Emphasis supplied by James:
“The Freeh reports states quite explicitly and at least six times (a) that the 1998 incident did NOT involve any criminal conduct—on the part of Sandusky or anyone else—and (b) that Paterno had forced the resignation of Sandusky before the 1998 incident occurred … In any case, what EXACTLY is it that Paterno should have done? Fire him again? It is preposterous to argue, in my view, that PATERNO should have taken action after all of the people who were legally charged to take action had thoroughly examined the case and decided that no action was appropriate.”
I suppose if the question is, for some reason, limited to whether Paterno broke any laws in 1998, this exceedingly legalistic answer is marginally acceptable. But to sit here in 2012, knowing what we all now know about this, and about Paterno’s knowledge, subsequent inaction, subsequent lies and the tragic consequences of all of it which he, and maybe he alone, could have done the most to stop given his stature, and focus on whether at one brief moment in time Paterno was legally required to do more than he did seems preposterous.
It’s the sort of cherry-picking that, had someone done it to baseball data, would cause James to flip his lid. It is legalistic argument for argument’s sake that is so utterly beside the point when it comes to assessing Paterno in the present day that the word “misleading” doesn’t begin to do it justice.
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Um... CALL THE POLICE! Call child welfare. Let everyone in town know to keep their kids away from Sandusky. Take away his keys to the locker room. Tell the people at Second Mile that their charity was becoming a victim farm.
Or at the very least, on January 26, 2001, don't have a conversation with your supposed boss where you use your influence to stop him from reporting Sandusky to the authorities.
He didn't fire him.
Shut up, Bill James. You're embarrassing yourself.
And with that, I'm going to go look at the league leaders in RBIs, batting average, and pitcher wins.
made me chuckle at my desk
This.
Ayup.
It's surprising that James doesn't post here -- he's got the stubbornness of opinion and an odd blind spot to reason in niche areas to make for a fine primate...
To be honest, I'm a little weirded out by your concerted effort to defend the people who are defending Paterno and Penn State.
And I assure you that I am giving your personal weirded-outness every drop of deep thought and self-reflection that it merits.
Shouldn't that be OT-Serial Child Rape? It's not like there's going to be a lot of talk about actual football...
Pass.
yes, but if so then he fails to see that his reaction is itself a moral outrage. Which would be consistent with zonk's profile of Jamesian thought.
Be careful. This view of those who don't respond like you wish them to is scary.
We see this all over the place, but prominently when it comes to discussing sex involving minors. First, you must earn your right to comment. You do that by following social dictate. Bend the knee to the taboo in no uncertain acquiescent terms, and make it clear you fully accept the conventional wisdom about that taboo and are not at all questioning its value or the way it is inflicted on both perpetrators and bystanders and commentators and other no good sympathizers. If you don't, you just might be hung as an unindicted co-conspirator in spirit. You pay your dues by talking the talk and walking that line.
Anyone attempting to engage in discussion outside the box better first understand that there is an implicit threat to them personally for doing so. Daniel Dennett refers to this as second order punishing. It's not enough that the wrongdoer be punished, but those that don't adequately express outrage at the wrongdoing, or are otherwise viewed as Laodicean in their response, must also be punished in some fashion. They must be made to pay for not sufficiently being outraged. The parallels in politics are, I'm sure, fairly obvious.
At the same time, they both said a lot of other stuff about a lot of unrelated topics. The world might very well be better off if they'd just shut up and stuck to what they knew.
I would say it differently. I would say the world would be better off if people ignored what uninformed parties said about a subject. I don't give a damn what James says about Sandusky/Paterno anymore than I care what Clarence Thomas says about the Designated Hitter rule.
Other than the fact that he's famous, is there anything that makes James' comments any more meaningful than the boneheads who comment on Yahoo articles? He's just another person commenting on a topic.
Precisely.
I don't know of anyone that is seriously suggesting we dig up Paterno's corpse, tar/feather it, and then salt the earth around his grave... but the guy's dead. Based on what we know, I think it's entirely fair that his reputation be tarnished over this. Setting aside civil suits; legal culpability is now pretty much moot. Paterno isn't going to face any 'real' consequences, but I think there is at least some good that can come from the black eye his reputation is getting... namely - call the ####### cops if you have good reason to believe someone you know is molesting children.
I would say this was the most uncalled for sentence of the thread so far and in general I am more on Esoteric's side in this whole debate. Nevertheless, I think it's really unfair to Benji Gil Gamesh to imply a certain weirdness on his part, especially when such a horrendous crime is the backdrop of the discussion.
Not when we have Morty here to actually do the thing that Eso wrongly thought BGG was hinting at.
Geez. Yeah. I'd forgotten about that. *shudder*
The part about being "a little weirded out" was definitely directed at the wrong poster.
Absolutely, and that's fair ... but Paterno stopped others from turning Sandusky in to child welfare. Spanier and Curley were both going to and Paterno stopped them.
You very rarely see a situation like this, where a powerful person has literally no dry ground to which his lackeys can retreat. Even the family's last gasp -- that Sandusky was a "great deceiver" -- isn't even close to true. Anyone who watched his response to Costas asking him whether he was sexually attracted to boys -- one simple, 15 second question -- would conclude that he was. Sandusky was the Neifi Perez of deceivers.
I'd say the Joe Neikro.
Regardless, it was still a low blow (even though I find the thread policing to be aggravating). Shouldn't have said it and I apologize.
The one thing that I have gone back and forth on with respect to Paterno is based on my experience with others in his generation, including my grandparents. They just have never wanted to talk about these things (by that, I mean the really ugly side of people that looked normal), and certainly seemed willing to sweep things under the rug. Not something I condone or admire, but it certainly came across as a mind set from that generation. Perhaps the best way to put it is that Paterno's actions (and inaction), even though wrong, do not completely surprise me.
I'm about as far away from Penn State as you can get. But, what sort of qualified defense am I mounting?
Paterno deserves to be judged more harshly than Sandusky, IMO, for his active obstruction of justice. He facillitated further rape and abuse. If there's a hell below....
That's the devastating truth that many will continue to avoid.
What a weird question? Did you read my post? What's my post about? What does your question have to do with my post?
Everybody loves to hate on them some Chomsky. Nobody really has a good argument why. Chomsky's the Nickelback of political criticism. Everyone knows they're supposed to hate him, but can't articulate a good damned reason why to save their lives.
Dude.
First the neck-stabbing, now this.
Intervention time.
Like Bill James maybe? We won't know if we only comment about his so-called effrontery in speaking to things outside his field and never try to actually understand what he's saying. But, of course, that won't slake your blood lust.
I wouldn't go that far.
The music is even more breathtaking.
My Dad is 2 years or so older than Paterno would be. I'm not sure how he would have reacted.
When I was a kid long ago, people joked about child molestation. "Oh, that's just weird Uncle Harold. Don't get caught with him alone."
Penthouse used to run Chester the Molester cartoons in the 70s, iirc.. He molested women and young girls both.
Even when parents reacted, they only threatened people. "Stay away from our children, Mr. Conlin."
Paterno also lived in a personal time-warp in a time-warp town. If all the above are mitigating circumstances, there is no excuse for his cover-up behavior. He cocooned his mind and must suffer (posthumously) the consequences.
The mitigation is presented as perspective for learning. It is not a defense of Paterno. If he was simply befuddled as to what to do, I could cut him some slack. But befuddlement was not the case.
Disclaimer: PSU grad although not a FB or JoePa fanatic in the past. More or less followed the team, went to a dozen games in the 40+ years since I first attended. 4 of my 5 sisters are grads and 2 BILs (one a big contributor and 40 year season ticket holder, even when he moved to TN). Another BIL installed a significant amount of fiber optic cable on several of the campuses. My kids and nieces and nephews wanted no parts of PSU, even before the scandal.
If he was Joe Shmoe down the street and ignored his best friend doing this stuff and tried to discourage the cops from investigating his role might have been ignored. But he wasn't. He was in a position where he easily could've changed the end result - he could've got a predator off the streets quite easily with his influence, or at least made it impossible for him to find new victims easily. Instead that predator was allowed access to young children and allowed to keep a status that provided even more access.
He's completely wrong when he says Paterno fired Sandusky; he in fact gave Sandusky the choice of coaching with him, and serving as his primary lieutenant, for as long as he wanted.
James's entire "argument" is based on a fundamental mischaracterization of the record. He sounds like a ####### (starts with fuc, ends with -ing) fool.
Nor would I, but I can see the argument being made. Obviously, IMHO, something is badly wrong inside Sandusky's brain (though certainly nowhere near the degree to absolve him of any degree of culpability); presumably, we're talking about some sort of repulsive compulsion that he's apparently all too happy to act on.
With Paterno (along with his co-conspirators) ... I dunno. I guess something was sick & wrong inside his soul, to the point that "protecting the legacy/program/school" trumped all other considerations, including those of the most fundamental human decency. That's pretty damned horrendous, all the more so, to me, because it appears to have stemmed from cold (albeit horribly flawed) logic rather than sickness.
47:
Good, you're speaking to what James claimed in one instance, and not merely assassinating James's character for making claims and mooting argument.. That makes a total of one here on BBTF.
He didn't fire him.
Before I hit post, I see SBB mentions this in post 47. So here's the link.
while serving a term as ag coop president i discovered the books didn't make sense. i spoke to the coop manager and gave him time to explain but after about 2 months of the shuck and jive hired someone from the outside for an audit and they discovered a big mess. the nitty gritty was that the manager was banging the bookkeeper in return for letting her embezzle. she went to jail. he lost his job and his wife and his house.
i knew this guy for decades. at minimum we were long-time business partners and to some degree friends. i got a blankstorm of flack from many folks in the area who thought i was mean to poor old charlie. his ex to this day curses me if we pass one another. my wife lost several friends who give her the cold shoulder to this day over the matter.
the man was cheating on his wife, granted the woman was a shrew, and was involved in defrauding a company. and i was demonized not that it took much given i have never been mr popularity
not looking for any attention here other then to point out that people do act strangely in various situations.
I'm Mel Hall's lawyer.
We owe a mountain of debt to you Mr. Gordon Jump.
Say hello to Miguel Sanchez!
My friends call me Dirty.
In turn, I'll apologize for the thread-policing. I thought it was pretty obvious from Jim's statement in the other thread that he preferred discussion touching on this topic only in threads marked "OT," but a) I might be wrong and b) regardless, that's for Jim and other moderators he's designated to judge, not me.
Minor quibble, but, hadn't somebody already called the police? Wasn't the 1998 incident in fact an investigation by police (that did not result in any action)?
At that point, yes, Paterno should have totally cut Sandusky out of any involvement with Penn State. Then, when the 2001 incident happened, he should have immediately called the police and essentially said that Sandusky was at it again -- not that he should ever have been allowed on campus in the first place after 1998.
My understanding is the cops couldn't prove what Sandusky did in 1998. That shouldn't have stopped Paterno from having Sandusky banned from the campus.
I can't understand why he wasn't banned from campus in 2001. 1998 is somewhat understandable as a big misunderstanding. But in 2001, its staring them all in the face.
Joe Paterno was actually a pal of my high school's football coach, a very evil and malicious man, and still the archetype I think of when I read Don DeLillo's description of football coaching: "the savage commands of unreasonable men." I am not surprised enough by the Sandusky case to be shocked at all, but there's a residual sense in which I kind of hate having my cynicism confirmed.
There was also the 1995 dual-suicide attempt by adopted Matt Sandusky and another girl living with the Sandusky family. I assume there was a police investigation.
Yeah, for a guy who built his reputation with a body of work that challenged what we all thought we knew about baseball, he seems awfully willing to defend sacred cows when the available evidence against them is damning and conclusive (specifically, when it's presented in an "official report").
Or maybe, as another poster suggested, he's just an across-the-board contrarian, which surely served him well as a sabermetric pioneer, but not as someone trying to appear credible on certain issues that generate wide "public outrage."
Geez. Yeah. I'd forgotten about that. *shudder*
??? I missed (or forgot) something, apparently.
For examples, go to any long thread on this site (that wasn't posted with the intent of being a month-long catch-all thread).
No matter how cynical you get, you just can't keep up.
Morty's thinks its okay for children to have sex with old people. Because the child made that choice.
Though hes no produced evidence to that point in re Sandusky.
Though hes no produced evidence to that point in re Sandusky.
Um, yeah--has anyone even suggested this was the case in re Sandusky (leaving apart age of consent issues, which seems kind of inappropriate given that re Sandusky we're talking about 8 year olds or 11 year olds)? Yikes.
Eew...really?
Jesus ####### Christ.
"Based on the evidence, the only known, intervening factor between the decision made on February 25, 2001 by Messrs. Spanier, Curley and Schulz to report the incident to the Department of Public Welfare, and then agreeing not to do so on February 27th, was Mr. Paterno's February 26th conversation with Mr. Curley," the report wrote.
I think Bill probably should have done a little more work than just hitting Find: "intervene" before responding.
I've said it before, but this only cements it. As much as I loved reading the old Abstracts, each new thing I read from James makes me less likely to want to read anything else new from him. He's getting increasingly hard to stomach.
My question for BBTF's lawyers is: does it ever help to have somebody like Bill James work with you in preparing a case? (Any kind of case, I guess, though I suppose criminal defense, given that Rose and Sandusky were both ultimately convicted of crimes, would be the most germane.) Does it help to have someone stretch language to its breaking point in hopes you'll discover some last-ditch argument, or is an analyst like this just wasting your time?
No it doesn't help, because a good many judges (and juries to I suppose, but I rarely ever reach juries) really do not like it when someone puts a wholly implausible spin on things:
So A & B decide to go to the police
Then A tells B, I talked it over with C, and going to the police isn't a good idea, lets do nothing.
If you then tell the judge that the most reasonable interpretation of that is that C intervened in the decision to go to the police, and I tell the judge, no, in fact that's proof that C did not intervene, at no time did A ever literally say, "C intervened"-
The judge is going to ask if I have a better argument.
True case:
A restraining notice was served on a bank, the bank failed to restrain the debtor's account - because the account was not in the name of the debtor- it was in the name of a corporation (which as it turns out the debtor owned)- the creditor who served the restraining notice sued the bank- and in his suit specifically claimed that the corporation was a sham, and the bank should have known that since the debtor's SS# was the same as the TIN/EIN # on the account.
OK, the bank moves to dismiss, and submits an affidavit, stating that the account was opened under a certain TIN#- which TIN# was different than the debtor's SocSec# provided by the creditor- in court in front of the judge, the creditor's lawyer stated, "the bank admits that the account was opened using the debtors SS#"
the response was, "Your honor that is not true, as shown on the account records and in the bank affidavit, the account was opened with a TIN# that was not the same as the debtor's social number..."
the creditor's lawyer responded, "no where in this affidavit does the bank actually deny that the debtor's social number was used"
that went on for quite some time, finally the judge said, "You say the account was opened using X, the affidavit says it was opened using Y, are you telling me, on the record* that does not imply a denial that the account used X?"
And the lawyer said, "no that does constitute a denial, the account was opened using the debtor's social security number, the bank has never said it was not, what they say is that it was opened using a corporate Tax ID number, that does not constitute a denial that the account was opened under the social security number, they can call it a tax ID number all they want..."
I started to interject, but the judge cut us off... a week later the judge issued a very dry decision simply finding that the bank had no liability to the creditor, the account was owned by a corporation which was a separate legal identity than the debtor...
*that was a veiled threat by the way- but it got no further...
You trying to pretend to be anti-thread policing is hilarious, you stupid asshat.
There's such a difference between this B.S. and just writing "If these allegations are true, this is terrible. But let's not forget the good things Paterno did for the community" in such a way that makes readers think you're being dismissive of the allegations, as the aforementioned P*sn*nsk* did.
Agreed.
I will agree that his "off the cuff" writing of late has been pretty disappointing.
More than "pretty disappointing." This business about Paterno is just loony-old-crank idiocy.
Additionally, it wasn't the concept of 'thread policing' (or whatever) I found bothersome, it was its use in this particular instance.
This and the related e-mail (which I believe Paterno wasn't copied on) seem to fall a little short of smoking gun evidence that Paterno wanted to cover-up for Sandusky. There isn't any description of what Paterno allegedly said in the meeting, and Paterno isn't around to give his version, so perhaps there should be some doubt. What if Paterno merely said: "You better be sure, because if we're wrong Sandusky will sue us all and Penn State."? Perhaps I missed some evidence, but I'm not sure the evidence actually establishes that Paterno was calling the shots here.
well, itd suggest to me that Paterno was more full of himself than I thought if he believes this was a point necessary for him to raise. Your suggesting that a university president is unaware of the possibility of being sued? I find that impossible to believe in a world where deans and even department chairs carry liability insurance.
No, you just call them idiots and defenders of child molesters.
I agree. If Penn State gets sued it wasn't going to be Joe Paterno who swings - it was going to be Curley and Spanier, the administrative guys who cost the university tens of millions of dollars. I find it difficult to believe Paterno was more worried about lawsuits than the two of them. He wasn't in the line of fire regardless.
If he were defending Sandusky, sure. But not for defending Paterno.
While I kind of appreciate the language, Justin T in 85 is just being a dick.
well..he's never DENIED it, so...
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