A Simple Argument For Why Penn State Should Not Honor Joe Paterno At A Football Game
Photo by Rob Carr/Getty
Hey, did you hear today’s big football news? On Sept. 17, before the home game against Temple, Penn State will to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first football game Joe Paterno ever coached at the school. According to a release by the school, “activities during the game will take place to commemorate Joe Paterno’s first game as the head football coach at Penn State.”
Here’s an argument for why they shouldn’t do that:
1. Joe Paterno died in 2012 shortly after being fired as head coach of Penn State, due to overwhelming evidence that he had spent years covering up acts of sexual abuse committed by Jerry Sandusky, one of his top assistants.
2. An FBI report based on 400 interviews and the review of 3.5 million documents concluded that yes, he had been an active part of the cover-up.
3. Unsealed documents later revealed that Paterno knew about at least one act of abuse as far back as 1976, when he ignored a complaint by a 14-year-old boy who been digitally penetrated by Sandusky, saying, “I don’t want to hear about any of that kind of stuff, I have a football season to worry about.” There were several other incidents of Paterno failing to report Sandusky between 1976 and 2011, when Sandusky was finally arrested.
4. Sandusky was convicted of molesting ten boys between 1994 and 2009. It is likely that he molested and raped many, many more.
5. Joe Paterno is therefore directly accountable for every boy that Sandusky ever abused, and every life that he ruined.
6. These are not secret facts that I have been holding onto for years, waiting for a perfect time to deploy them. Penn State has access to all of them, as does everyone else in the world, because they are in the public record.
7. Therefore, Penn State should not honor Paterno, unless they disagree with me that pedophilia and sexual abuse, along with the facilitating of said acts, is a bad thing.
To summarize, Joe Paterno is a loathsome, cowardly, irredeemable cretin who enabled a serial pedophile for decades, and rather than commemorate him, we should spit in disgust every time his name leaves our lips. The only way to meet the news that he’s being honored is with total outrage. And Penn State, we know that a certain segment of your community is populated by self-deluded apologists, but even so, this should not be that fucking hard.