Let’s stop reading books by rapists and listening to music by domestic abusers. Let’s stop trying to balance the bad things and the other things. They are the terrible things that they have done. That musicians or poet isn’t a complex figure either: they did shitty things that took away agency from other people. Now think of it all in a different way: Paterno isn’t a complex figure. Think of all the Penn State fans trying and failing to properly define who the man is. Think of Paterno as the artist who led Penn State for years and helped them win a lot of football. Think of the poetry world, of poets who are accused of violence against intimate partners, of rape-and think about how people so quickly rush to their defenses, who say their art has this intrinsic value no matter what terrible things they did, that even if the art itself represents that intimate violence it’s fine because it’s Good Art and we can still read their books because DAMN IT THEY ARE GOOD BOOKS. People try to be critical of them as people while still being all this song is my jam still YOU CAN”T TAKE AWAY THE ART. Think about musical artists who commit rape or murder. There’s always a thin line between appreciating something and critiquing something. Uhh, never? We should never ignore Paterno’s failings. When’s the right time to forgive a man who willingly employed a known child sexual abuser? Obviously four years isn’t enough, but what is? Read this Deadspin article, which talks a little more about all the bad things fans did. It’s time to forgive Paterno for his failings and celebrate his accomplishments as a head coach, which is exactly what Penn State did against Temple this week, showing video tributes to the academic success of Paterno’s teams and celebrating his coaching abilities and UGH. Clearly, there are some major, major failures on the part of Joe Paterno.īut 2012 was four years ago. He continued to rape underraged boys in those facilities. That man was allowed to continue using the Penn State facilities after his retirement. That man worked for Penn State until 1999. Joe Paterno knew that an assistant coach was a child rapist in 1976. If numbers could be written in CAPS LOCK, those would be. Then, according to some court documents, as early as 1976.ġ976. Later, investigators revealed Paterno knew of Sandusky’s actions as early as 1998. Paterno was fired and Penn State fans staged large protests on campus in support of Paterno. ![]() Then news broke that Paterno had been told in 2002 about an incident in which someone witnessed Sandusky assaulting a boy in the Penn State locker room and Penn State fans tried to find ways to justify Paterno’s inaction, saying things like maybe he didn’t know exactly what he was being told or he’s old, he was protecting a friend, he didn’t believe it. At the time, a lot of people around the country said man, I hope Joe can handle the stress of finding out his longtime friend was doing this. In 2011, news broke that Jerry Sandusky, a former Penn State assistant coach, had spent decades sexually abusing underraged boys. Paterno coached Penn State’s football team from 1966 to 2011. Specifically, Penn State’s decision to honor former head coach Joe Paterno this weekend. This week it’s an issue in the world of college football. Though this column is, on the surface, a column about the NFL, I wanted to give myself room to discuss other issues around the sports world.
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