Paterno Deserved Better

Novak on the Paterno issue:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/289587/injustice-done-joe-paterno-michael...

"When the hundreds of thousands of Penn State alumni hear the name JoePa, they think of moral leadership, of the kind of person they aspire to be. Of his warmth, his fatherliness, his steadiness, and his granite character. Joe Paterno was for hundreds of thousands of alumni the very model of the moral ideal of Western humanism."

1: Too bad all that warmth, fatherliness, steadiness, and granite character wasn't enough to get him to stop ignoring children being sexually assaulted on his watch.

~2

Yah, it is one thing to say - as I have said - that Paterno was in a tough spot and that he chose institutional loyalty over the highest personal morality is probably not that exceptional. If he deserved to be fired and ridiculed there were a lot of people in higher positions that deserved worse. It is another thing entirely to hold Paterno out as some sort of "moral leadership" role model.

But I am not at all surprised that such is the view of a NR columnist. Fully in line with WFB's editorial stance when Nixon was running for President the second time around, after Nixon's capitulation to the PRC and after he had imposed nationwide wage and price controls. I quote: "Tis not, perhaps, the time to be merry, but neither is it the time to be churlish ...." Followed by the expected appeal to vote to Nixon.

I've had the two of you on Ignore for so long I can't even remember when I did it.

4: It is not really all that much of a slight to be ignored by someone who holds up as a moral paragon a man who looked the other way with respect to child sex abuse on his watch.

~4

And look what you missed. Deprived.