With the nation recoiling in disgust over news of a serial pedophile preying on young boys from his position as a top-level coach on the Penn State football team, the trustees of the university have sacked Joe Paterno from his seemingly permanent position as Head Coach. Many people seem to think Paterno was a sad victim a scandal he had nothing to do with, which reflects the near universal acclaim the sporting world had for him. Yet the reality is that Paterno is just another false god taken out by his own toxic combination of arrogance and bad karma finally catching up to him.
During the days of the Reagan Administration, Paterno was a high-profile supporter of Reagan’s campaign to establish “personal responsibility” as a core philosophical belief in U.S. culture, building on our longstanding belief in individualism. What that meant for Reagan was quite clear: by getting everybody to focus on individual responsibility, it was easy for him to gut the social programs depended on by the poor and the elderly, as well as communities in general and urban areas in particular.
The long-term result of this campaign over the last 30 years has been the shredding our social contract and safety net to the point where they barely exist at all anymore. That is, unless you are an investment bank swindler like Goldman Sachs or a hedge fund plunderer with toxic securities paper on your hands, of course. In addition, we’ve seen an attendant turn away from locating the social roots of social problems, transferring them onto the backs of individuals as well.
Paterno was such an enthusiastic supporter of Reagan’s agenda that he hit the road making constant speeches spewing the dogma of “individual responsibility.” Here was noted leader of men Joe Paterno inspiring Americans to take responsibility for their own welfare and actions, rejecting social responsibility for the increasing problems in the U.S., as well as for the aid of others.
His standard speech also included the leadership responsibilities each of us was expected to exert in our daily actions, being a “stand-up citizen” who leads by example and doesn’t take the easy way out. Yet when it came time for Paterno to take on some real leadership responsibilities himself, where was Joe? When it was reported to him that his noted former assistant was buggering a 10-year-old boy in the Penn State locker room (or even just “horsing around” in the shower with him, as the case may be), where was Joe? When the investigation was not reported to authorities that could stop a serial predator, where was Joe?
The irony is that “Leader of Men” Paterno was hiding behind the “I did the minimum required by law” excuse for not flushing the evil out of his program. He preferred to protect his program at all costs by adopting a “see no evil” approach. Wait, that’s not irony, that’s sheer hypocrisy. He lectured the country to stand up and take responsibility, yet he didn’t/doesn’t lead, he hides behind a flimsy legal pretense. He’s no leader of men, he’s merely the leader of about sixty or eighty dudes, however many players he has on his team at any given time.
To make matters worse, once the shit hit the fan and this horrific story hit the news, Paterno thought he could just say, “Let’s let the legal system run its course.” Again, from the preacher of “personal responsibility” who decried the legal system protecting the rights of “criminals” in the 1980’s. Wow. The sheer amount of hubris is staggering to behold.
And then there’s Penn State, the institution he professes to love and be devoted to. He was called before the grand jury to testify back in January. He knew what was coming, and could have quietly (relative to today) retired, and saved the school mucho embarrassment. But no, the only thing that has ever mattered to Paterno is keeping his gnarled fingers wrapped around the steering wheel of power, and they literally had to be physically pried away to get rid of him.
Joe Paterno is not a man deserving of anybody’s respect or pity. Joe Paterno protected true evil in his midst in the name of keeping his own pathetic grip on power. Joe Paterno is no leader of men. Joe Paterno is a symbol of a culture that worships heroes at any cost and willfully devours its young, with nothing but phony retroactive conscience.
