Penn State Scandal

I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I'm watching the Penn State scandal unfurl itself. So far Sandusky was arrested, Joe Pa and the University President were fired and McQueary is on paid administrative leave for his safety. It is reported that Joe Pa has hired an attorney. Last night the Penn State student body organized a prayer vigil for the victims which was a powerful antidote to the riot they had Wednesday night when Joe Pa was fired.

I try to get inside of Joe Paterno's mind. I imagine that Joe has known about the Sandusky problem for years, and that is a huge part of what has been driving him to keep working till he's 84 years old. If Sandusky had died (of natural causes) back in 2003, and if Joe knew the scandal was contained, paid off all the boys, etc., then Joe probably would have retired years ago. I believe that Paterno...in good faith...has been trying to teach young men at Penn State to be good and moral, and to be good fathers, but I would guess that he also has a huge sense of guilt that drives that, also. He couldn't stop Sandusky and he couldn't protect the boys because he had to "Protect the Program," but maybe in the balance scales in his mind if he did so much good in other people's lives it would outweigh the bad that festered under his watch.

Unfortunately, the scandal will probably go into Stage 2, Sandusky pimping out young boys to wealthy donors. Mr. Injeanious told me he read something about that yesterday, 11/11/11, but it might not come out until later when a grand jury does more investigation. It was also mentioned that in the past 100 years, a District Attorney working on a case had not been murdered, but coincidentally, in 2005, the District Attorney in Penn State's county disappeared. He had worked on the Sandusky case, so we have to wonder does the cover up and the "Protect the Program" mentality go that far that they would murder a District Attorney?

Those two rumors seem to go way overboard, until I stop and ponder, "Sandusky sexually abused 8 boys over about 10 years? There is absolutely no way that is the totality of it. What else do we know about human nature but that this is only the tip of the iceberg?"

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely," is not a cliche. Why does something like this happen? We all have propensity for good and evil in us. When we set up situations where people in our society like Ben Roethlisberger, Joe Paterno, etc., to a god-like status such that they don't have checks and balances, they might do things they shouldn't. I'm becoming a great proponent of checks and balances.