Submitted By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
That ultimate question uttered by Senator Howard Baker encapsulated the Watergate Era as Congress grappled with assessing culpability of President Richard Nixon, who was then at the zenith of his presidency. Now almost forty years later, the nation is again captured by a fall from grace as steep and as fast as Nixon’s. And again that question has to be asked of “America’s Football Coach.”
While I’m certainly no Woodward or Bernstein, it seems my blog post about the expanding scandal has reached some folks in Pennsylvania with knowledge about the inner workings of the institution of Penn State Football and about the characters involved. One reached out to me with disturbing questions and a “theory” that has the distinct ring of truth. Here’s the version:
It’s 1999, and you’ve just been handed the American Football Coaches Association’s Assistant Football Coach of the Year award. The son of hard-working second generation Polish immigrants from Western Pennsylvania’s coal region, you graduated first in your class at Penn State after starting on the football team for three years. You’re coaching at your alma mater in a profession known as much for long hours, low pay, and eating its young as for being carried off the field in victory. Oh, you’ve had your share of shoulder pad rides, too. First, when you held everybody’s All-American (and arguably the finest player to ever play college football), Georgia’s Hershel Walker to 3.2 yeards per carry in the 1982 national title game. Then again in 1987 when your protegés intercepted Heisman Trophy winner, Vinny Testaverde, five times, in one of the sports most improbable victories over the heavily favored bad boy of American athletics, the infamous fatigue-wearing Miami Hurricanes, and in so doing vindicated the Nittany Lions’ hoary motto of “Victory with Honor.”
It’s your dream job and you’re coaching with one of the true legends of the profession. Your mentor is in his mid-70’s and you’ve been proclaimed his heir apparent by everyone who would listen. You’ve been approached by several schools to coach their floundering teams, including the University of Maryland, and even made the perfunctory rounds of interviews at places like the University of Virginia. You’ve produced 10 consensus All-Americans including NFL Hall of Famer, Jack Ham. You’ve been at your job for 20 years, and you’ve gained the respect of colleagues, peers, and the public alike for your charitable work and well-publicized interest in helping disadvantaged kids through a charity you founded. At age 55, you’re making good money — for an assistant coach — but a head coaching job would earn you ten times as much and give your family of six adopted kids and a devoted wife financial security. You’ve even written the definitive book on your area of expertise which you generously entitle, “Developing Linebackers the Penn State Way.” In short, you’re hot in your profession and uniquely poised to either succeed the legend or take one of the plum coaching jobs in America’s football pantheon. You know, the Notre Dames, Michigans, or Southern Cal’s of the world.
With all this professional and financial potential, what do you do? Well you retire, of course. You set yourself on a path of summer football camps, and chicken-dinner speeches with appearance fees earning roughly two-thirds of what you’ve made and orders of magnitude less that what you could make. You throw yourself into charity work from whence you derive some income and you rely on the largesse of a town where you preside as a demigod. But there are rumors.
In 1998, you’ve been investigated for “inappropriate” conduct with a minor. The mother of the child sets you up in sting operation where a detective hiding in a closet overhears you say, ” “I understand. I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won’t get it from you. I wish I were dead.” Luckily, the DA in charge of the case rules the matter “unfounded,” declines to prosecute, and thankfully later winds up missing after a 60 mile pleasure ride. You’ve dodged a bullet. Yet, you resign just under a year later.
Joe Paterno has claimed ignorance of the 1998 episode, but according to a person who contacted me, that’s highly questionable. State College, Pa is a 40,000 person enclave devoted to Joe Paterno and Penn State — in that order. Hell, there’s a bronze statue of the man in the middle of campus replete with those thick, black glasses; William Penn just gets some pages on the Paterno Library book shelves. Located in the largely unpopulated heart of Pennsylvania, the town was little more than an encampment when Joe Paterno arrived in 1950 with another icon of Pennsylvania’s venerable football coaching priesthood, Rip Engle. Engle, who was paranoid of losing even against vastly inferior teams, inculcated his charge with the notion that a coach must exercise iron-fisted rule over his program, and to borrow a modern bromide, “what happens inside the program, stays inside the program.” Brown University graduate, Joe Paterno was a good student to his football teacher, and when he took over for Engle in 1966 he inherited a strong football program and a town enamored of it.
Football coaches call their profession a “brotherhood.” Almost exclusively male and established as a true hierarchy, the work is exhausting as every aspect of the opponent must be broken down, scrutinized, and prepared for as if for a sea-borne military invasion. It’s overkill sure, but the adherents love the challenge and, most of all, the camaraderie in pursuit of the challenge. It harkens back to a time of face-painted men pledging their lives around a camp fire to the hunt of some sabre-tooth tiger for the glory of the tribe. It’s machismo pure and simple and most coaches will tell you it’s their life. Oh, they pay dutiful homage to “family and faith” of course, but it’s football that keeps the brotherhood together in almost an exercise of devotion. As I mentioned in the earlier post, it’s a religion in most every sense — ritual, zealotry, ornamental dress, and rigid tenets. Probably the most important tenet is that coaches live out every win and loss together. Like most closed circles of the faithful, they talk, they argue, and they critique their fellows — all the time.
With that background is it really plausible, that in a town as ga-ga over football as State College is, Paterno really didn’t know about Sandusky’s run-in with law enforcement? Is State College immune from the marriage that all authority figures have for one another in most every other small town. You know like when the police chief and the high school football coach meet over coffee to discuss who’s handling security for Friday’s game and whether that trouble-making Jones kid will be there. Or when the mayor runs into the school superintendent and they talk about the kid who bullied the mayor’s little precious. These conversations go on every day in every small town in America — and most big ones, too.
Put those little facts together with the fact that Paterno did not attend Sandusky’s retirement party, and was rarely seen outside of the football facility with Sandusky, and you might wonder what happened to the relationship after 1998. You might wonder why Sandusky quit applying for head coaching jobs. You might even conclude that Coach Paterno nudged his former right-hand man out of his position at age 55, and refused to recommend him for any job at the head of another football program. No, not even at Virginia or Maryland who were desperate for a big name, sure winner and who rarely ever played Penn State. Nobody ever explained why Sandusky didn’t get those jobs despite their stated interest and his brightly burning star. Just the usual, “we have a number of good candidates … blah, blah, blah.” You might conclude that Penn State knew about the transgression with the child and, in exchange for his leaving the Program, cut a deal to grant him and his charity unfettered access to the program and satellite campuses, but no direct role in its operation with young men. That way, you see, there’s no taint. No questions on the propriety of a program that made $51 million for the school last year and funded 26 academic departments — all on the efforts of 18-22 year old-young men. Nope, no questions indeed, except the big one whose answer may be locked away in some ancient personnel files that seem to have the nasty habit of getting lost amid all that moving that goes on within campus departments.
What does a person do who’s banished from the priesthood? How do you react, after a life of high achievement in every sphere, and then are abruptly denied your goal when it is within your grasp? What do you feel, and how do you act on those feelings? Those are the questions that can only be answered by answering the first one I asked.
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Childhood Abuse May Increase Risk For Heart Attack, Stroke
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/13/childhood-abuse-may-incre_n_1089155.html
Excerpt:
Girls who experience severe sexual and physical abuse may have a higher risk of heart attack, heart disease and stroke, according to a recent study that researchers say is among the first to examine the correlation.
The research, presented Sunday at the American Heart Association’s 2011 scientific sessions, found that women who reported repeated episodes of forced sex in childhood or adolescence had a 62 percent higher risk of cardiovascular disease.
Severe physical abuse in childhood or adolescence was linked to a 45 percent higher risk of cardiovascular events.
“It’s almost hard to imagine stressors much greater than physical and sexual abuse,” Janet Rich-Edwards, lead author of the study and associate professor in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital told HuffPost. “When we think about stress and health, abuse is the elephant in the room.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control, Child Protective Services found that in 2008, 772,000 children were victims of maltreatment — including neglect and physical, sexual and emotional abuse — but many more cases go unreported.
Researchers used information from the Nurse’s Health Study — one of the longest running investigations into women’s health in the U.S. They studied data collected between 1989 and 2007 from more than 67,000 respondents (most of whom were white). Some 9 percent of the women reported severe physical abuse during childhood and 11 percent reported forced sex. (Mild physical and sexual abuse were not associated with increased risk.)
Thanks, Blouise, Gene, and Rafflaw,
Back in August puzzling said:
“I had to go back to May 4th to find a “Tea Party” posting from JT, but the guest bloggers produced many politically-driven topics/headlines that could be lifted right from Think Progress in the same period…”
Here’s is puzzling’s list of my politically-driven posts:
– The Right’s War on Women Continues…at the State Level
– Bachmann-Tea Party Overdrive
– Sean Hannity, Bill Donohue, & The War on Easter
– What’s Up, Wisconsin?: Is the Koch-Funded Americans …
– Rush Limbaugh Runs Hot and Cold on Weather Indices
– Rush Limbaugh and Some Other Heartless Americans Make Light …
– The Bells Are Ringing: Sarah Palin and the Revised Story of Paul …
*****
Regarding my posts about Rush Limbaugh: Limbaugh is not a politician. He doesn’t hold elected office. He’s a radio talk show host and a hatemonger who spreads misinformation and tries to rile his followers up.
*****
Here’s an excerpt from my post “The Right’s War on Women Continues…at the State Level”
“Just yesterday, I read about State Rep. Bobby Franklin of Georgia who is introducing legislation in his state that would require proof that a miscarriage—aka a spontaneous abortion—was the result of natural causes. If this legislation passes, there would have to be proof that a woman’s miscarriage was the result of natural causes. If a woman can’t prove that—she might face felony charges!”
I thought that was a pretty scary story. Was it politically driven? I guess it depends upon your point of view.
BTW, ThinkProgress was not my source for that story. Here is a list of my sources:
– Daily Kos
– Huffington Post
– Washington Monthly (Political Animal)
– Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee
*****
On August 5, puzzling wrote:
I went over to TP a minute ago. The top headline is
EXPOSED: The Corporations Funding The Annual Meeting Of The Powerful Right-Wing Front Group ALEC
And here it didn’t take long to find the same:
Smart ALEC: The Organization That May Be Helping Corporations Write Legislation for Your State by Elaine M.
*****
Puzzling should have read my entire post about the American Legislative Exchange Council. If he had, he’d have learned that I had been working on that post for a couple of weeks. My sources for the ALEC article were:
– The Nation and the Center for Media and Democracy who collaborated on a series of investigative reports. The two organizations developed a website called ALEC Exposed, which has a wealth of information about ALEC.
– NPR
– Democracy Now
– People for the American Way
– Common Cause
– Bloomberg
– Thom Hartmann
– Lawrence O’Donnell
– Keith Olbermann
– NBC
*****
Our country and our world are politically driven. It’s hard to avoid political stories. Is reporting the truth about issues that concern me partisan? I guess some would say “yes” and some would say “no” depending upon their points of view.
I think of poems when I think of Elaine!!
Mike,
FWIW, I too consider Elaine to be more issues driven than party driven. For the most part, I find this true of all the guest bloggers. Some may have some preference for party, but that preference is always issue and/or value driven and secondary (or tertiary or completely irrelevant) to the issues proper. None are afraid to cross any party line to lay criticism where it is due. In fact, that is one of the things I think that differentiates this blog from most other political blogs: partisanship is not a primary driver of the authors here and (the usually Constitutional, human and/or civil rights) issues rule at the end of the day.
Maybe Elaine’s a little pastry driven at times, but hey, there’s no fault in that. Who among us doesn’t like a bit of cake or pie now and again? She has really good taste in pastries too. But partisan? It’s not even close to the first word that comes to mind when I think of Elaine.
“I am less partisan than Elaine…” (Mike S)
I must stand in defense of Elaine against that misrepresentation.
She is strong for women’s issues, strong for compassion, strong for education … she is issue driven and committed.
I honestly can’t imagine her refusing to vote for a republican who supported all of those issues simply because he/she was republican. Neither can I imagine her voting for a democrat who was anti woman, lacked compassion, and considered education to be unimportant simply because he/she was a democrat.
Ludicrous.
Mike S.,
“I am less partisan than Elaine…”
I’d like to know what you meant by that comment.
While I may be a liberal/progressive, I don’t consider myself blindly loyal to the Democratic party. I have voted for Republican candidates in the past. You say that you’ll vote for Obama in 2012. I am not sure that I will.
Malisha: another example of this cozy ‘insider’ status protecting a child rapist: http://deadspin.com/5859075/judge-who-set-unsecured-bail-for-jerry-sandusky-is-a-second-mile-volunteer
And imagine this (I’m not saying it happened, I’m just saying “Imagine” it):
Some kid in Aransas, Texas, some time before 2011, gets into a situation where his parents are getting a divorce and there are allegations back and forth and both parents seek custody. The kid starts off living with mom during the pendente lite period. On a visit to his father, his father sits him down and questions him about everything that has happened at his mother’s house in the last two weeks. Dad refers to the mother not by her name but by calling her, “that bitch.” The kid is uncomfortable and says he doesn’t want to talk about it. Dad beats him up with a belt, for “lying.” The kid screams, “I hate you I’m not coming here any more!” and after the visit, tells his mother. She goes to court to get dad’s visitation supervised. The judge sides with the father and says, “The boy has told his father that he refuses to visit him any more and that he hates him; this has obviously been caused by the mother’s alienating the child against his father to gain advantage in a custody battle.” He rules that the boy goes to dad’s custody and has no visitation with mom until she has therapy to show her that it is bad parenting to turn a child against his own parent. She is resistant and the therapist reports that she is so hostile to the father that she will not be able to learn good parenting under any circumstances. In a little friendly “ex parte” with dad’s lawyer, the judge says, “I know how to handle a bitch like that,” and also shares his belief that the kid needed to be beaten with a belt. Although the judge rules that the mother has no visitation or contact (in the child’s best interests of course), her parental rights are not terminated so that a child support order can be made against her to support her son, in accordance with the Texas guidelines for child support orders.
So, the courts being abuser-friendly, is this scenario unimaginable?
And about that initial beating — was it hard to cover it up?
Happens every day. Lots more often than the Sandusky-type thing.
About cover-ups.
(I left a comment but it vanished; I don’t know how these things work.)
The cover-up, in my opinion, is worse than the crime, for many reasons. One is that crimes flourish when cover-ups can be presumed. One of the most persistent problems with all the sex abuse cases, from the churches to the schools to the sports to the scouts to the families, is that the cover-ups are so easy.
Even seemingly good people participate in these (and many other) cover-ups, too. One reason they may do so is that they shy away from doing harm to the various abusers whom they protect, because they have sympathy for them. Another is that they shy away from opening up dangerous subjects because they have their own vulnerabilities. And another is that abusers are very good at finding, organizing and using power against any and all people who might try to help their victims either emerge from their control or demand accountability after having emerged.
Another very important piece of this is the fact that our society is built not upon accountability but upon LIABILITY. If you cannot make somebody liable to you for what they have done, you have NOTHING, and they can punish you for trying to demand accountability if you fail to strategically gain on them in the liability battle. So thus, if you sue somebody for damaging you, in our system, better make sure you have more power than they have, or the whole thing turns on you and they have their foot on your neck IN COURT and then you have suffered not only the damage, but on top of that, punishment for having complained, and the total loss of credibility. This will keep MOST PEOPLE from complaining of anything others won’t back to the max. This is abuser paradise.
IT IS WHERE WE ALL LIVE.
The courts are abuser-friendly.
Make no mistake about it; any one of Sandusky’s alleged victims, acting at a time before he could have counted on massive publicity and enormous legal and financial backing, would have been crushed like a bug.
Mike Elk
If, like me, you scanned the crowds rioting at Penn State last night after the announcement of the firing of Joe Paterno, you may have noticed that nearly all the people there were white men. The riots were about white men not liking to be held accountable.
As a native Pennsylvanian, I never once considered attending Penn State University. Penn State always seemed like a place full of cliquish white people recalling their glory years of making fun of the dorky kids in high school. More progressive white people and people of color went to big city state schools like Pitt or Temple while whiter, more conservative types tended to dominate the settings of the rural, fraternity-heavy Penn State campus.
At the center of Penn State’s conservative culture stood Joe Paterno — who frequently campaigned and fundraised for conservative politicians throughout Pennsylvania. As my friend sportswriter Dave Zirin points out, Penn State was a company town and football was the company that funded Penn State. Home football games attracted 100,000 people per game. Each year the program pumped a whopping $59 million into the poor rural economy of the surrounding area, from the sales of food to buying hotel rooms to the selling of sports gears, and created $50 million in pure profit that could be distributed to other programs at the university. In addition, Penn State football fostered large alumni donations as football games fostered strong bonds with graduates. To many Pennsylvanians, Joe Paterno represented Penn State and all it stood for.
Old, conservative white men around the state revered the football coach who stayed on well past his prime into his eighties. Paterno stayed on when others told him he was wrong not to change his old ways, well after his coaching seemed ineffective and his team’s record suffered. Paterno’s perseverance in the face of his deficiencies was a beacon of hope for many white men in Pennsylvania who felt their power challenged by liberals and people of color seeking to change their ways.
That’s why I paid attention to the crowd rioting on television at Penn State last night. The firing of Joe Paterno upset the natural order that white men like Joe Paterno could rule not based on merit — as Paterno’s coaching deficiencies showed — but because white men always had.
As a Pennsylvanian, I could not be more ashamed of Penn State. This weekend I will instead be rooting for the University of California-Berkeley Golden Bears. There students participating in OccupyCal bravely faced police attacks for peaceably assembling, at the same moment Penn State white males attacked police over the firing of an 84-year-old football coach who enabled a child rapist.
…another view
All of which reflects roughly the WordPress statistics and does nothing to bolster your speculation or contentions, puzzling.
I do rather enjoy watching a dog chase their own tail though.
I thought mudslides were a drink at a bar…. I didn’t know you could get them in the shower at ped u…..
aha
One final thought on the site statistics since it came up here.
Visits to jonathanturley.org are tracked by five tools: Comscore Beacon, Google Analytics, Pubmatic, Quantcast, and WordPress Stats. Some of these tools may record and pass recent browsing history back to the blog. As Gene has made clear, guest bloggers have access to at least some of this information.
You can make yourself less visible to these tracking tools with browser add-ons like Ghostery and others.
More statistics here, including demographics:
http://www.quantcast.com/www.jonathanturley.org
This is a set-up gentlemen, be watchful.
“The vast majority of guest posts here are monotone, partisan attack pieces that buy right into the false debate our political duopoly has constructed. JT’s weekday pieces and topic selection stand apart from the self-congratulatory echo chamber the guest posters have created for themselves after hours. This Esposito piece is one of too few exceptions.”
Puzzling,
I think you continually misread what is being written by the guest bloggers through the lens of your own pre-judgment, At one point or another I have disagreed with every one of the guest bloggers and likewise they with me. Gene and I for instance disagree on many things, however, we agree on quite a few others. For instance Gene will probably not vote for Obama and I will. Mespo and I have disagreed on issues of punishment of certain crimes. I am less partisan than Elaine, more radical than Nal and certainly have had my differences than Mike A.
However, while we’ve all had our differences, we do share many viewpoints that coalesce with JT’s perspective, we’ve all been around here for a long time and we respect/like each other. Besides us there is a core of others who are also regulars here and they are too numerous to mention without offending anyone my aging memory banks may miss, thus negating the expression of my regard for them.
On the other hand, you yourself, although of differing viewpoint are a long time regular, as are Bdaman, Bron and Anon. That we disagree on much personally, does not lessen my feelings of camaraderie with you/them as denizens of this blog. There is a point where you may be correct and that is that we do seem to have developed the habit of congratulating other guest bloggers on their efforts. I agree that at points that may appear to be too incestuous.My only explanation, not justification, is that we all share a common experience because it is more scary to present one’s ideas as a columnist, rather than a commentator. Sharing that experiential knowledge we do tend to root for each other and give each other positive feedback. However, if you think I would hold back criticism because of that comradeship you are mistaken and I think my history here has proven that I am not afraid to express myself, even to friends.
As for you and I particularly, my take is that you have found my writing puerile and knee-jerk. Perhaps they are, I don’t discount the possibility. I am after all a legend in my own mind. Whatever contribution I make here it is sincere and honest. I am as I write, for better or worse. There is no one who judges me more critically than I do, yet even if my own judgments of me are harsh, I understand myself enough to lovingly accept them and honestly expose them.
Curious response, puzzling, as you don’t have access to any meaningful statistics concerning this blog. I told you the relevant information regarding trending and traffic volumes. If you want access to the specific numbers, I suggest you ask the Professor. As to your supposition about audience composition, it remains simply unfounded supposition. Please feel free to continue what is manifestly a personal beef for you though. It harms no one but you in the long run.
Mespo:
I’ve been listening off and on to this subject all this Saturday night/Sunday morning with the local sports stations weighing in on this subject,the last commentator I tuned into said this will be with us for “years”with the info that has yet to come out.
I’m not personalizing the comments, Gene, sorry.
I published real statistics and you haven’t.
puzzling,
First, maybe you don’t see the increased traffic because you don’t have access to the detailed WordPress site statistics like me and the rest of the guest bloggers. Second, I didn’t claim correlation or causation, only that your claim of guest bloggers driving away traffic is false – because it is false. You, on the other hand, claim to have some sort of magical insight into the motivations of those who visit this site and what drives the traffic. The bottom line is your assertion that the guest bloggers have harmed site traffic is pure bullshit driven by some petty personal problem of yours.
It’s a not very attractive and quite transparent problem you’ve got there.