Written by William I. Greener III on Sunday - December 11th, 2011
It comes as not much of a surprise that many of us involved in politics also have more than a modest passion for sports. So, similar to most other Americans, I’ve been quite disturbed with the recent scandals involving coaches at Penn State and Syracuse. On the one hand, nobody can condone any sort of sexual abuse, much less abuse of children. Everyone feels nothing but sympathy for any person who is a victim of such abuse. That said, the behavior of the media in all of this leaves much to be desired in my view.
When it was Joe Paterno at Penn State, the standard seemed to be one where notifying his superiors of the potential of wrongdoing and letting the system handle the challenge without going to the authorities (police) with everything brought to his attention meant Joe Paterno failed miserably and deserved to be immediately fired. No benefit of the doubt for Joe Paterno based on his years and years of demonstrably doing the right thing. No thought that if Paterno did want to “bury the problem,” going to his supervisors is hardly what springs to mind as the action to be taken. No, anything other than Joe Paterno not going directly to the police constitutes miserable failure of responsibility on his part. He, and virtually anyone associated with the athletic program and administration of the university had to be immediately terminated. We have folks such as Christine Brennan arguing that Penn State ought not to participate in a post-season bowl game. Just what logic is there, I ask, for punishing the current football players who had nothing to do with anything related to the scandal? The triumph of political correctness and moral indignation requires the totally innocent to pay a price. Why?
Now, go to the scandal at Syracuse. From all I can gather, ESPN was given the infamous tape of the conversation between the wife of assistant coach Bernie Fine and the alleged victim years and years ago. They say that, at the time, they could not corroborate anything, so they did nothing. They did not run the story. They did not go to authorities of the university. Most important, they did not go to legal authorities. If Joe Paterno doing anything other than going to the police on the basis of what he was told is dereliction of duty, just what is it when you have a tape with indications of abuse and you do not go to the legal authorities? Where are all the calls for heads to roll at ESPN? Who is paying the price for inaction that perhaps meant that additional child abuse took place? How is it that the network with all the chattering talking heads who roundly condemned Joe Paterno and everything at Penn State can pretend they did nothing wrong in the Syracuse situation? Simple. As is the case in almost all things mainstream media, these people have one standard for all of us and a completely different one for themselves. They ought to be ashamed, but we know they are not.
