OK, now that I got your attention, I will start by saying that I don't really believe what's written below, and I agree with the decision of the Penn State Board of Trustees to remove Paterno effective immediately. What is provided below is the set of defenses that I'm hearing from Paterno supporters, and it is posted here largely in an attempt to answer the question so many people were asking last night: why are the students seemingly protesting in favor of Paterno. My reading of the various PSU boards and discussions suggests that the reasons below are the primary way that Paterno supporters are constructing their belief system.
I should also add the following: I lived in State College for ten years during the period in question. I taught over 500 students at Penn State (University Park) in small classes (capped in the 20's). I think I understand the institution, the students, and the town outside the institution (which is coming in for very little criticism, and less than it deserves given the Second Mile connection) fairly well.
The DefenseReason A: The McQueary Theory - This is the key premise on which all the other reasons hinge, and goes to the heart of Paterno's knowledge. Paterno's supporters don't believe that McQueary provided Paterno with the detailed description of what he saw that was presented in the Presentment. Rather, they believe McQueary gave Paterno a much more sanitized and ambiguous version of events. They have some good reason to believe this: clearly, McQueary was a credible witness to the Grand Jury: they indicted Curley and Schultz for perjury on the basis of McQueary's claims. Yet they did not indict Paterno for perjury. There must, then, have been some concordance between Paterno and McQueary's claims about their conversation. Paterno's camp has subsequently stated publicly that McQueary's description was not at all what appeared in the Presentment, and this public claim - it is thought - would not be made if it was in direct contradiction to the Grand Jury testimony. So, to put the most pro-Joe Pa spin on things, his supporters believe that he was given an ambiguous sense of McQueary having seen something odd, and reported even that. (It should also be noted that McQueary's camp has characterized his description of events to Paterno as detailed and explicit).
Reason B.1: Paterno DID Tell the Police - I've seen an odd claim emerging from Paterno's supporters, and it goes like this: Paterno did,
in fact, both follow up and tell the police. Here's how that claim works. Schultz was, at the time, the head of the University police. Paterno first reported what he's heard to Tim Curley, the Athletic Director. But then later ( a week later) he had another meeting, with both Curley and Schultz in attendance. As this argument goes, Paterno's insistence on notification of Schultz with a second meeting was an attempt to report directly to the police. He was essentially telling the police chief to pursue the charges.
Reason B.2: But Where's the Follow-Up? - It is on this point that the argument would seem to fail,
unless you buy Reason A in its entirety. Put another way, if you think McQueary told Paterno that he'd seen Sandusky raping a 10 year old, then clearly the lack of seeming follow-up in the form of a police investigation would demand that Paterno revisit the issue. If, on the other hand, you think McQueary said something like "I saw Sandusky in a really weird scene with this kid, and it just made me really uncomfortable, and we should report it," then the lack of follow-up would not seem all that surprising, if Paterno did tell police, and they presumably investigated, and found nothing "weird." To believe this, you also have to believe Reasons C and D, below.
Reason C: The Crazy Protocols - Paterno supporters insist that he discharged his duty not only legally, and not only according to the mandatory and Byzantine protocols that employees are drilled on at PSU and other large institutions, but in excess of the protocols. In essence, they claim he was hamstrung by the protocols, but did everything in his power within them to alert authorities. This is the function of the second meeting with Curley and Schultz after the single protocol alert (to Curley) seemingly went nowhere. The second meeting holds up the claim that Paterno did not merely do the "bare minimum" under institutional protocols, which would be to alert Curley. The bare minimum does not require the second meeting with Schultz (the "chief of the University police, see Reason B.1). I actually find this to be a plausible argument, and people claiming that Paterno did the bare minimum have to explain that second meeting, which was not a requirement once the reporting was made to Curley. It was either an active part of a cover-up (the Grand Jury didn't seem to think so), or what Paterno supporters claim, but it was not the bare minimum.
Reason D: No, Actually, Joe Didn't Know - Much of the argument that says Paterno didn't do enough in 2002 is based on the idea that he must have known about the previous investigation, and all those other victims. Paterno supporters say, essentially,
where's the evidence for that? Where's the evidence he knew anything about the 1998 investigation? Not the "Oh, he must have known!" evidence, but real actual evidence that Paterno himself was informed of it. What we know about the 1998 investigation is this: Ot was reported to the University police by the victim's mother. The University police investigated it and handed it to Gricar, the DA. He didn't pursue charges. Nowhere in that narrative, the supporters assert, do we see Joe Paterno being notified. Needless to say, this part of their defense stretches credulity to the breaking point: was the head football coach not notified that the University police and the DA were investigating his much vaunted assistant for sexually abusing children in his own facilities? Come on! That said, there is no detailed explanation of what that investigation entailed, apart from the sting with the mother, and there's no positive evidence that Paterno
was notified, according to supporters. If you combine Reason D with Reason A, and add Reasons B.1, B.2, and C, you can see how the portrait of Paterno as flagrantly ignoring known abuse starts to fade.
The FallbacksWhat you have above is the case in chief. It basically argues that Paterno did not at any time know the extent of the abuse that we see in the Presentment, and, indeed, did not even know if the
one ambiguous report of something odd going on was accurate, but nevertheless turned it over to the University police through the second meeting with Schultz. Because he did not know of previous reports, and did not know what exactly McQueary might have seen, he assumed the investigation had found nothing untoward. Is this a plausible argument? No. I would call it possible but not plausible, which is to say, you can construct this account from the known evidence without gaps, but it does stretch credulity. The arguments below are those being made by supporters in an attempt to smooth that out.
Reason E: Joe's Old School - On its surface, this argument would seem facile at best. It basically goes like this: Paterno may have had inklings of Sandusky's proclivities, but he didn't have the world view or knowledge to understand them. Infuriating, surely, but not without some substance. In the claim you have a plausible set of ideas: Paterno basically had a mindset of the 1950's, before what we know now about abuse (on the abuser side) and trauma (on the victim's side) really inundated the culture. The "old school" response to any number of "sexual indiscretions" is simple: hey, knock it off, pal. Anything from cheating on your wife to having a thing for little boys is solved this way. There is also the sense that the more horrible versions of what happened to those children simply cannot happen, so "knock it off" is always addressed toward acts like fondling rather than actual rape-intercourse (a particularly cringe-worthy distinction, I know, but it informs the next point). On the victim's side, the notion that sexual abuse produces a lifelong trauma is also unthinkable. Think of the way PTSD was once handled as "shellshock" and you get the idea: the premise is that there is no lasting trauma that you can't "overcome" by simply bucking up. This argument surely doesn't save Paterno, but it would explain his actions in combination with the reasons above.
Reason F: Media Frenzy and Reading Backwards - The final line of defense is really media critique in the standard mode. The argument goes like this: the real culprits here are Sandusky, Curley, Schultz, and Spanier. The reason that people don't see Paterno's side as laid out in the case in chief is because Paterno is the big deer for the media to bag, whereas nobody ever heard of these other guys. Celebrity culture, QED. So, the big media zone in on Paterno, and completely twist the evidence to make it sound that he knew more than he did. Rather than McQueary telling an ambiguous story, he tells an explicit one, even though there is ambiguity in the Presentment on this very point. But that's media and reading backwards. Instead of an exceedingly discrete investigation of the 1998 incident, Paterno was notified and made Sandusky retire. That's media and reading backwards. This argument, in essence, attempts to save the plausibility of the case in chief not by supporting it, but by saying
everything you think you know about this situation and the institution is actually a false construct of the media narrative, and the media narrative is more concerned with latching on to somebody famous than the truth.*****************************************
As I stated above, I don't believe this case. I believe everybody knew what Sandusky was up to, in broad terms at least (there is something to the "old school" argument, I think), and that includes people not yet implicated, especially within the State College
non-academi community and especially at the Second Mile (I am speculating here, but I even find it more plausible that Paterno had no inkling than that the whole of State College establishment had no inkling). I have presented the larger reason that people could actually believe this stuff, here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2275877.What I think will happen: The reasons will start to crumble one by one as more information comes out. The problem is that they are internally consistent with the evidence we have now.
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