Historical Tidbits
by DONN BROOKS
“Say it ain’t so, Joe.” That’s what America is saying to Joe Paterno. Of course, the saying is not original for the Penn State icon. Sports fans first heard the phrase in 1919 when Shoeless Joe Jackson was implicated in the Chicago Black Sox scandal in which the White Sox were accused of throwing the World Series.
Still, the phrase fits for the Penn State mess. For the moment of course, it is so. Joe Paterno did not rise to the occasion. He wishes he had done more. So do I. So does the nation.
What’s the story? Joe Paterno, the winningest coach in collegiate football, had coached at Penn State University for nearly 50 years. He got fired for not taking appropriate action when one of his assistant coaches was accused of raping a ten-year-old boy. Paterno informed his athletic director of the event and took no further action.
Let’s be honest. We live in a culture where it is rare to see punishment for sins of omission. Whether or not we like to admit it, making the boss look bad is not a recipe for success.
The trial of Billy Mitchell goes to prove the point. Mitchell advocated for increased air power in the mid-1920s and he was court martialed for insubordination. He resigned his Army Air Corps commission when he was found guilty and punished with a five year suspension from service.
Of course, Mitchell accurately predicted the attack on both the Phillipines and Pearl Harbor, and it might have been a good idea to have listened to him.
Franklin Roosevelt also has been accused of having advance knowledge of Pearl Harbor. Despite the accusation, there was no public outcry that might have lead to his impeachment.
The original witness in the Penn State case, Mike McQueary, compromised the whole deal once he left the premises. Had he intervened, everything would have been different. But, once he left, Sandusky was able to say, “Boy? What boy?” So, all things considered, the episode went south the moment McQueary did not intervene.
By virtue of the fact that McQueary is currently receivers coach for the Nittany Lions it can safely be assumed that he had his eye on a full-time position on the coaching staff; physically confronting Sandusky would have made that career difficult. When we value loyalty above all else, it becomes a national illness.
Incredibly vindictive supervisors are part of the employment picture throughout the land. Wrongly, McQueary probably thought more of his career than he did of the ten-year-old boy. Had he physically intervened against Sandusky he probably would have never coached.
Because he did not physically intervene he will probably never coach again. McQueary was never given a good set of options.
Then there is Joe Paterno. We can’t find it in us to forgive Joe, but we are sorry he did himself in. Again, after going to his athletic director, it would have been monstrously poor form for him to announce to the public, “You know, I turned this over to my boss, and he dropped the ball, so now I am going public with the matter.
And by the way, you can figure out that my boss is incompetent.” No, Joe Paterno did not have whatever it took to do that. Old Joe was given a poor set of choices.
Having been around criminal investigations all my life I suspect that, somewhere along the line, some secrecy on the part of law enforcement was involved. Investigators usually implore witnesses not to talk to anyone about cases. The athletic director may have had such instructions and passed them on to Paterno.
The disappearance of one of the prosecutors on the case considerably confounds the matter. This man just vanished. What are Penn State and Paterno’s critics going to say if it turns out Paterno gave this prosecutor all the evidence he had?
The prosecutor’s disappearance adds to the problems of this snake-bit fiasco. I have a long-time friend who knew the prosecutor on a professional basis and described him as “strange.”
What it all boils down to is that careerism trumped decency in this case. We have seen it before; we’ll see it again. Let’s be definite: by careerism we mean placing career and job opportunities ahead of ordinary ethics and commonly held standards of behavior.
Did McQueary inform the Penn State university police about the incident? That agency says it has no record of that transaction. Somebody is lying about that matter and getting to the bottom of that thorny question comes close to being job one in this problematic disaster.
At the end of the day, even the sorriest spectacle of careerism does not normally lead to the rape of children. But we, like Joe Paterno, could have – should have – done more.
Those of us not involved should insist on laws making it unlawful to fail to report to law enforcement directly when we have knowledge, direct or indirect, of child abuse. And this beast of careerism needs to find disfavor with the American public.
After all of this, the Nittany Lions could well be advised to change their mascot to the Nitwit Rodents. It works for me.
