Saturday, November 12, 2011
Some thoughts on Penn State and Joe Paterno. First of all, I hope that if I witnessed a sexual assault in progress that I'd do something to stop it, and call the cops. Mike McQueary apparently did neither of these things, and instead told his father what he'd seen and asked for advice. I guarantee that had I been in his position my father would have asked, "What did you do to stop it?" and "Are the police on the way?" He would not have told me to tell Joe Paterno about it.
Second, people seem to be confused about what this story is actually about. It is only tangentially a story about college sports-- what it really is about is the way that colleges handle incidences of sexual assault. Notwithstanding the fact that sexual assault is a criminal matter the default response on campus is to handle these things internally. The Penn State situation is unusual only in that the victims were not members of the campus community, but were instead brought onto campus by the assailant. Given the culture-- and the actual sexual assault policies of every school we've sued over the years-- it is hardly surprising that everyone who was made aware of the situation passed the matter up the administrative chain.
Third, there appears to be some backlash suggesting that Paterno is being scapegoated. In view of the fact that he made the wrong choice at each step of this genuine crisis, I can't agree. If he didn't want to be fired the classy thing to have done would have been to have resigned. Months ago. It is incredible to me that someone nearly universally regarded as a moral avatar could have been so morally tone deaf, particularly with the example of the crisis in his own religion before him as an example.
Second, people seem to be confused about what this story is actually about. It is only tangentially a story about college sports-- what it really is about is the way that colleges handle incidences of sexual assault. Notwithstanding the fact that sexual assault is a criminal matter the default response on campus is to handle these things internally. The Penn State situation is unusual only in that the victims were not members of the campus community, but were instead brought onto campus by the assailant. Given the culture-- and the actual sexual assault policies of every school we've sued over the years-- it is hardly surprising that everyone who was made aware of the situation passed the matter up the administrative chain.
Third, there appears to be some backlash suggesting that Paterno is being scapegoated. In view of the fact that he made the wrong choice at each step of this genuine crisis, I can't agree. If he didn't want to be fired the classy thing to have done would have been to have resigned. Months ago. It is incredible to me that someone nearly universally regarded as a moral avatar could have been so morally tone deaf, particularly with the example of the crisis in his own religion before him as an example.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
(I had a look at what his students have to say on RateMyProfessor, and he seems popular. So there's that.)
* I'd be interested in Mrs. Smart's take on his paper on inductive reasoning.
Monday, January 24, 2011
There's a James Thurber story called "The Greatest Man in the World" about an aviator who flew around the world. The press was anxious to lionize him, but Jack ("Pal") Smurch, "erstwhile mechanic's helper in a small garage in Westfield, Iowa" turns out to be a thug. Confronted with the reality of a national hero who is not cut from heroic cloth the assembled press secretly assassinate Smuch, then write their story the way these sorts of stories are always written. It's a nicely done bit of work: when he put his mind to it Thurber was an exquisite writer-- he dates now because his great subject was his own misogyny.
Which brings us to Ben Roethlisberger. When we talk about all-time great quarterbacks-- or just about the best QBs of the moment-- he has to be in the conversation, and that is an awkward thing, to say the least, because the rest of the conversation about Ben Roethlisberger has to include the sexual assault allegations in Lake Tahoe in 2008 and in Milledgeville, Georgia, in 2010. It's too bad Michael Vick and the Eagles didn't make it to the Super Bowl: it would have been interesting to see how the league, the press and the public dealt with that sort of cognitive dissonance. My hunch is that the spin on Vick would have been about his "quest for redemption" and the Roethlisberger story would have been about his quest for a third ring.
Which brings us to Ben Roethlisberger. When we talk about all-time great quarterbacks-- or just about the best QBs of the moment-- he has to be in the conversation, and that is an awkward thing, to say the least, because the rest of the conversation about Ben Roethlisberger has to include the sexual assault allegations in Lake Tahoe in 2008 and in Milledgeville, Georgia, in 2010. It's too bad Michael Vick and the Eagles didn't make it to the Super Bowl: it would have been interesting to see how the league, the press and the public dealt with that sort of cognitive dissonance. My hunch is that the spin on Vick would have been about his "quest for redemption" and the Roethlisberger story would have been about his quest for a third ring.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
We've represented victims of campus sexual assault in the past. This is pretty much how it goes.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
We've represented victims of campus sexual assault in the past: it grieves and angers me that colleges and universities in the 21st century are still trying to euphemise rape culture under the rug.
Monday, April 20, 2015
