The university gym I go to has swim classes for little kids on the weekend and is also used by the university's summer sports camps. So there will be people ages 8 to 80 in the showers at times. Though you'd never say that adults are showering "with" the kids, more that they're in proximity. There's no interaction between (non-parent) adults and the kids outside of someone occasionally yelling at some kid for running in the shower room or something like that.

Right. There is no "horsing around" between men and boys in these places, and no reason in the first place for Second Mile kids to be showering just because Sandusky took them to a game. (Serious question: What would a legitimate reason be for kids to be showering in an empty PSU locker room at 9pm, let alone showering with Sandusky, let alone "horsing around"?) WTF? And even if they _were_ exercising or whatever and needed a shower, kids wait until they get home to take showers, and at that they often wait a couple of days. Ten year old kids don't typically go rushing to the shower as soon as they exert themselves.

If Sandusky was teaching a gym class at a high school -- and I understand there was some involvement at times of Sandusky at various local high schools -- then it would not be suspect that a kid would jump in the shower. But it wouldn't be legitimate for Sandusky to jump in with him and start "horsing around." This is utter nonsense.

This is utter nonsense.

Of course. Is anyone denying this apart from Bill James?

Bill James has a minor point that nudity does not automatically correspond to child abuse. Living in Germany, I'm constantly amused to see little kids strip down and play in the fountains on a hot day.

But to describe the 1998 incident as simple "showering together" is to conceal as much as you describe. Sandusky wasn't just showering -- he insisted the kid use the shower next to him, bodily grabbed him and held him in the water, then bent over, kissed him on the head, and said "I love you." (I may be forgetting some details.) That's creepy, even if the other guy is 40. Dreaming up some contrived situation where nothing disturbing is going on avoids the fact that lots of disturbing things were going on.

So this all means "40 years ago in Kansas people used to drive their cars all the time" isn't going to beat a DUI?

Living in Germany, I'm constantly amused to see little kids strip down and play in the fountains on a hot day.

HOW amused?

47 is pure gold.

In Switzerland, and probably much of Europe, kids take off their swimsuits to dry when they get out of the water. And beach nudity is acceptable for all.

The brutishly sensitive (or is that sensative?) Jack misses only one nuance in his yeoman effort to conflate Mark Twain, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Ernest the tool man...which is that it's possible to pee on someone (or at least try to, as "eluded" to in #39...) without actually being nude and in the shower.

In terms of the Dantean "circle of hell" structure, we can make some distinctions worth noting. Sandusky is clearly in the ninth circle (brutal, ruthless betrayal of those who should have been in his care). Paterno hits the eighth circle for his involvement in a fraudulent coverup. A specific punishment for him would need to be teased out of the different aspects of such behavior that are detailed in the Inferno. Not sure whether Poz falls into panderer or flatterer, but the punishment for the former is to simply carry the burden of the infraction forever as one marches with the recognition of the ill-considered act for eternity. The punishment for the latter is, to put it closer to Jack's parlance, to be "dipped in sheet."

As for Bilge Aims (good one, Jack...), the Dantean formulation is a bit unclear. False accusations are clearly eighth-circle stuff, but what's really going on here is a form of fraudulent defense of Paterno. It is the type of thought/statement that many of us would make in private, or in a forum such as this, and it would not be permanently held against that person if there were some form of retraction (or some mitigating acknowledgement that such an interpretation was several SD's away from the consensus view). In this case, the prominence of the contrarian makes the statement much more public and much less likely to be either forgotten or forgiven. Idols, no matter what form they take and whether false or not, are always vulnerable to some form of revenge--justified or otherwise--from the masses. And, on several levels simultaneously, that's exactly what's happening here.

I'm not a fan of locker rooms, but nudity is a part of the package.

The possibility of the guillotine should hang over every ruler's head.

I never knew Bill James was such a pollyannaish cockeyed optimist. To see this sort of story, with quotes like

In the fall of 2000, Penn State janitor James “Jim” Calhoun witnessed Sandusky performing a sex act on a child in the shower of the Lasch Building, and immediately told other janitorial staff what he had witnessed.
It was an away-game weekend.
Jim, who now suffers from dementia, couldn’t testify. But others who were there that night told the grand jury that Jim was very distraught and trembling because of what he’d witnessed.
“Jim said he ‘fought in the Korean war ... seen people with their guts blown out, arms dismembered ... I just witnessed something in there I’ll never forget,’ ”

, and keep looking on the bright side with a hearty "Pshaw, we're upset about nudity in the locker room? Everyone did it back in the sixties!" - what a happy-go-lucky guy.

WTF does 40 years ago have to do with 2001, anyway

[throws bone in air.]


I thought this was awesome. Well done!

I thought so, too, but there's also

Best Buy's Geek Squad is holding a memorial tonight to honor Arthur C. Clarke. Alas. Everyone was far too polite to say this about the recently deceased sci-fi writer: Had he lived in the U.S. rather than Sri Lanka, he'd be a prime membership candidate for the North American Man-Boy Love Association. "Once they have reached the age of puberty, it is OK... It doesn't do any harm," Clarke told the U.K.'s Sunday Mirror in 1998

#33 Matt: Perhaps Bill James has more in common with Chuck Shumer than you want to believe.

Now I'm wondering exactly what kind of mentor James was to Neyer.

As others have said, big difference between a group of men, even including teens and kids, showering at the same time and "showering together". Many of us have been there and the first rule is: no contact, including eye contact. You clean yourself up and move along.

Exactly. James was either being stupid or dishonest here. He knew full well that the issue wasn't showering in the same communal shower, but "showering together," with lots of touching and grabbing.

#61: James is not claiming that what Sandusky did was innocent. He's claiming that Paterno could have honestly believed that what he was told Sandusky did was innocent. He wasn't told about the janitor incident.

#33 Matt: Perhaps Bill James has more in common with Chuck Shumer than you want to believe.

Someone's been reading non-baseball blogs today! Anyway, I thought Bill James *liked* cereal.

In Switzerland, and probably much of Europe, kids take off their swimsuits to dry when they get out of the water. And beach nudity is acceptable for all.

What's the point of wearing a bathing suit at all if you're going to take it off when you get out of the water?

What's the point of wearing a bathing suit at all if you're going to take it off when you get out of the water?

So fish won't eat your dick?

Bill James has a minor point that nudity does not automatically correspond to child abuse.

Perhaps. Harry Shearer has written that the swim classes at his all-boy high school (in 1950s Los Angeles) were conducted naked -- part of the graduation requirements involved successfully diving off the 3-meter board, which boy after boy would climb onto and jump off of au naturel.

He's claiming that Paterno could have honestly believed that what he was told Sandusky did was innocent. He wasn't told about the janitor incident.

Told by whom? McQ? Hardly.

I'm not a fan of locker rooms, but nudity is a part of the package.

And, oddly enough, the package is part of nudity.

#69, you don't know what you're missing.

James' comments that there's no reason why Paterno should have been the 1st one to go to the police because he knew less about what was going on than others did...that is just plain stupid. WHAT IF NOBODY ELSE WENT TOTHE POLICE? I mean, either you are the 1st or you don't go. Being 2nd was not an option.