Good for Penn State to fire Paterno. Children have to be safe on campuses.

But the Twitterers harshing Kutcher are goofy... There are plenty of decent people who don't read every newspaper every day all the way through, especially actors.

Been saying that to my husband since the story broke. It's on his shoulders. Disgusting. This is precisely what our law enforcement officials are for. And surely, Paterno had no obvious LEGAL obligation, but here's where your code of ethics must rise above. The law is just one thing that is taken into consideration when one is making decisions, if that's where you stop, no thanks.

And Please... I beg you... Let's all stop taking moral instruction from Goddam NPR.

Oh, is that was they said too?

"Look Jerry, if you gotta keep raping little boys, just do it off-campus, OK, ol' buddy, ol' pal?"

That's not exactly what Paterno & Co said to Sandusky, but it is exactly what they let him get away with, for many years, even after they caught him in the act, with his cock up a child's ass.

If that 10-year old boy in the locker room shower had been Paterno's grandson, I'm guessing he would have had a harder time just fulfilling his minimum legal obligation, and then washing his hands of the whole thing.

Tweet

Unbelievable.

(I had actually started a comment criticizing Jess for using prissy, one-word comments about this.)

I hope all those families take Paterno, the AD, and the assistant coaches to civil court. Those assholes should loose everything they own.
What kind of animal witnesses the rape of a child and then walks away and does next to nothing? I don't care if it was my best friend or husband-I'd kill te bastard and then call the cops.

And I responded, Crid!

Eh, I like "disgusting" better.

> Eh, I like "disgusting" better.

The problem with that is that you can get too focused on pointing out how this tawdriness is all so beneath you... Eventually you forget what you're trying to hate.

That's what happened to Kutcher last night. He missed a news story in the paper, and now an internet full of idiots is screaming at him for somehow supporting the torture of children... Which is ludicrous. And it undercuts any trust that you could have in the idiots. They seem much more interested in making fun of a successful movie star than in caring for endangered children.

Who's Kutcher? My point, aside from my thoughts that the whole situation is disgusting, was that anyone who knew and didn't go to the police was/is culpable. We should be better than that. We (children included) should expect to be able to rely on people being better than that. Now not only did kids get raped, but no one helped to end it. That is what's disgusting.

Slam dunk... No need for lace embroidery and a nosegay.

I wish I had the nerve to steal credit for this link.

"My point, aside from my thoughts that the whole situation is disgusting, was that anyone who knew and didn't go to the police was/is culpable. We should be better than that."

I don't want to go too far down that road and neither should you.

We already live in a country where we are being trained to report anything out of the ordinary to police. How far a stretch is it to make everyone criminally liable in this country for not reporting such things as dads taking pictures of their kids in the park?

In my legal opinion, Paterno did exactly what he should have done. He was not a witness. Sandusky was a former employee who had been given continued access to the Penn State facilities by administrators above Paterno. Paterno did not witness the abuse. It was reported by the grad student.

If anyone should have called the police, it should have been the grad student and his dad. But then you get into, exactly how do you apprehend Sandusky and hold him for the police and should you have a duty to do so?

Especially when people have been killed and seriously injured trying to make citizens arrests.

I think most serious people would agree that if the athletic director and his boss, had done their jobs at the time, Paterno would have done everything necessary to address the problem.

It was their inaction, after the report, plus of course, the lies to the grand jury that became a problem.

The statute of limitations has long since past on this 2002 incident. If there is a conviction of anyone other than Sandusky, it will be for perjury.

The Penn State board of trustees is now on a witch hunt to fire everyone who might possibly prove a liability in the coming civil suits over what occurred on their property. It won't protect them, but it looks like they are "doing something"

"If that 10-year old boy in the locker room shower had been Paterno's grandson, I'm guessing he would have had a harder time just fulfilling his minimum legal obligation, and then washing his hands of the whole thing."

If you can stomach the English Subtitle, watch this Korean movie as a grandmother challenges the society's acceptance of sexual violence done by boys including her grandson to other child and the subsequent cover up by the school to maintain the appearance of social order.

The last scene of the movie reminds me of the movie "The Hours".

Also, at the end of the movie, it contains probably the most poignant badminton play ever played in human history.

There damn well should be a legal obligation to report a man HAVING SEX with a child. It's not picture-taking by a dad, and no one could mistake it for such. It makes me ill that I could live in a place where there are no real consequences for doing jack-shit in this situation.

> In my legal opinion

Are you saying you're an attorney? "Legal opinion" has special meaning, even from lay people.

> Paterno did exactly what he should have done.

Yeah?

Y'know, if I worked on campus and someone came to me and said they'd eyewitnessed a boy getting fucked in the ass in a University shower, that would be a big day for me. A real game-changer.... Quite aside from any legal response that might be required.

I'd call several friends, including one I've known since LBJ was president. Check in with the family. I literally would consider calling my long-retired mother for guidance... Just for the emotional handling of it, not for what I "should" do, which would have been handled immediately.

Because this will not wash:

> if the athletic director and his boss, had done
> their jobs at the time, Paterno would have done
> everything necessary to address the problem.

> It was their inaction, after the report, plus
> of course, the lies to the grand jury that
> became a problem.

If you're part of such an enterprise –especially the titular, decades-beloved senior of one– your responsibilities are not merely procedural. If there's a point to a story like this, it's that you can't just throw up your hands and say 'That's not the part of the machinery I'm paid to worry about!'

That's how I knew, from Paterno's Wednesday morning comment, that this wasn't over: "With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more." This is a man with a tin ear for morality.

Props to M4

I'd suggest that maybe the Trustees also need to look at themselves, and perhaps resign en masse. I am not suggesting that they endorsed or knew of the behavior; I *am* suggesting that it was their responsibility to establish a culture and an organization structure under which such things would not happen.
A while back, there was a fire on a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier. It was caused by a sailor smoking in a paint locker, in defiance of all regulations and all common sense. The vessel's captain wasn't the one who did the smoking nor was he the sailor's immediate supervisor; however, he was still relieved of command.

Isabel,

This doesn't fall under the category of "too much government/police intrusion." This type of thing is exactly what the police and our legal system are in place for. And there was no question about what was happening, it was kid-f*cking. Man up.

Amy - here are the rumors - Pittsburgh et al sports talk show hosts:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/10/penn-state-scandal-rumors-sandusky-pimping_n_1086099.html

"...that Jerry Sandusky and Second Mile were pimping out young boys to rich donors. That was being investigated by two prominent columnists even as I speak."

This investigation is going to give Rick Perry a break from the headlines for a few days.

Yeah. Besides:

> It won't protect them, but it looks like they
> are "doing something"

Who are you quoting, Izzy?

It's easy to agree with you that the TSA is reprehensibly mishandling its authority. But that's the same problem at Penn State: sinister authority.

> This investigation is going to give Rick Perry
> a break from the headlines for a few days.

Obama, too.

And BTW, we might be in another war by Monday. Care to wager?

So, just how far are you willing to go with this requirement to report heresay to the police? What are you prepared to do about the first false accusation? I'm afraid I know the answer, so I'm going to be a bit cautious about creating legal obligations. Paterno screwed up, and it cost him his job.

After all, a women would never make a false accusation of rape, right? That didn't work out too well for the Duke lacrosse players...

Maybe we can start a Department for Reputation Restoration, because we're going to need it.

Sandusky continued to have access to campus facilities, where he often brought children through his work with the nonprofit Second Mile, which he founded to help disadvantage[d] youths.

Someone should explain to Sandusky that "disadvantaged," does not mean "hasn't been taken advantage of yet."

> So, just how far are you willing to go with this
> requirement to report heresay to the police?

I'd have compelled the eyewitness to tell the cops.

M'kay?

> Maybe we can start a Department for Reputation
> Restoration, because we're going to need it.

What makes you think so?

> it contains probably the most poignant badminton
> play ever played in human history.

Let's take a break here and try to imagine.

How many are accusing Joe Paterno because he's the only person at Penn State they can name?

Clearly more than one person is involved.

I'm just asking you not to forget the others.

"There damn well should be a legal obligation to report a man HAVING SEX with a child."

Yes, there should be, and there is. The graduate student and his father reported it, to the athletic director who should have gone to both the university attorney and the police but didn't.

"It's not picture-taking by a dad, and no one could mistake it for such."

No,it is not, but we are headed that way, if we start holding people with second hand knowledge of a possible crime, criminally liable for not being aggressive enough in their reporting.

Assuming what Paterno says is true, and he did not have direct knowledge of a crime, why should it not be sufficient for him to tell the athletic director and why would he have an obligation, as a non witness to go directly to the police?

Do you people even understand the basic concept of hearsay?

"It makes me ill that I could live in a place where there are no real consequences for doing jack-shit in this situation."

Me too and I think when the truth comes out the right people will be hung out to dry. However, I don't want this country to become one where it becomes a crime to not report your every second hand suspicion that a crime has been committed directly to the proper authorities (whoever they may be).

You know darn well, the child rape would not be the only crime that you had a duty to report. Please tell me you are not so naive to believe that it would not cover a whole host of other things like "failing to properly dispose of used motor oil" for instance.

Do you think the grad student should be charged for not going directly to the police? The grand jury thought he had done what he was supposed to do.
Things are not always what they seem, and a lot of people seem to have 20/20 vision into what they would have done in a similar situation.

Here is hypothetical.

If you worked at a company and you happened to see some search terms on someone's computer at work, that indicated that they were possibly looking "at" or "for" child porn, would you; a. tell your boss, or b. go directly to the police?
If you answered b, you are a hysterical ninny and you would deserve to be fired, (in my opinion)

But in Momof4's world you deserve to go to jail if you do "b" instead of "a" , your boss fails to act, and the employee in question turns out to be involved in kiddie porn.

> It won't protect them, but it looks like they
> are "doing something"

Crid, what I am saying is that firing everyone in sight even remotely connected to this thing, is what Penn States attorneys probably advised the board to do protect the institution from collective liability for negligence that occurred "on the job"

It won't work because they will still be on the hook. The only thing that may protect them is sovereign immunity.
It is really all about $$$ and whether the fired employees retain some rights to get Penn State to pay for their legal defense. The rest of it is just your typical security theatre, closing the barn door after the horse is out, so to speak

As for being an attorney, I don't do torts, or criminal. My specialty is contracts, business law and taxes.

I would keep going up the ladder. Eventually someone would take an interest in an employee searching for kiddie porn on an office computer. Stopping at the first wall isn't a solution, either.

Circumstances are an important consideration here.

About 8 years ago I had a party at my flat in Germany, I had around 15 people it was the holidays, everybody was getting hammered, lots of comings and goings, no small amount of vomit in the bathroom, and quite a bit of passing out eventually took place.

I gave everybody there access to my computer systems, and everything was fine. The next day after everyone had left, I got onto the computer, and I saw populated search histories for child porn, and someone had saved a bunch of some of the most horrific things I've ever seen. I'm as cold hearted and jaded as they come, but what I saw that day will never leave me.

My first instinct was to delete it. But immediately afterwards I realized someone at the party had to have been the one to download it all after the rest had passed out. So I went and reported it to the Criminal Investigation Division on post. I had no idea which person had done it, but all of them were people I thought of as comrads. Most of us had deployed together, and known each other for a year or three or more. Who it was, I had no idea. I gave out names of those whom had attended and let them handle it from there.

A few months later and someone had been arrested and confessed.

Now in those circumstances, I KNEW a crime had been committed, I did not know by WHOM. I had a duty to report and I followed through.

Now if I only heard rumor that Jane Doe had been molesting John Q. Public's elementary school age son, then a report on my part would be somewhere between rumor mongering and a witch hunt, mere hearsay without any evidence. What COULD BE considered a responsible course of action would be to speak to John Q. Public's son and say something like, "John, listen there are unpleasant things going around, I don't want to put out anyone's name or any ugly and possibly untrue rumors, but I suggest that you have your son examined and talk to an expert to ensure he is in good physical and mental condition and that nothing bad has happened to him." Now its only natural that John would be upset by this without more information, but a rational response to that expression might be, "Look if the rumor were about you, absent any truth you'd want someone to be discreet too. It may be nothing, and if it is, wonderful, but if there is something, then you want to know ASAP, and you can go from there. If I need to make some sort of statement about something I've heard, I'll make it then. For now, the responsible thing is what I mentioned first."

That is the way I'd treat a circumstance like that.

"I would keep going up the ladder. Eventually someone would take an interest in an employee searching for kiddie porn on an office computer. Stopping at the first wall isn't a solution, either."

This appears to be one of those sex based things. I want to suggest that men and women handle issues like this differently.

After my time in the Army, I came to realize, that most women, in the work place have no concept of the "chain of command".
When you do, as most men seem to,you realize that especially when you are dealing with problems and solutions that are above your pay grade, your obligation ends when you notify your boss, that there is a problem. You don't wait a while and then decided to go above him or around him if he hasn't come back to you and said; "I handled it", with all the gory details that will satisfy your prurient sensibilities.

It is no longer your business or your concern, as an employee, and I don't care if it is suspected kiddie porn or embezzlement from the coffee fund.

Jesus Christ, the guy's wife is named "Dottie".

> How many are accusing Joe Paterno because
> he's the only person at Penn State they
> can name?

From the commentary I've read on the internet over the last 40 hours, that would be about 0.0032 percent.

> I'm just asking you not to forget the others.

Your concern will be addressed, promise.


> The graduate student and his father
> reported it, to the athletic director
> who should have gone to both the
> university attorney and the police but
> didn't.

So the fuck what? The grad student, and his father, and Joe fucking Paterno, should have followed through to ensure prosecution of this matter.

That's how it works in virtuous societies: When authorities fall short, decent men keep moving forward.

> No,it is not, but we are headed that
> way, if we start holding people with
> second hand knowledge of a possible
> crime, criminally liable for not being
> aggressive enough in their reporting.

Two punctuation errors, and you're pissing me off anyway. See the example above... If someone came to me with an eyewitness report like that, I'd call the cops immediately and demand that the person say it to them again in my hearing. I would fucking chain him to the chair while the cops drove over.

And if the cops dropped the ball, as they seem to have done in this case, I would go seven kinds of public. L.A. Times, Orange County Register, Blogs, Twitter, talk radio, my circle of friends, and freeway graffiti.

> Do you people even understand the basic
> concept of hearsay?

Do you understand the basic concept of decency? When you have credible information that something horrible has happened, you're expected to do something about it.

You're not allowed to make a token, career-saving gesture of response, and then move forward as if your involvement were concluded.

But it's interesting, telling indeed, that military experience has taught you otherwise. Good to know! Thanks for your comments.


(And let me be the first, in my own appreciation of the Paterno scandal if not in yours, to explicitly acknowledge the weirdness of a error like this from a man named for fatherhood. Anyone care to wager that the victims in these cases didn't come from single-parent homes?)

CHRIST I'm good for you people. You need me BAD

I have a SIMILAR personal story regarding rape of children. While I was living with my grandmother I discovered my uncle was molesting his two sons. Turns out he was violently raping them and the only reason he did not rape me was because I was female. My grandmother knew all this was going on and did nothing.

After a year of living there my mom came and picked me up. I told her what I witnessed and she TOLD ME TO KEEP IT A SECRET! That is correct, she said not to tell anybody about it because they would think badly about us. I remember walking away and thinking "I'm going to hate this woman for the rest of my life"

She would go to family reunions and NOT say anything. I never attended those things, but I remember being at home and waiting for her to have done the right thing...She never did.

I did, I opened my big fat mouth and made a big deal about it when I became 18. But I would like to say that to this day it would still be a secret.

Yup that's the mom I have....

Do you date older guys? Shorter ones?

"Me too and I think when the truth comes out the right people will be hung out to dry. However, I don't want this country to become one where it becomes a crime to not report your every second hand suspicion that a crime has been committed directly to the proper authorities (whoever they may be).

You know darn well, the child rape would not be the only crime that you had a duty to report. Please tell me you are not so naive to believe that it would not cover a whole host of other things like "failing to properly dispose of used motor oil" for instance.'

You are perilously close to the Islamic (maybe just Saudi, I don't know) law that says rape doesn't happen if there aren't 4 witnesses. You are THAT paranoid that everyone on the planet is out to get the innocent accusees and they must be protected at any cost. I wold kill myself if I had your worldview, and I mean that sincerely. I also mean it as the daughter and sister of 2 very successful attorney's. As a woman who lost her liscense for 3 months needlessly, because I had been drilled that you submit to no tests NO MATTER WHAT by my dad. In fact, if I knew for certain that I would go to prison for life for reporting this as a grad student, I STILL would have done so. To the people who's job it is to enforce the law, not my boss. And that, my dear, makes me a much better person than you. And I say that sincerely as well.

I mean you can seriously equate reporting seen sex WITH A CHILD, and used motor oil? Does your head explode as you type? I can't fucking fathom you. There are slippery slopes in this world, and then there's fucking cowardice and shitty inhumanity. You seem to have seriously confused the two. Or consciously decided to, I'm not sure which. I rather fear the later.

Yeah, I do know what hearsay (in the legal world) is, and I know there are exceptions. Decency and humanity, for one. It's a damn good thing I know no one else in the military or legal world like you.

Here's a link to the Grand Jury report:

http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/uploadedfiles/Press/Sandusky-Grand-Jury-Presentment.pdf

Very telling little detail on page 7:

"Joseph V. Paterno testified to receiving the graduate assistant's report at his home on a Saturday morning. Paterno testified that the graduate assistant was very upset. Paterno called Tim Curley, Penn State Athletic Director and Paterno's immediate supervisor, to his home the very next day, a Sunday, and reported to him that the graduate assistant had seen Jerry Sandusky in the Lasch Building showers fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy"

Is that what you'd do to the guy above you in the chain of command? Order him to come to YOUR house on a Sunday evening? That tells you who was really in charge over there. In theory, and for legal purposes, Curley was Paterno's boss. But in reality Paterno was the Boss, the King of Penn State football, and nothing happened there without his knowledge or approval. Fulfilling his (minimal) legal obligations and leaving the rest up to his chain of command can't relieve him of his moral obligations.

I love love love how events move so fast in nowadays!

1/10/2011 12:30 PM PST BY TMZ STAFF TMZ Live Penn State Scandal Giving Mike McQueary a Pass?!

And six hours later--

McQueary will not coach Saturday Interim president says there have been 'multiple threats' against the

By Andrew McGill and Mark Wogenrich Of The Morning Call

9:20 p.m. CST, November 10, 2011
Penn State assistant coach Mike McQueary will not coach Saturday against Nebraska due to "multiple threats" against him, the athletic department said Thursday.

_______

And now, more harshness for Izzy.

> When you do, as most men seem to,you realize that
> especially when you are dealing with problems and
> solutions that are above your pay grade, your
> obligation ends when you notify your boss, that
> there is a problem.

This is lunacy. I have so many problems with that passage I don't know where to start... Harshness aborted.

See the title of this blog post.

And here's Paterno in his own words, from an interview last year:

"You take a kid who has had no real experience, and who has no confidence in himself, who maybe comes from a broken family...You've got to know what you're doing. You're not dealing with lamps or light posts. You're dealing with young people"

http://aol.sportingnews.com/ncaa-football/story/2011-11-08/penn-state-joe-paterno-scandal-jerry-sandusky

It's an injustice that Paterno got sacked over the phone, while that sack of shit McQuearey (who saw Sandusky raping a child with his own eyes) still has his cushy job. But try as he might, Paterno can't square his actions with his own high-minded words.

One man had direct, eye witness knowledge and four men heard from the eye witness himself that a child had been raped on campus. Not one of those men picked up a phone and called the police. Whether or not they deserve to go to jail, all of those employed by the university deserve to lose their jobs. The grad assistant turned wide receivers coach and the athletics director should have been fired along with Paterno and Spanier. Really, what kind of man at the age of 28 observes a man in his 50's sodomizing a boy of about 10 and runs away to call daddy? A man more afraid of what he has to lose than concerned with saving a child.

@Isabel--

You deeply misunderstand the concept of "Chain of Command." I can tell you this with 100% confidence as I used to work for a Security agency with many, many active and retired Military and Law Enforcement personnel.

The actual rule is that you don't go above your superior's head unless you have a damn good reason. I suspect that as a female you were nothing but a desk jockey, so the only infractions you had to report were things like items being habitually misfiled and that you were the only one who ever cleaned out the fridge.

In the real Military, you know, the dangerous part, if an order puts you and your men in unnecessary danger (like a friendly fire situation), then of course you take a different course of action. It's called being a hero.

You, on the other hand, are a coward, hiding behind a "rule." What was your rank, BTW? You can't have gotten very far, since (a) if you were high ranking you would have stated it and (b)you don't know the actual rule regarding chain of command.

"I suspect that as a female you were nothing but a desk jockey"

Hey now. I agree Isabel is totally wrong about this (I mean, rape of a child, eyewitness - how is this even a debate???) but dude....

'Know who I rilly like? Big Mac.

How about if that someone has been best buddies for 30 years with the guy who holds the keys to your career in football? In 2002, McQuearey was just a lowly graduate assistant. Today he's (still officially) the Penn State receivers coach & recruitment coordinator. Would his career still have followed such a stellar trajectory if he'd taken bolder action?

> Would his career still have followed such a
> stellar trajectory if he'd taken bolder action?

DOES IT FUCKING MATTER?

Deathbysnoosnoo,
I was a line officer in the Field Artillery. My husband is a USMA graduate. My father in law in a retired two star general and my question then and now is; Do you want to live in a country where you can be charged and convicted of a crime for reporting a real or suspected crime to your boss rather than the police? Yes, or No?

It obviously mattered to him. Can you think of a more plausible answer to Megan's question?

> Do you want to live in a country where you can
> be charged and convicted of a crime for reporting
> a real or suspected crime to your boss rather
> than the police? Yes, or No?

You're an attorney? Do you word contracts like that?

Years ago, an attorney wrote an article chastising another lawyer for using the "Yes or no" gambit in a public affairs argument. (The second attorney was the President of the United States, and he'd earlier selected the first to be his Assistant Attorney General. It didn't work out.) "Yes or no" is the argument of a child.

The "live in a country" thing is overwrought is well. I want to live on a planet where 10 years aren't raped by adults in schools.

If nightmares like this send your mind to careerist consequences, again, we're glad to know this about you... Glad to know what you think most needs to be protected.

10-year-olds, not 10 years. Sorry, I'm pissed off.

> It obviously mattered to him.

OK, right. Didn't see where you were headed. So this is why I'm arguing...

Listen, take this thread from the top. I'm the one who says people can get carried away with their response child abuse... That our generation has made selected it as the boogieman, the flaming-thunder violation by which we have absolute authority to shoot first and ask questions later, as if justice weren't a consideration.

And that's bad. It speaks more to our disassociation from each other than it does to our love for children.

NONETHELESS, and without knowing details— Seeing McQueary's career rolling forward so smoothly suggests that Izzy's chatter about a "witch hunt" is horribly misplaced.

M4 & Snoo, whatever their military or legal backgrounds, understand things about responsibility that other people don't... People at Penn State and elsewhere.

Do you want to live in a country where you can be charged and convicted of a crime for reporting a real or suspected crime to your boss rather than the police?

The whole "yes or no" thing is silly. It pretends there's only one possible path through this, like this is some kind of moral flowchart.

The statute of limitations is not over for the 2002 case:

http://www.pcar.org/policy/statute-of-limitations-child-abuse

-Julie

Also, I'm not sure how we got derailed into the idea that we should adjust our moral compass to the way the military does things.

I know squat about the military except what I saw on "JAG" (which was a fun show, by the way), but if the military really does support letting a 10-year-old be raped if an immediate supervisor doesn't feel like pursuing the matter, then the military is not and should never be the North on our compass.

And if this is an example of flawed female thinking, then so be it.

> like this is some kind of moral flowchart.

Yeah. "Yes or no" what, again? Who says the choice (so poorly) described by Izzy is the one we have to make? Her scenario is bogus. When you see something like that, you can tell your boss AND call the cops. And then chat up your friends about it while watching to make sure the authorities respond appropriately. And then take other steps. There's nothing binary about it. People who cook these questions into a coin toss might be presumed to be dodging the morality. As if they know they'll want to be able to say: Aw c'mon, I only made that ONE mistake....

That's not how people feel about McQueary.

'Do you want to live in a country where you can be charged and convicted of a crime for reporting a real or suspected crime to your boss rather than the police? Yes, or No?'

Yes! Why on earth would one report a crime to their boss, unless their boss IS a policeman? What part of "football coach" duties include enforcing child molestation laws? That's why we HAVE police. Jesus, isabel. I really hope if you're ever raped and there's a witness to it, that they feel considerably differently about this subject than you do. Of course, that's not a fair comparison at all, since you're an adult and that was a CHILD who could not be expected to take proper steps even after the rape, and should not be expected to.

I find myself wanting to make all those arguments I used to hate from Valium-addled housewives on the Phil Donahue TV show in the 70's... Where everything is gruesomely simplified and made personal.

(Ahem.)

But Isabel... What if it were YOUR 10-year-old son who was being raped in the shower by a much older man? If an eyewitness had reported it to his boss and considered the matter closed even though no justice had come to pass, would YOU still be concerned with his career?

Like that.

Ewww, I need a Valium.

New deets. I didn't realize this had all happened so recently.

[Checking Google: Yes, Sandusky IS under arrest. Phew! You can see how we might be worried about that.]

By the way, the Genovese case mentioned by Slate wasn't the social collapse that it's usually described as being. Read this.

From the Slate piece, Re: Amy's flowchart—

McQueary, like Paterno and Penn State’s administrators, didn’t have just one chance to turn Sandusky in. He could have gone to the police at any time. And yet, he watched as the old coach used the team’s weight room as recently as last week.

What would it be like to pass an animal like that in the hallway at work?

Where's Isabel? We must be missing some central component of her argument... The woman's an attorney.

You know why this is so fun?

Because we're CLUCKING. Clucking is a sin.

But there are so many people are making it so easy...

If, even as a young & confused student, your name had been recorded in this story, how would you ever live it down?

I'd change my name and move to Asia.

"Your concern will be addressed, promise."

I glow at the idea and positively tremble with anticipatory delight!

You take no comfort from Izzy's "witch hunt"?