a great example of Group Think on a grand scale. That's the sociological theory that explains when otherwise intelligent and capable people follow the wrong leader right over a cliff. It explains why Paterno and others took the "risky shift" of putting their own careers and the reputation of the school at risk by covering this up without calling the off-campus police or child services (which I don't believe they did, or they'd still be working there).
In Group Think, there's the "in crowd" and the "out crowd" and Sandusky unfortunately was such an in-crowd guy for so many years that the school leaders circled the wagons for him instead of casting him out. To save the group and keep out a threat, they looked the other way for years. They "punished him" (sort of) by not giving him a coaching job, but let him keep the key to the locker room, and that was really not very smart.
We think of loyalty as the best virtue, but it can actually cause huge mistakes and errors in judgment. That's okay when you're talking about an advertising campaign that doesn't work, or a TV series that might get canceled, or something like Netflix that destroyed itself by insulting its own customers.
But in this particular case, the loyalty to the in-crowd at the Penn State Atheletic program has huge consequences, not just for the young victims who have had their lives destroyed possibly forever and their parents who are racked with guilt, but students, faculty, and fans who are watching in horror as their school's reputation is destroyed. I guess that's stating the obvious on my part, but my point is that it isn't just about poor JoePa and his reputation.
So no, I don't see that it's all political, except on a personal scale since Paterno and Company (and God knows who else) let loyalty cloud their judgment to the point where the rest of the world almost can't believe it. :twocents:
