peteykirch
Member
Which is silly considering that 11-1 season really only had 1 quality win, that being against OSU.
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200 former Penn State players file petition to return Paterno statue
- Thread starter ElectricBlanketFire
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Which is silly considering that 11-1 season really only had 1 quality win, that being against OSU.
ElectricBlanketFire
Member
It's very simple: He covered up child rape. He doesn't get an honorary statue.
Everything he did was because of greed, hence the cover-up.
There are no two sides aside from the right and wrong side.
peteykirch
Member
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Penn_State_Nittany_Lions_football_team
They didn't even play Wisky, yet alone beat them.
Remember when Toronto mayor Rob Ford was revealed to be a crack smoking on-the-job alcoholic who hung around with gang-bangers and lowlife criminals?
Same thing.
I completely agree.
I don't agree with this at all and it's dismissive of how complex people really are.
And this is just straight bullshit and just about never true in all of human history.
FloydtheFathead
Member
This is the best post you've ever made Ninja. Bar none.
Yeah man.. Grown guy in the showers assaulting young boys.. His old little mind can't comprehend that.
I'm okay with this.
One.. I agree with you on the first part.
Two.. This isn't close to the limit at all.
Yup.
HalfBakedProphet
Member
You're misunderstanding the points here. The good things he did WERE BUILT UPON A FOUNDATION OF ENABLING A CHILD RAPIST. Everything he did or was able to do outside of football was closely intertwined with the past success of the football program. None of the good (i.e. the money) would have happened without the Football program performing consistently over the 70s, 80s and 90s on the field, with the help of Sandusky no less. Paterno and the university administration protected and enabled Sandusky for Football Reasons™ while the university raked in cash.
And anyone bringing up some down seasons in the early 2000s as an argument against "it wasn't just about the football" is hilariously obtuse. Paterno's legacy was cemented by the time Sandusky retired in 99, Joe Pa was already a legend and a few bad seasons weren't going to change that.
Fox Mulder
Member
They didn't learn a thing. Should have nuked the athletic program from orbit, but they got off easy.
You're misunderstanding the points here. The good things he did WERE BUILT UPON A FOUNDATION OF ENABLING A CHILD RAPIST. Everything he did or was able to do outside of football was closely intertwined with the football program. None of the good (i.e. the money) would have happened without the Football program performing consistently over the 70s, 80s and 90s on the field, with the help of Sandusky no less. Paterno and the university administration protected and enabled Sandusky for Football Reasons while the university raked in cash.
And anyone bringing up some down seasons in the early 2000s as an argument against "it wasn't just about the football" is hilariously obtuse. Paterno's legacy was cemented by the time Sandusky retired in 99, Joe Pa was already a legend and a few bad seasons weren't going to change that.
Also they kept funneling children in with the programs for him to sexually assault without even an attempt to keep him away.
I don't know whether it would have helped anything, but it would have been great if it happened. The NCAA just doesn't seem very concerned with anything that doesn't directly involve players being paid though.
Joe Paterno recognizing and admitting how much of a role he played in this all would have done more, and I'm also fine with holding it against him that he didn't do this. Call him a hypocrite and a liar all you want, say he's a bad person, I can't blame anybody for that either. Even if you want to call him a bad person, he did a lot of good things. Not in a "But nobody talks about all the children he didn't let get raped" sort of way, but in an effort to actually think about why people defend him. Otherwise we can just change the fucking title to "football is evil" and close the thread because discussion isn't allowed.
To those talking about the good joe pa did making him a complex figure instead of a wicked old man.... how exactly do you feel about Sandusky? Yeah, he was a rapist, but his foundation helped thousands of kids. And he didnt rape like 7 of the 8 kids he adopted who got a better life than an orphanage would have brought.
Perhaps it's too simplistic to say Sandusky set up his foundation simply to rape children. He probably had good intentions and all that jazz.
Right??
Perhaps it's too simplistic to say Sandusky set up his foundation simply to rape children. He probably had good intentions and all that jazz.
Right??
ElectricBlanketFire
Member
There's being a complex person who makes mistakes and then there's covering up child rape.
Again, I'm not sure what you're looking for here. People defend him because of football. If he's Joe Random doing good things for the community and isn't a football coach, nobody would be defending him. The reason is football, full stop.
This is really the best idea I have heard.
But then maybe they would put the pieces back together, so you would have to only mail some of the pieces out.
You can say it all you want, it doesn't make you any less wrong.
Or does the Catholic Church have one hell of a football team I'm not aware of
He was able to get the money to do things off the backs of raped children
fuck him, fuck everyone around him, and particularly fuck his defenders. They should melt down his statue and use it to make the bars for Sandusky's cell.
People definitely attach their ego to Church the exact same way they do to football. There is a reason that "football is religion" is an aphorism.
??? I mean, counterfactual worlds and all that, but people don't become insane fans over charitable works. People don't go frothing mad over criticism of their personal favorite charitable works person. People don't feel personally attacked because their favorite charitable works person covered up child rape by an associate and no longer has a statue.
There has to be some kind of tribal identity thing attached for that to happen. There are tribal identities attached to football, and JoePa practically is the football program. There aren't tribal identities attached to doing good works.
Like, I don't know what to tell you. How many defenders of JoePa aren't fans of the football team? If he hadn't been a football coach, can you honestly tell me that you think this would still be a big story, and that he'd have many thousands of people lining up to defend him, instead of being a quiet footnote that people were kind of embarrassed about?
Edit:
Perfect example, actually. People defend the Church because they are attached to Catholicism. You can't honestly believe that people only defend the Church because it does good works, right?
HalfBakedProphet
Member
In an odd twist, your defense of Penn St. (which you claim isn't actually a defense) sounds very similar to arguments used defend the Catholic church. "Yeah, ok the child rape happened but...what about the all good they've done?"
In unrelated news, fuck Notre Dame.
Seriously, it's worse than blood money. It's pedo santorum encrusted money.
Already Torn
Banned
Hey, I'm not trying to say that he never had some bad seasons, but he had some good seasons too. Let's not over simply things and only focus on the bad stuff.
THIS IS WHAT I'M SAYING. The defenders are in their minds thinking about the good things he did. I'm not saying we should. I'm saying that it helps to understand why people make bad decisions and if we encourage oversimplifying and waiving away real contributing factors means this entire place should just be shut down because what the fuck even is a discussion at that point.
I don't want the statue up, I didn't want Joe Paterno to get to wait and resign when he wanted it, and I didn't think the sanctions should have been lifted pretty much immediately after they were applied. But there are a lot of people out there who do and it wasn't only because he won a title before cable TV existed. "How can these people defend this monster who never did anything good in his life" is a question that can never be answered because it starts from a false premise.
The defenders aren't thinking at all. They are reacting emotionally because they have attached their egos to the football program. Any rationalization about "the good things he did" comes only after their reflexive defense of the football program.
They didn't take away Joe Paterno's graduation rate. They didn't take away Joe Paterno's library. All the quote-endquote good things he did are still there. So why do people want a football statue and football wins and football honor when it's supposedly not about football, but the other things?
It's also a question nobody asks.
He was so all about football that he covered up the rape of children to not harm his program for decades.
This is what happens when a university attaches more importance to football than the core business of a university. JoePa has to be a good man who did nothing wrong at all because he won them football games, and sports fans don't like the idea that their team isn't the "good guys". And letting kids be raped definitely makes you not the good guys. So, instead you concoct a story about how the football team was great, and JoePa was great, and Sandusky was the villian and the administration over-reacted to try and calm some Politically Correct storm that the evil national media brought down on little old Happy Valley where the real good people live and watch football.
See: Baylor.
elrechazado
Banned
All of these alumni and groups just need to buy some land and pay for their own private statue if they want to honor this monster. That's not what this is about, clearly. It's about making the state use its space and money to honor him and shove it in everyone's face.
Oooh Baylor is a GREAT example, because a lot of their fans have had the same response as PSU fans, except Art Briles is pretty much objectively a piece of shit and doesn't have a $10 million library in his name.
They're already doing that
http://www.cbssports.com/college-fo...-statues-are-being-made-in-a-secret-location/
Most of the "good things" he did were the direct result of covering up the rape of children for decades.
He wouldn't have had good graduation rates, or the money to donate to a library, or to donate to charities if he had copped to what was happening. He acted after self interest time and time again and put himself, his school, his football team and his personal interests ahead of children over and over again. Every day since 1978 when he first learned what was happening until the day he got caught he was living a horrible lie.
The reason that PSU fans think so highly of him is because of his bullshit "aw shucks" demeanor and "real old school manly toughness with a heart of gold" schtick that he hawked for all of his life. The thing is, all of that was a lie. Because the huckster let children be raped and didn't do a fucking thing about it.
It doesn't matter if it was a lie when you were brought up knowing nothing else. It's a lot easier to resolve the dissonance with "these new facts must be lies" than it is to say "Everything I've known for my entire life about this person is a lie" even if the latter is the only one based in reality. Once more, I'm not saying that we should think about Joe Paterno's good things when we talk about whether Joe Paterno needs a statue up. He just fucking doesn't. We need to consider them when we're talking about the people who do think he deserves a statue to be put back.
elrechazado
Banned
Good luck to them then. Stay off public property. Hope they have security for wherever they put that thing. Hope it becomes a huge Mecca used by victims and advocates rather than a shrine to paterno
I just saw McQueary the other day. I was at my GF's parents in State College and apparently his sister lives like two doors down.
According to my GF's dad, on July 12 the insurance company that is refusing to pay for Penn State's legal fees and settlement money is releasing a report detailing why... I guess there might be some info on the supposed incident in the 70s where Paterno didn't report abuse.
According to my GF's dad, on July 12 the insurance company that is refusing to pay for Penn State's legal fees and settlement money is releasing a report detailing why... I guess there might be some info on the supposed incident in the 70s where Paterno didn't report abuse.
Already Torn
Banned
Everyone who donated their time and money to those programs that dear old Joe Pa and the football program supported were also unwillingly supporting something built on a foundation of covering up child rape since the 70s. It's fucked up.
We don't need to consider his "good things" nor do we need to consider the insanely tiny minority of insane PSU fans who believe this crap. What you are saying is not mindblowingly deep - you're simply saying that his zealots can see no wrong the man does. Who cares? Those people are morons.
He's the tiny old football guy that looks like your grandpa. It plays heavily into why people will defend him.
If you ignore the image and demeanor, and look strictly at the facts, no one with a shred of decency can defend this man. Children were raped for decades because of his direct complacency.
Already Torn
Banned
Excuse me? The facts say that he was the winningest college football coach of all time.
Every time this comes up i think about whether or not the reaction in Tallahassee would have been the same if this had happened under Bobby's watch.
I don't think it would but it is hard to say. It's such a crazy reaction and amount of denial. I wouldn't really be surprised either way, but Bobby never seemed to be deified like Paterno was, despite being as important to the success of our football program as Paterno was, and nearly as big a figure in the community.
I don't think it would but it is hard to say. It's such a crazy reaction and amount of denial. I wouldn't really be surprised either way, but Bobby never seemed to be deified like Paterno was, despite being as important to the success of our football program as Paterno was, and nearly as big a figure in the community.
Yeah, don't care about the psychological conditioning of a bunch of rape apologists.
The people at florida state managed to run out Bobby Bowden when he stopped winning, when he could have still kept on getting those vanity wins in order to chase the all-time winningest coach title. In fact, if they had kept him and let him get those vanity wins, he'd be the all-time winningest coach right now for sure.
Penn State could never do that, not even after a 3-9 season.
It's still all about football, mind you, but I don't think Florida State's identity is attached to football and bobby bowden like PSU is with joe paterno. For one, FSU wasn't relevant until recently in the modern history of college football, where PSU was built in the 60's, and FSU went through a drought of irrelevancy for several years, where PSU always seemed to bounce back with a 10+ win season when they needed it.
Why not? Is it really not that interesting that a huge group of people, most of whom would say "Fuck that guy" if asked a hypothetical about somebody who let children get raped over the course of decades, would defend somebody they didn't actually know because they felt they knew he was a good person and wouldn't do those things?
Isn't it at least beneficial to admit that the people who do bad things aren't actually mustache twirling comic book villains and talk about that? It isn't breaking new ground or anything but from the looks of this entire thread it's a foreign concept.
I'm not playing devil's advocate here, I'm playing devil's advocate advocate. I know people who have defended Paterno and for them it was a case of not wanting to investigate because they were so certain he couldn't have had a hand in any of this. I don't know that all of them have come around, but I do know that none of them changed their mind because they got shouted "No Paterno is evil and you're evil for supporting his evil"
ElectricBlanketFire
Member
I am officially 100% baffled at your stance on this.
Already Torn
Banned
It's kind of interesting that people can become so horrible, but those people are still horrible people. I think that's why people are interested in the blackgrounds of the infamously evil. That's the whole idea behind Breaking Bad.
The number of people who defend PSU and Joe Paterno aren't huge, and they are no more interesting than any other cult. And yes, the psychology of cults are interesting, but not enough for normal people to pander to them in the name of... whatever you call progress.
Except Joe Paterno was as narcissistic and selfish as people imply. Yes, sometimes villains have good intentions. Joe Paterno's weren't noble, they were selfish. For the very same reasons it's idiotic to try and trump Sandusky's kids as an organization that bettered children.
My stance is that nobody's defending Paterno because they believe he's guilty, and it's not just football that makes them believe that he's not guilty. I think it's useful to explore why that happens. And sometimes in exploring those reasons, you are able to convince people that they're wrong.
I don't think anything could ever possibly be gained from a shitty story about people supporting somebody who did shitty things, and then saying "boy gee aren't those people shitty" and moving on. Nobody learns anything and nothing gets better.
Already Torn
Banned
Those people are still shitty if they're supporting him because he did allegedly good stuff in addition to covering up child rape as opposed to supporting him just for covering up child rape. They're shitty people.
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