Joe Paterno To Step Down After Season In Wake Of Penn State Sex Abuse Scandal

Joe Paterno, the storied coach of the Penn State football team, will be announcing his retirement at the end of the season in wake of the sex abuse scandal involving his former defensive coach, Jerry Sandusky.

The person says Paterno will announce his retirement later Wednesday.

The person spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because the decision has yet to be announced.

Paterno’s support among the Penn State board of trustees was described as “eroding” Tuesday, threatening to end the 84-year-old coach’s career amid a child sex-abuse scandal involving a former assistant and one-time heir apparent.

Paterno’s son, Scott, said his father hasn’t spoken with Penn State officials or trustees about stepping down. Addressing reporters outside his father’s house, he said Joe Paterno plans to not only coach in Saturday’s game against Nebraska, but for the long haul.

I'm sorry, but that's just insufficient. Paterno knew about the abuse, and he and the university went to great lengths to keep the matter private when law enforcement should have been involved the moment that another coach found Sandusky abusing a child in a Penn state athletic facility.

Everyone involved in the decision-making process at the university put the university's football program ahead of the interests of the children who were being abused by Sandusky. They barred Sandusky from bringing children on campus, as though that was sufficient; it wasn't. Officials looked the other way, and two of them are facing charges relating to the abuse.

People knew about the abuse, and left it to university officials to police the matter, but they instead did nothing. The university would say that it was complying with the letter of the law, which didn't require informing law enforcement, but that's quite besides the point. What about the morality and ethical responsibility to act to inform law enforcement of the potential abuse? Everyone looked the other way and thought the matter was closed, even as the abuse continued.

In some respects, the university handled matters in the same fashion as the Catholic Church has done in its own sex abuse scandals. It claimed to have acted according to the letter of the law, and yet the abuses continued for decades. The Church allowed children to be abused under its watch and it violated its trust with its parishioners.

The same thing has happened with Penn State; the university violated its trust with the public.

Yet, there's some on campus who think that Paterno shouldn't be forced to resign, be fired, or considered for possible charges. They think that Paterno has done nothing wrong.

That's just not true either. He looked the other way as the university went ahead and made a deal with Sandusky to stop bringing children from his charitable project on campus, but that didn't address the abuse that had been discovered. He put the football program ahead of the right thing to do.

And in that light, Paterno failed himself, his football program, the university, and the community at large.

A Contrast In Styles

Compare and contrast.

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos issued a genuine apology without any weasel words or blaming others for his mess. He's the captain of the ship - the buck stops there, and he takes personal responsibility for the screwup in the Kindle deletions. He directed his words at the very people who had most reason to be angry, the Kindle users who saw their purchases evaporate as the company deleted the books, including Animal HouseFarm [ed: sorry, I thought the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor too] and 1984 (rather apt at that).

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com

That's in comparison to what Obama has done repeatedly, and most recently with the nonsensical statements re: the Cambridge police kerfuffle with a Harvard college professor. He was busy making asinine statements without all the facts in hand, including calling the police officer's actions stupid, and then tried to walk back from the mess through his subordinates. He said he regrets the situation. Really?

Expressing regret isn't an apology. It's a weasel-worded cop-out. It's not an apology, which the Police Force now demands.

It's simple actually. President Obama should have avoided saying anything about the incident, lest he jeopardize the police investigation, the rights of the police officer, or that of the professor involved.

Instead, President Obama opined without all the facts and made a mess of things.

Now, with Bezos, you could argue that this was a belated apology, and you would be right - but the apology was unequivocal.

That's where the Bezos apology is superior to that of the many other political "apologies" we've seen in recent years - that apologize only to those who were offended, rather than to everyone for their frakking mistakes. They never take personal responsibility for their actions, and instead blame others for misinterpreting or taking things out of context, etc.

Too bad this kind of apology will be few and far between. A lot more good will comes from this than the weasel-worded variety.