Father Figure

Penn State alum Michael Weinreb tries to get at the mindset that caused all of the warning signs outlined in the Grand Jury report to be ignored:

On the front page of my old college newspaper, a senior marketing major named Andrew Hanselman said this: "Being accepted to Penn State felt like a family, and Joe Paterno was the father." Well, we're on our own now, Andrew. It's time to grow up.

Does anyone not see the extraordinary ironies and parallels here? Yes, this is a classic "father" figure, like a priest or bishop or Pope. The man is even called "Paterno". And what Paterno did is what the current Pontiff did when he was an archbishop in Munich, where he was told of a priest under his jurisdiction who had raped children. He didn't alert the police; he merely sent the rapist on to a psychiatrist and the man went on to rape many more children. And we might as well face it: college football is a kind of religion for many. Challenging the Pope of Penn State was unthinkable.

I regard the current actual Pope as an accessory to child-rape, as I do Paterno. But their paternal authority within religious institutions allowed them to carry on. And this is another thing one can say about this profoundly fucked-up culture of abuse: once condoned or treated lightly, the abuses often get worse and worse. I am not surprised that prescient Mark Madden is now hearing rumors that Sandusky was "pimping out young boys to rich donors." Pedophiles find each other.

All they need is for good people to look the other way. And a cult of authority that never challenges the father figure. 

(Photo: Police try to control students and those in the community as they fill the streets and react after football head coach Joe Paterno was fired during the Penn State Board of Trustees Press Conference, in downtown Penn State, in the early morning hours on November 10, 2011 in State College, Pennsylvania. By Patrick Smith/Getty Images.)