F. Scott Fitzgerald once said “the rich are different from you and me.” He was right.It’s sickening to witness, on a quasi-daily basis, how the rich and famous get away with so much.
The latest involves legendary college football coach Joe Paterno, amicably nicknamed “JoePa.” His status at Penn State is larger-than-life: according to a Sports Illustrated article, there’s a library and ice cream bearing his name, statues and murals devoted to him and even a class named COMM 497G – Joe Paterno: Communication & the Media.
It’s ironic how Paterno lacked the communication skills necessary to place his ex-defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, behind bars after he found out the latter had been abusing a 10-year-old boy in the showers.
After being told of the abuse by a witness in March of 2002, Paterno didn’t call the police. He called the university’s athletic director and told him about the report. Nothing happened, and Sandusky kept abusing boys of various ages until 2009. He was arrested Nov. 5 and charged with 40 counts of sexually abusing children over 15 years.
After being told of the abuse by a witness in March of 2002, Paterno didn’t call the police. He called the university’s athletic director and told him about the report. Nothing happened, and Sandusky kept abusing boys of various ages until 2009. He was arrested Nov. 5 and charged with 40 counts of sexually abusing children over 15 years.
This is part of a bigger problem. The media is responsible for giving celebrities, the rich and famous and other important figures too much leeway. Greg Morago wrote a great piece for the Hartford Times in 2003 likening celebrities to Teflon.
“Their shiny, impenetrable surface makes them invincible. Punishment for crimes and misdemeanours never stick. Bad press slides right off. Ill will ricochets with alarming ease.”
“Their shiny, impenetrable surface makes them invincible. Punishment for crimes and misdemeanours never stick. Bad press slides right off. Ill will ricochets with alarming ease.”
So many powerful people have gotten away with terrible things: Schwarzenegger (busy hands, alleged admiration of Hitler), Kobe Bryant (sexual assault), Rick James (sexual torture), R. Kelly (child pornography), Johnny Cash (killed 49 California Condors, roughly half the entire species). The list goes on and on.
What do they all have in common? As Morago said, they all have Teflon armour. We’re partly to blame, though. There’s an innate desire to see celebrities implode, but an equally powerful desire to see them bounce back and start anew.
We encourage this because we allow the media to appropriate this crazy notion that celebrities are demigods. The more we talk about these scandals, the more fun their PR machines have in feeding the media frenzy, and the less coverage that goes to victims. In Paterno’s case, it’s unfortunate how he’s been cast into the limelight while the victims of Sandusky’s abuses are the ones we should be concerned with.
In an ideal world, everyone mentioned above would have taken a stand, and made it clear how wrong their actions were, instead of profiting from the attention. It’s encouraging to see vigils for the victims, and senators rescinding their support for Paterno’s nomination for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but Paterno himself needs to take advantage of this moment to not only apologize, but offer ways to help prevent this from ever happening again.
Instead, he’ll be sitting at home, enjoying his $554,000 annual pension while the men who were abused continue having nightmares night after night. How fair is that?
I disagree with your stance on some levels. Your energies could be focused more on Sandusky himself, a guy who on national television, via a phone interview, essentially insulted all of his alleged victims and every sexually abused child anywhere by denying claims that are all but certain to be true. He’s ‘innocent until proven guilty’, but he’s so obviously guilty and to BS a national audience was almost a joke. How could he do that after all he’s allegedly done already? Why would he agree to do it is also a good question.
You’re labeling Paterno a rich celebrity which isn’t all that accurate. Sure, the $500,000 pension is sure to make him ‘rich’ by my standards, but it sounds like your calling him Lindsay Lohan-style rich and famous. The guy lives in a crappy old bungalow in what looks like rural Pennsylvania from the pictures. Outside of the world of US college football, no one cares who old JoePa is, i.e. the rest of the world. I wouldn’t exactly label him a ‘celebrity’.
In any case, lets get to the real issue. Yeah, he didn’t report it to the police. That’s terrible. He needs to do that, I think everyone agrees with that. But we don’t know what was said to him by certain Penn State officials once he informed them of Sandusky’s ‘gross misconduct’. Could someone have warned him to be silent?
You have to think, if someone saw Sandusky doing the deeds, then Sandusky probably saw them. And he also probably knew that it would be reported to JoePa. I wonder, was there words between the powerful trustee Sandusky, and the football coach who never wanted to leave Penn State? Maybe Paterno was threatened if he were to tell the police. Maybe, or maybe not.
Maybe he just plain didn’t tell police, which justifies his fate. He was fired from his position of 46 years. He is currently a national embarrassment in the US, whether he deserves it or not. Damage has been done to Joe Pa.
But before we go on labeling Paterno as just as bad as Sandusky, I’d like to hear evidence from the trial as to what really happened.
I will happily decline having my comment edited in The Concordian’s print edition.
Fact check your work, Mr. Czikk. Joe Paterno makes well over a million dollars a year, placing him definitively in the ‘rich’ tax bracket.