Oh, the hell with it…
The publication “The Week” quoted and linked to my post about the Joe Paterno statue controversy, presumably because I was among the few to make an argument that Jo Pa’s statue should stand without doing so on the basis that the coach “made only one mistake” or that the football program he built and his coaching career are severable from the little matter of him allowing his former colleague to keep raping little boys for over a decade.
My mistake was reading some of the comments on Yahoo!, which is chock full of commenters who mocked my conclusion without either reading the post or comprehending it. For example, Dave, a non-reader from Texas, responds, “Leave it up as…what? A monument to pederasty in sports?” to applause from 17 sheep. I believe I answer that question, Dave, and the link is right in front of your damn face.
“The Silent Majority,” proving yet again why it’s best for all if they stay silent, writes: “If the students want the healing process to begin they should… tear down Joe’s statue… remove his name from school buildings… and, remove his picture from any murals…” Yes, and let’s change the sports record books and history tomes as well, to purge all signs of Joe Paterno. Let’s airbrush him out af all the mespaper archives as well. The story is too painful to recall, and we certainly don’t want anything to remind us that leaders, icons and role models can completely corrupt us, because, really, what are the chances that anything like this will happen again? I believe the folly of this thinking was the main point of my post, but TSM is blind if not silent. Some woulds shouldn’t heal. Some wounds need to leave a big, ugly scar—like Paterno’s statue.
Then there is dear Judy, who says, “Okay, the ‘no’ argument in the article is ludicrous. They’re not kindergartners that need a teachable lesson.” My favorite! 1) My post never uses the term “teachable lesson,” which trivilializes a major, ongoing, problem in all organizations and the culture generally. 2) Uh, Judy? They are students. What do you do with students if you are a school? You teach them. The idea of teaching students by referring to a past event that carried important ethical and organizational lessons is “ludicrous” only to former faux-students who think college is just about winning football games. Let me ask you, Judy: what are the chances that the Sandusky scandal will ever be mentioned in classes or school materials if Penn State gets to decide?
The vast majority of Americans don’t want to make rational ethical calculations, don’t know how to make them if they did, and don’t have the patience or objectivity to seriously consider any argument that doesn’t conform to their personal biases, and then make a legitimate and responsive rebuttal. And these are the very people this blog was designed to serve, inspire, teach, and enlighten. The vast majority of the actual readers who come here, however, are generally capable of ethical analysis, and competently and articulately use these skills to either expand on my analysis or disagree with it.
All of which makes me wonder why I bother. And marvel that democracy works at all, with so many citizens incapable of anything but gut level thought.
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Source: Yahoo!
Graphic: Pathetic reviews
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ethics Alarms 
I propose a third way: Keep the statues up and encourage the students and general public to deface them.
.I have the following quotation, attributed to Samuel Adams, posted in my office:
“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”
Do you see yourself in there somewhere? I do.
Are you referring to my post? Or Jack’s?
I’ve long ago learned to ignore comment boards. One of my colleagues says it best: “Comment boards are the bathroom walls of the internet.” Your board is a rare exception, which I attribute to your comment policies and how you enforce them.
John Robins responded with a good quote. My first reaction to your post was to do the same. For me, sharing good quotes to console and encourage is like being the junk food addict who can never eat just one potato chip; I hope these synergize well with the quote John shared:
Marian Wright Edelman: We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.
Leigh Hunt: The same people who can deny others everything are famous for refusing themselves nothing.
George Washington: Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages.
(I owe you for knowing about that one – inspired me to make my own which perhaps someday I will share.)
Dr. Seuss: Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
(can’t resist one by Eeyore) We can’t all, and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it.
Jack, I felt like you did this past weekend, when discussing the Paterno statue with a particularly brilliant young family member. I could not even keep eye contact – had to look away – as he said he agrees with, and would even cheer on, anyone who vandalizes the statue. But then I remembered: This young man, a highly educated graduate student, is of a generation of which none but a tiny minority knows even when the first nuclear weapons were used on cities.
We did agree on the “death penalty” for the Penn State football program. Heck, he and I even agreed to some extent on “reconfiguring” the statue. I think the figure of Paterno should be publicly and permanently upended, with the soles of his feet skyward or suspended upside-down by the figure’s heel – similar to how flags are used to signal distress, or protest – amidst a placque or field of placques which tell the Penn State football program history during Paterno’s tenure, to include the Sandusky scandal. The whole display could be called the Tragic Flaw Memorial. It could never match a Holocaust Museum, but it would serve as a fair primer. Students, no matter how illiterate, would always ask, “Why is he upside-down?”
My first contribution to your site, so please go easy on me. You can be altogether too tough a critic. That said, please don’t diapair of your efforts. You provide a needed service to all the venues of ethical behavior you address, though I do disagree at times. That said…the monument to Paterno should stay, perhaps with a plaque that explains this ugly episode. The graphic images now burned into our individual and collective cultural consciousness will resurface every time someone sees that monument. This will be good for us all. It should remind us that we are all flawed and have a dark side and that we should NEVER revere any human. That monument will remind us all that Paterno was as flawed as the rest of us. His major contribution to this ugliness was his impulse to protect his program and perhaps his legacy (though we don’t know how deeply he thought about his legacy).
Now the NCAA needs to step up and show some moral leadership. The justification for their action should be the “institutional control” section of their mandate. Obviously the senior administration had no control over the football program. Only Paterno did and the administration permitted this to happen. It seems that Paterno was the defacto president of the university.
What should the NCAA do? Rather than the “death penalty” which some pundits are recommending, I suggest an “induced coma.” This would mean: 1) 2-5 years of probation, depending on steps taken by the university to regain control, 2) no post-season play or NCAA money for five years, and 3) the loss of one football scholarship for each of the presently known victims of Sandusky (plus one additional scholarship for any yet-to-be-discovered victim that must be out there. In all this I am trying to think of all the other sport venues at PSU that the football program funds. Those young people should not be punished for the faults of the football program.
Thanks for weighing in, AVS. I haven’t commented on the death penalty issue, because I find the suggestion perplexing. Yes, it was a football scandal, in the meta sense that an obsession with football caused it, but how is it the business of the NCAA? It has nothing to do with competition; it didn’t affect games. No students or athletes misbehaved. What if Paterno’s wife was an Al Qida spy, and Joe helped her? Would the NCAA have the responsibility of punishing the football team for that? On what basis?
I think it’s a stretch. The NCAA takes action regarding athletic misconduct, not broad moral, ethical, legal failings involving football’s interaction with campus culture, unless someone has an example I’m not aware of.
To clarify: The “death penalty” I was pondering was a hoped-for one, which the university could self-impose (but, of course, it won’t). I already knew that the NCAA has virtually no power to enforce its “death penalty” on Penn State based on the Sandusky scandal.
I actually think they do have the power. My point is that this isn’t the place to exercise it.
Should we have a statue dedicated to a white man who frequently had sex with a black woman who had no choice in the matter?
I refer, or course, to that notorious slave-owner, Thomas Jefferson.
He ev en had several children with “HIS” Sally, and never freed her them in his life or in his will. A statue to him would be a slap in the face of all black women, and would denote approval of slavery.