Maybe, since the best the author could come up with is such hard facts as: maybe Joe was told of “fondling”, and maybe Joe knew about 1998; then maybe this article should have been titled “Maybe JoePa was not ‘real trustee’ of Penn State.” Seriously, this article doesn’t have a single piece of information that isn’t conjecture and speculation whatsoever. Its the basest level of blamestorming, an OpEd made to look like reporting.

and the question of what Joe meant by “it may have been discussed in my presence, something about somebody” is a legitimate one. However, the above article seems to ignore the next line in the transcript : “I don’t know. I don’t remember, and I could not honestly say I heard a rumor.”

My interpretation of the lines of the GJ testimony transcript in question are that Paterno honestly did not remember hearing a rumor, but couldn’t be completely sure that he didn’t. If I was being questioned under oath, I would probably err on the side of caution unless I was completely sure of my answer. If I was giving an interview that obviously had a PR dimension to it, I would probably be more firm. Nothing in the above article indicates to me that Paterno lied in the Washington Post interview. The worst I think you could claim that he did is commit more strongly in the interview than he did in testimony to not having heard anything. I guess some people might interpret that as being misleading. In my opinion, it is extremely minor. It certainly isn’t enough to change my opinion of how he acted in this situation, or of his overall life and legacy.

and this seems like as good a place as any to say it.

I think that the reason why those of us ‘inside the circle’ fixate on stories concerning Joe and his level of involvement is that we have seen what can happen to a person in today’s world when a story gets out of hand. A lot of us were saying back on that first weekend in November that we had no information that would sway our preexisting notions of who Joe was. We were saying (very rightly so) that the Grand Jury presentment did not contain the end-all be-all version of events. We were saying that anyone who was calling for Joe’s immediate firing was operating on assumption rather than fact.

Since then I have read countless articles and comments that are based on the paradigm of Joe being willfully blind, if not complicit in a conspiracy, for the sake of protecting his program. These items are typically peppered with inferences (if not outright statements) that Joe and Sandusky were friends, that Joe was effectively in charge of the entire University, that Police Services was not a ‘real’ police force, or any of a number of other red flags that indicate that the author’s intentions are at best sloppy and at worst libelous. These pieces have informed the majority opinion, as any objections are conveniently shouted down with claims that the objector does not care about children, or that no one could defend Joe if they stopped to consider what he would have done if it had been his grandson in the shower with Sandusky. The indelible image out of State College from the week after the presentment was released is the students protesting against – what is in the minds of the great majority of viewers – ‘just the school’s football coach’.

Those students understood, just as many of the regulars on BSD understand, that Joe was much more than just a football coach. I’m not going to list his accomplishments beyond the football field, since anyone who is going to give a damn already knows who Joe was and what he did. The reason why those kids took to the street on November ninth, and the reason some of us will always continue to defend Joe, is that if a man of his stature can be taken down by speculation and lies, then what chance does any of us have?

These threads all follow the same pattern:
1) M1EK states an unpopular opinion about Joe not doing enough.
2) People jump all over him about it, often condescendingly.
3) M1EK condescendingly accuses people of making assumptions and jumping to conclusions, while
4) he also jumps to conclusions and makes assumptions when arguing his own points.
5) A number of commentators state that M1EK is a jerk-face
6) M1EK says something like “don’t call me a jerk-face, jerk-face”.
7) The obligatory “Dude, you make some good points, but you don’t have to be such an a$$hole about it” comment.
8) The “I’m only being an a$$hole because YOU’RE being an a$$hole” reply.
9) I bash my head in with a ball-peen hammer.