November 11, 2011

"Although it goes without saying that the [Penn State] allegations are horrific regardless of the race of the children..."

"... a certain level of curiosity has developed about whether the alleged victims in this in this case -- boys participating in the Second Mile Mentor program for underprivileged kids -- were African American, with some asserting that they were. If that turns out to be true (the race of the mother of the victim in this video isn't clear) it will undoubtedly add one more level of analysis to this already-disturbing story. Many are already wondering, with good reason, if the identities and circumstances of the kids involved contributed to the allegations not being taken seriously."

I found that at The Root after I started wondering about that myself.

IN THE COMMENTS: carrie says:
"McQueary's reaction was the result of a lot of things, but he did tried to do something and he did more than he had to. The vilification of McQueary is going to have a chiling effect on the reporting of incidents like this. Could McQueary have done more--yes. Could he have done less--yes."
I say:
People need to act to protect children. McQueary did not do enough. He failed to go to the police. The "chilling effect" cuts the other way. People need to learn that telling your dad or your boss is not enough... unless you yourself are a child and don't understand what's going on. McQueary was an adult, and he [allegedly] walked away from a child he saw being raped. He went home and consulted with his father about what to do, then went to bed. Now, let's hear your speculation about the content of his discussion with his father. Assume it's your job to write up the scenario for a movie based on what happened. You can fictionalize, but all the facts we know need to be covered. Now what do the McQuearys, son and father, say to each other before they go off to sleep?

BTW, McQueary was just put on indefinite administrative leave.

201 comments:

1 – 200 of 201   Newer›   Newest»
madAsHell said...

Educate me! Why does race matter?

I thought Obama was the post-racial president...whatever the fug that means.

Anonymous said...

The thing that I find most interesting about this whole disgusting saga is people's reaction. Not the disgust. But the way that people have packed in all manner of assumptions into their clamoring about what should have been done.

This seems to me to be first and foremost a failure of law enforcement and the judicial system. That's who fucked up most.

Not that something shouldn't have been done. Obviously, it should have. But the general theory seems to be that the people who knew should have done something to Sandusky. What? What based on the facts as they were known in such a scattered way before now?

bgates said...

with good reason

What reason is that?

Joaquin said...

REALLY!!!! Race is now an 'issue' in this!!!

Freeman Hunt said...

Eject race for being poor.

Joaquin said...

White 11 year old = horrible.
Black 11 year old = horrible X 2.
Is that where this is going?

Ann Althouse said...

"Educate me! Why does race matter?"

Here's why I started thinking about it. I read about the reaction to seeing the anal rape of the boy in the shower. That is not something I picture very concretely at first. I hate to think about that happening at all, and my mind does not make a clear picture. But going over how someone could look at that and not know you have to stop the rape, save the child, and call the police, it occurred to me that they might have thought of these boys as maybe not so much in need of protection. These were supposedly "at risk" kids. What did they look like? Perhaps not the stereotype of an 11-year-old boy. Maybe they seemed tough to these people. I'm thinking of the stereotypical thinking that is aimed at young black males. That might have made these Penn State authority figures think it was appropriate to deal with it in some way that they would not have thought of if the boys in question looked different.

Anonymous said...

As far as the issue Althouse raises, absurd.

Show us the black kids who lived in cute little split-levels on cul-de-sacs who got molested.

The fact that we have so many black people in our country who are also poor is a terrible and shameful reality that must be changed. However, it's often very lazy thinking to conflate race with poverty. Certainly it is in this instance.

Anonymous said...

Oh come on, Althouse!

Would Penn State and prosecutors be more likely to pursue rumors and reports and less likely to cover up the rapes of 11-year-old white boys?

Under your theory, that would be more scandalous, not less.

MaggotAtBroad&Wall said...

The Root author who wrote the sentence that became the title of this post may hold the record for writing the the most superfluous sentence ever.

Kirby Olson said...

This will make the issue matter to the PC left, who I don't think knew how to respond to this set of events since they generally use the standard, "If you don't have anything PC to say, don't say anything."

Now they will have something PC to say, and will be able to say it, since their cue cards are now in order.

Freeman Hunt said...

I think you get the same stereotype with poor white kids. They're tougher. They're somehow "other."

And, of course, if you're the type of guy who can walk off from a child rape, you're also a cretin, so there's that.

TMink said...

I think this will get more and more ugly as more and more victims are revealed. And since the victims are black, the race pimps will be out in full force.

Trey

bgates said...

Maybe they seemed tough to these people.

Who are you calling "these people"?

TMink said...

Eject race for having no father and being poor. Kids without dads are more vulnerable.

Trey - with an obvious hat tip to Freeman

Ann Althouse said...

"Would Penn State and prosecutors be more likely to pursue rumors and reports and less likely to cover up the rapes of 11-year-old white boys?"

That is the suspicion. I find it very hard to understand how the decisions that were made could have been made. One idea that occurred to me is that lower value was placed on these boys because (if) they were black or that there is a prejudiced attitude that some people have when they look at a young black male, say, an 11-year-old. Maybe they don't see him as really being a child so much. He looks mature or he looks like someone who might *commit* a crime. And on top of that, if he's in Second Mile, he's been designated as "at risk." I'm expressing a suspicion, as I'm trying to understand something unfathomable, that the men who made the decision were influenced by the race of the victims.

Ann Althouse said...

I'd like to know about the facts of the case.

"Eject race for having no father and being poor. Kids without dads are more vulnerable."

My question isn't about how vulnerable the boys really were. My question is about why the decisions that were made were made. What factors influenced these men in positions of trust to go in the direction that they did?

Freeman Hunt said...

I think the theory is plausible. Depends on how people picture criminals there. Does the idea of criminal in that area of the country conjure the image of a young, poor, black male? That varies from place to place. Here, the idea of criminal conjures the image of a poor, white, meth addict.

MayBee said...

I assumed the kid who came home with his hair looking wet was not black. I could be wrong, but it seems to me AA and super curly hair has a dry appearance faster.

MayBee said...

It also seems that the fact McQueary estimated the victim he saw to be around 10 means the victim did not have an especially tough appearance.

Anonymous said...

I really don't understand how things would have been different if the raped children were white. I think what you are missing is the possibility that a wealthier black of white family may have made way more ruckus. It's the ruckus of the victims that would have changed everything. A wealthier, more educated family of any skin color would have known to go to the press and to find a lawyer. They wouldn't have shut up. They would have made the University and the State act because they would have a better understanding of our culture and our systems.

But race plays no role in that, quite obviously.

Here's what I think. I think that a lot of assumptions are making a lot of erroneous assumptions.

I think that when all this first surfaced -- apparently in 1998 -- the Penn State coaching staff and the University alerted the district attorney and the police. There was an investigation and, for whatever reason, there were no charges filed. That was a heinous error in retrospect but what is Penn State supposed to do when the State fails? Is Penn State a fact finder?

Penn State obviously decided to get rid of Sandusky anyway. Obviously, they didn't do it right. They didn't do nearly enough. But again, we have to remember that no charges were filed yet Penn State acted anyway.

People want to see good and evil, or racism, or whatever, when really this is all just a heinous man and ordinary people reacting to that man's heinousness in the typically failed, imperfect ways that humans always act.

Freeman Hunt said...

I think Trey is right about the addition of fatherless to poor. Poor, fatherless, boys with possible questionable histories designating them as "at risk." Boys who would be easy to forget about because everyone else has forgotten about them. Terrible.

I'm still not convinced that this has anything to do with race, but the idea that the boys would be somehow not of the same society as the men who ignored them is, I think, likely.

Cedarford said...

AA (on the race of the sex assaultees) - "I found that at The Root after I started wondering about that myself."

Interesting that wondering about the race and type of the people coming out and saying Herman Cain harassed them (were they all white and blonde) - led to 7 Machos and others hyperventilating that it was racist to even consider that question...
While of course any supposed sex assault of a black person by a white, if only for rarity's sake - leads the Boomers and blacks to instantly go into the race victimization narrative. Even faux stuff like Duke and Crystal Gayle Mangum and of course Tawana Brawley....

Why the difference?

Is it part of the famous old joke about the progressive Jews of the media?
"World ends tomorrow! Jews, women, racial minorities suffer the most!"

madAsHell said...

Is that a corollary to "The bitch was looking for it!"?

AllenS said...

Jungle Fever Gone Terribly Wrong.

Balfegor said...

Perhaps not the stereotype of an 11-year-old boy. Maybe they seemed tough to these people. I'm thinking of the stereotypical thinking that is aimed at young black males.

That would have to be a very old looking 11-year old black child. 11-year olds of any race, as far as I can tell, are still pretty neotenous. And besides, isn't that neoteny exactly what pedos go for? Otherwise they're ephebophiles. And if the pedo here were an ephebophile, you'd expect a few older children mixed in (were there any?).

Anonymous said...

Cedarford -- I have not said that it is racist to ask the question. I have said that this, as in so many instances, is a lazy conflation of race with class. This is a class issue.

Of course, you prove to be laziest of all, with your poor reading comprehension skills. And you know who has good reading comprehension skills: Jews. So you just prove yourself inferior to the Chosen People again.

edutcher said...

Much of PA is Rust Belt, economically depressed (remember Billy Joel and "Allentown"?), and white. It's very possible these kids were white, although Harrisburg isn't that far away, so you'd have black kids in the vicinity.

TMink said...

Eject race for having no father and being poor. Kids without dads are more vulnerable.

Precisely, but that makes all the feminist memes look bad, so trying to find a racial angle would deflect that.

Automatic_Wing said...

I will bet that the vast majority of the victims in this case were white. If not all of them.

Why? Because people who hold Penn State football in extremely high regard are overwhelmingly white, and I believe the whole point of Second Mile from Sandusky's perspective was using the PSU's brand and squeaky clean image for his own nefarious ends.

The people who bought into that nonsense are white. QED.

James said...

Black kids in rural Pennsylvania?

After leaving Penn State, Sandusky worked as a volunteer football coach at Clinton County High School where he allegedly met some of his victims (read the grand jury presentment). Clinton County is 0.05 percent black: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_County,_Pennsylvania#Demographics

rcocean said...

Boy-rape at Penn State - minorities hardest hit.

madAsHell said...

That might have made these Penn State authority figures think it was appropriate to deal with it in some way that they would not have thought of if the boys in question looked different.

Occam's Razor - Maybe it something simple like.....they wanted to keep their jobs??

MayBee said...

There is available on the internet a photo from Sports Illustrated with Jerry Sandusky sitting near a Christmas tree surrounded by teens (the caption is partially gone. His family?)
I know one of the victims had appeared in SI with Sandusky, but I don't know if this is the photo. Getty Images has removed it from their site.

Anyway, in the photo are:
4 white boys
2 black boys
3 black or hispanic girls

none of them are tough looking

I won't link it.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure why or how race would change this:

McQueary is in the locker room. He hears slapping noises that sound sexual in the showers. He looks over.

He sees a boy, according to the Grand Jury report, McQueary estimates to be 10 years old with his hands up against the wall. Sandusky is ass raping the kid.

The former quarterback doesn't pull Sandusky away. He doesn't call the police or an ambulance.

McQueary himself estimated the kid to be 10 years old.

MayBee said...

The photos used by SecondMile.Org show small, very wholesome looking children. Mostly white.

http://www.thesecondmile.org/welcome.php

Anonymous said...

I also find it hard to believe that an 11 year old boy of any color looks tough to the football coach who witnessed a rape. When you are around 21-year-old chiseled running backs and fat-ass linemen all day, you would certainly not think any 11-year-old boy looks tough.

You and The Root are way, way off base here Althouse. The Root at least has an excuse, sort of, as their job is to look for the black angle.

AllenS said...

Every black who had a relative in this charity will file a claim that their relative was violated by Sandusky. Every. Single. One.

carrie said...

According to the grand jury report, at least one of the kids is pictured with Sandusky in a Sports Illustrated article, so you could probably figure out the race of at least one victims (at a bowl game I think) so you could probably figure that out for at least one of the victims with some digging, and there may have been clues for other pictures too . . .

Anonymous said...

This whole thread is a new low.

madAsHell said...

Was Sandusky promising the boys a ticket to the NFL?...and was that reinforced by his associations/employment at Penn State??

I think black kids would take that bait. That's the race card here.

Anonymous said...

"My question isn't about how vulnerable the boys really were. My question is about why the decisions that were made were made. What factors influenced these men in positions of trust to go in the direction that they did?"

1) McQueary's family knew Sandusky.

2) Culture of authority of being on a team - going through channels, not around them.

3) job security/ career

4) Cowardice

5) No empathy for the child.

frank said...

Hmmmmmm, so we're try to fathom that subset of humans known as white, gay,pedophiles. Let's ask the UW Sociology/Athletic Departments to do a study of white,lesbian,pedophiles.

MayBee said...

The kid obviously didn't look tough to McQeary, because he's the one who estimated the age.
Ditto the kid found by the janitors.

carrie said...

I thought that the grand jury report that was released (I saw it on ESPN's web site--I hope ESPN has since taken it down) gave out too much information about the victims.

Lev Arbogastah said...

Canuck:

I see that as 3-2-1-4-5

kjbe said...

McQuery's reaction, to me, seems the result of a bad psychologic cocktail of coach and bully. I think he was so afraid to up upset the apple cart (as a former player, citizen of the community and now coaching assistant) that he panicked. Honestly, after continuing to move up the coaching ladder, there, after what he saw, I don't know he's been able to sleep at night. I think Sandusky had him under his spell as much as he did that 10 year old. I don't think race mattered. I also don't excuse McQuery.

MayBee said...

On the back of Sandusky's book, I see there is a photo with the same group of kids I mentioned earlier. They are called his "Second Mile" kids.
These are all older teenagers than Sandusky has been accused of molesting.
Although Sandusky has his arm slung around the shoulder of one younger, thin white boy wearing a football t-shirt.

Mitch H. said...

James has got it down - this is a lily-white area, and the few blacks who live around here are probably above the median income line. Your average central Pennsylvanian ghetto is full of crackers. I knew a guy in State College back in the mid-Nineties who would freak the hell out on trips between Happy Valley and Baltimore because of the bad vibes he got from traveling through ridge-and-valley country - same jitters as white boys get when they find themselves in the sketchy heart of the urban projects.

Harrisburg is nowhere near here, it's about two hours drive unless you're a speedfreak.

Ironically enough, I knew another black guy who was banned from campus about the same time as Sandusky was getting caught for the first time. "The Elf" (he insisted on being called this) was banned for "stalking" the athletic department - and he was legitimately kind of crazed, and not in a safe, cuddly way, although he never threatened me or mine in any way. I found him kind of amusing, if occasionally annoying. A classic example of what we used to call GRANOP - "Geeks, Retards and Nerds on Parade", which amply described our social scene.

Anonymous said...

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/who_knew_what_about_jerry_sand.html

I'm Full of Soup said...

The NYT will tell us those good old boys may be tree huggers but trees ain't all they were hugging.

Because those good old boys are surely racist as hell.

Anonymous said...

"Canuck:

I see that as 3-2-1-4-5"

yes - the order wasn't my opinion of important.

I'd guess cowardice as the #1 reason, wrapping in fear of career/job loss as part of that.

frank said...

the Penn State/nebraska live broadcast should be interesting. Wonder if the price of a 30 second ad has shot up? I suppose all the 'edgey' advertizers will be bidding up a storm. Just think of the 'casting call' going out on MAD Ave for 10 year old boys & girls--they're HOT!!

I'm Full of Soup said...

Every once in a while Althouse gets ejected from her own vortex and spouts some nonsense.

Sue D'Nhym said...

I find it very hard to understand how the decisions that were made could have been made.

So a big, tough former football player graduate assistant future assistant coach was tough enough to break up a knife fight in a cafeteria.

But when he saw Sandusky tapping the ass of a pre-teen, he ran out and called his dad.

Wonder what he was afraid of?

And a DA has police listen in on a mom confronting Sandusky, and the DA decides to not press charges. Strange. But not as strange as that DA then vanishing, with his laptop eventually found at the bottom of a lake with the hard drive removed, and his car abandoned. They never found his body, but have ruled him dead.

A janitor walked in on Sandusky going down on a kid. His co-workers tell him who he should tell if he decides that is what he wants to do. Which certainly means they thought that he would have a very real reason for not wanting to.

Rumors in College Station that Sandusky was pimping some of these kids to financial supporters of Penn State and of his charity.

Some of the decisions that were made are very hard to understand how they were made, unless one thinks that people were afraid for the livelihoods and their lives.

James said...

On the back of Sandusky's book, I see there is a photo with the same group of kids I mentioned earlier. They are called his "Second Mile" kids.
These are all older teenagers than Sandusky has been accused of molesting.
Although Sandusky has his arm slung around the shoulder of one younger, thin white boy wearing a football t-shirt.


One of the kids in that photo is victim #4 (see the grand jury presentment).

As far as I know there has been no accusations that Sandusky molested his adopted children. The kids in the Sports Illustrated photo are involved with Second Mile but aren't his adopted children.

carrie said...

McQueary's reaction was the result of a lot of things, but he did tried to do something and he did more than he had to. The vilification of McQueary is going to have a chiling effect on the reporting of incidents like this. Could McQueary have done more--yes. Could he have done less--yes. As you read about this, you know that there are a lot of people who knew or suspected this was going on who did nothing. I find it hard to believe that Sandusky's wife didn't suspect that something was fishy about the sleep overs in the basement of her house . . .

MadisonMan said...

I don't know how state-wide the Second Mile's reach is, or was in 1998/2002.

I do know that Central PA is overwhelmingly white. My high school class of almost 600 had 1 or 2 blacks. Granted, that was some years before 1998, but I don't think things have changed much.

Sue D'Nhym said...

and he did more than he had to.

He did less than anyone with an ounce of common sense or a dusting of courage would have done.

MadisonMan said...

Rumors in College Station that Sandusky was pimping some of these kids to financial supporters of Penn State and of his charity.

Or do you mean College Park?

wv: rions

Sue D'Nhym said...

Park, station. I can't keep them straight without there being an #Occupy going.

MayBee said...

hey were black or that there is a prejudiced attitude that some people have when they look at a young black male, say, an 11-year-old. Maybe they don't see him as really being a child so much. He looks mature or he looks like someone who might *commit* a crime.

I know I keep repeating this, but this doesn't work with the circumstances described.

The kid was in the shower, hair wet and plastered to his head, body naked, hands and face braced on the wall as he absorbed the force of the 6'1 man thrusting himself into his body. That is what McQeary saw when he estimated the boy to look around 10.

He did not estimate him to be 13 or 14. McQeary looked at this boy's naked, pathetic body and thought, "that kid is 10".

Revenant said...

I can honestly say it never crossed my mind to wonder or care what race the kids were. It doesn't change any pertinent facts about either the crime or the cover-up.

Anonymous said...

Carrie -- If you read chat boards, you'll see heroic typist after heroic typist saying that they would have beat the shit out of Sandusky -- a big dude-- right then and there. Or killed him.

As if there is some child sex exception for assault and murder.

That said, this McQueary fellow is failed in a shameful way. I couldn't live with that failure. I don't know how he does.

MayBee said...

James- thanks for the information. I feel badly that I may have pointed out the victim.

MadisonMan said...

@Sue: It's State College.

I've never understood the ability to mix those three places up.

I'm with Revenant; the races of the young male victims did not cross my mind.

Sue D'Nhym said...

MadisonMan- as Jackson Browne sang, "and these towns all look the same."

DADvocate said...

When I was a juvenile corrections officer in the 1970s, the heaviest bias was by socio-econimic level. If the kids parents could afford a lawyer, the game changed dramatically. Otherwise, there did seem to be a stronger bias against black kids than white kids, but not a strong as the class bias. But, that was over 30 years ago. It's not that way there now.

I think the socio-economic levels and lack of parents. Not having a biological father present ups the odds for bad things happening to kids much more than you might think.

frank said...

ALL this sure makes Ron Paul's opinion of the Fed, need for a Gold standard vey creditable. Beginning to look like Penn State's purpose to exist is to pimp out 10 year olds for the gnomes in Switzerland. Not only that, Carol is making perfect sense once you accept her explanation of her subacute aphasia, having lived with a stroke victim.

MayBee said...

Victim 4 received as gifts a snowboard and ice hockey equipment.
I say white kid.


I am really fascinating that there's an assumption that people would care about black child victims less than white child victims.

Anonymous said...

AllenS said...
Every black who had a relative in this charity will file a claim that their relative was violated by Sandusky. Every. Single. One.
_____________

A variation on Pigford.

WineSlob said...

Stereotyping On the Race of the Raped
Or the Skin of a Sauvignon Grape
They're Dark, Thick and Tough
This Kind Likes It Rough
Then They're Stomped In a Great Vat of Hate.

Anonymous said...

Victim 4 received as gifts a snowboard and ice hockey equipment.

That is strong evidence. If it was also a DVD collection of Wes Anderson movies and an iPhone, I think we'd have the smoking gun for sure.

Ann Althouse said...

"I am really fascinating that there's an assumption that people would care about black child victims less than white child victims."

It's not an assumption. It's a suspicion. We're talking about people that did despicable things. Why are you interested in suddenly thinking they're good on this point? I'm trying to understand how they could be so bad. That's the starting point. From there, try to explain.

Methadras said...

What is the relevance of the ethnicity of the kids involved unless its to try and make it some sort of tie in with being a 99%'er and they get taken advantage of, etc. which would make the argument even that more repugnant.

Ann Althouse said...

"McQueary's reaction was the result of a lot of things, but he did tried to do something and he did more than he had to. The vilification of McQueary is going to have a chiling effect on the reporting of incidents like this. Could McQueary have done more--yes. Could he have done less--yes."

People need to act to protect children. McQueary did not do enough. He failed to go to the police. The "chilling effect" cuts the other way. People need to learn that telling your dad or your boss is not enough... unless you yourself are a child and don't understand what's going on. McQueary was an adult, and he walked away from a child he saw being raped. He went home and consulted with his father about what to do, then went to bed. Now, let's hear your speculation about the content of his discussion with his father. Assume it's your job to write up the scenario for a movie based on what happened. You can fictionalize, but all the facts we know need to be covered. Now what do the McQuearys, son and father, say to each other before they go off to sleep?

BTW, McQueary was just put on indefinite administrative leave.

rcocean said...

Questions:

-Is there any proof - other than his statement -that Sandusky was doing to that boy what McQueery said he was doing?

-Other than McQueery's word do we know what he said to Paterno?

-why is everyone so eager to jump to conclusions and lynch Paterno?

-What is NAMBLA or the ACLU's take on this?

MayBee said...

It's not an assumption. It's a suspicion. We're talking about people that did despicable things. Why are you interested in suddenly thinking they're good on this point? I'm trying to understand how they could be so bad. That's the starting point. From there, try to explai

It's a suspicion based on an assumption. You suspect the victims are black because their plight was not taken seriously. The assumption is that the witnessed rape of a black child would be taken less seriously than the witnessed rape of a white child.

I'm trying to think of what point you think they are good on. Not being racist?
Maybe Sandusky was too racist to molest black children. Maybe the racist white coaches told him not to bring black kids around the football building.

See? You can still assume these guys are not good on this point (racism) and still think the kids weren't black!

It's easy enough to explain by thinking these kids were not all that important to the men involved, especially compared to the greatness of the football program.

Anonymous said...

RC -- Read the grand jury report. Get off your lazy ass.

Also, tell us again how you think gay people are pedophiles.

Shouting Thomas said...

Also, tell us again how you think gay people are pedophiles.

Well, some gays are pedophiles.

Gays aren't saints.

I can see proof of that every time I get off the Christopher Street exist of the PATH subway.

The underage kids from the Bronx, Brooklyn and Jersey gather there looking for an older guy.

Shouting Thomas said...

And, I might add, after being around the West Village for so long, I've got a very strong feeling that those underage kids are there to pimp themselves out.

Ann Althouse said...

James: "Black kids in rural Pennsylvania? After leaving Penn State, Sandusky worked as a volunteer football coach at Clinton County High School where he allegedly met some of his victims (read the grand jury presentment). Clinton County is 0.05 percent black:"

According to Wikipedia, State College, Pa. "3.2% White, 3.8% Black or African American, 0.2% Native American, 9.8% Asian, and 2.0% were two or more races. 3.9% of the population were of Hispanic or Latino ancestry"

MayBee said...

My own experience:

I know a woman who killed her husband in a heinous way. They had many couple friends who adored them both. The day before she killed him, had you asked any of the friends they would have told you the husband was a terrific guy.

The minute he was dead, those friends started speculating that maybe the husband had been abusing the wife or kids. The evidence was that he was dead, and so he must have somehow needed killing. The friends desperately needed their friend, their living friend, to have done the right thing. They were not bad people, these friends, but they were willing to believe something bad about a dead man just because he was dead.

I think the Penn State coaches similarly tried to justify and forgive Sandusky's actions. It probably wasn't so bad, they told themselves, because he was really good to those kids. Those kids maybe were *those kinds* of kids, the kind of kids who like that kind of stuff. And it wasn't like any of the kids came to them and asked to be saved.
So Penn State football was better off if Sandusky wasn't outed as a molester, and the kids got some nice trip to bowl games.

Amartel said...

Forget about "should be" world and confront reality:

If the molested children were white why would that make it less awful than if they were black? Is it just that if the victims are white then we won't be treated to racemongering?

What about if the molested children were asian or native American tribe? Is that also more awful than if they were white? Is that less awful than if they were black but more awful than if they were white?

Are all crimes worse if the victim is black? hispanic? How about Asian? Sex crimes only? If not, why is only molestation worse when the victim is black?

If a person is extra grossed out by interracial sex crime, is that a result of how that person feels about interracial sex in general?

Anonymous said...

Thomas -- Sure some gay people are pedophiles. Some are tennis players. Some are the lead singer of Judas Priest.

That's not the point. You missed the previous discussion.

Anonymous said...

A top Merck executive, an African American man, was just appointed to head the Penn State inquiry.

Shouting Thomas said...

College athletic programs have an deeply inbred race issue that I don't think has been addressed.

I would imagine that the same thing is true at PSU, as at my alma mater, the University of Illinois.

The athletes in the two major sports, basketball and football are 60% to 70% black.

The vast majority of those black athletes don't really get a college education. They're fodder for the grinder. Once their usefulness has been exhausted, they go right back where they came from, with no education and no prospects.

Race is a huge issue in college basketball and football. (Believe me, I'm not speaking as a liberal here.) Blacks athletes get used, they don't get paid, and they get tossed right back into their tough neighborhood once they are of no use.

And, the mythology is that they are being "helped." In some ways, they are. It's an odd sort of help.

I can see how that mythology would drip down into every area of a college football program.

sorepaw said...
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MadisonMan said...

According to Wikipedia, State College, Pa. "3.2% White, 3.8% Black or African American, 0.2% Native American, 9.8% Asian, and 2.0% were two or more races. 3.9% of the population were of Hispanic or Latino ancestry"

83.2% white. That first digit is significant.

The relevant statistic would be for pre-teens, not the general population, which you cite.

Amartel said...

True point about college sports and the using of black kids. That reverberates.

janetrae said...

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas -- read this http://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/11/10/omelas-state-university/

Anonymous said...

Graduation rate of Division I football players: 67 percent.

http://chronicle.com/article/Athletes-Graduation-Rates-/49202/

What do you suppose the overall rate is among people who start college?

janetrae said...

"...one of the great stories of science fiction is “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” which was written by Ursula K. LeGuin. The story posits a fantastic utopian city, where everything is beautiful, with one catch: In order for all this comfort and beauty to exist, one child must be kept in filth and misery. Every citizen of Omelas, when they come of age, is told about that one blameless child being put through hell. And they have a choice: Accept that is the price for their perfect lives in Omelas, or walk away from that paradise, into uncertainty and possibly chaos.

At Pennsylvania State University, a grown man found a blameless child being put through hell. Other grown men learned of it. Each of them had to make their choice, and decide, fundamentally, whether the continuation of their utopia — or at very least the illusion of their utopia — was worth the pain and suffering of that one child. Through their actions, and their inactions, we know the choice they made."

Why would the color of the child matter, ever?

Shouting Thomas said...

You might want to read that article, Machos.

NCAA researchers also tracked the graduation-success rates of nearly 5,000 individual teams at 322 Division I institutions. Of the teams that posted the lowest graduation-success rates, many were men's basketball squads: 28 percent of the 312 sports teams that graduated fewer than half of their athletes were in the sport of men's basketball.

Among those men's basketball teams were nearly two dozen programs that competed in the 2009 NCAA tournament. Twenty-three of the 65 institutions whose men's basketball teams advanced to the tournament had graduation-success rates below 50 percent. That included two of the tournament's top seeds, the University of Connecticut (27 percent) and the University of Louisville (38 percent).

Athletes in the sport of football also struggled to graduate. Three programs currently ranked in the Associated Press's top 25 — the University of Texas, Georgia Tech, and the University of Oregon — each had graduation-success rates of 49 percent.


Also at issue is... what kind of degrees did the athlete earn? Trash athletic department courses that barely require literacy are common at the U of IL.

AllenS said...

Ann Althouse said...
According to Wikipedia, State College, Pa. "3.2% White, 3.8% Black or African American, 0.2% Native American, 9.8% Asian, and 2.0% were two or more races. 3.9% of the population were of Hispanic or Latino ancestry"


What? I just did the addition, and came up with this, per your stats:

20.9% are what you said they were.

What are the other 79.1% of the other races? And, what other races are there?

rcocean said...

"Blacks athletes get used, they don't get paid, and they get tossed right back into their tough neighborhood once they are of no use."

Baloney. They get a scholarship, free room and board and a chance to get a very good education. Lots of them take advantage of that, and at some colleges its worth $20K-30K a year. They also get a chance to go onto the Pros.

If you pay the "Black Athletes" for paying football or Basketball, you'll have to pay the female lacrosse players and the male Cross-country runners.

Shouting Thomas said...

In other words, Machos, the non football and basketball sports pull up the general graduation rate for college sports programs.

Anonymous said...

Thomas -- You have now shifted exclusively to basketball, where the overall Division I graduation rate is about the same.

There are no majors for athletes. There are simply easy majors, which plenty of people at the University of Illinois also complete.

The crux of your complaint is that you think athletes are dumb. Profound. Truly.

Unknown said...

Race doesn't matter, except to the racialists like Sharpton et al. I'm sure Sandusky like all of his ilk looked for kids from broken homes, who were insecure and needy, and in awe of authority figures.

Like I say, I think this scandal is just beginning and it was good that McQueary was put on leave today.

Anonymous said...

Thomas -- The 67 percent stat is for football. It is similar overall for basketball. Please do read carefully.

I will allow you -- no racist, not you, certainly -- to do the math for filtering out the ethnicities in these percentages.

Shouting Thomas said...

Baloney. They get a scholarship, free room and board and a chance to get a very good education. Lots of them take advantage of that, and at some colleges its worth $20K-30K a year. They also get a chance to go onto the Pros.

Well, a group of former college athletes has organized to demand that athletes be paid. They estimate that the average market value of a football or basketball player to be $100,000 to $350,000.

The number of players who go pro is tiny.

Ann Althouse said...

I'm seeing an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) May 30, 1993: "SANDUSKY HONORED BY NAACP":

"Jerry Sandusky's honors have reached far beyond the football field. Sandusky, an assistant coach at Penn State for 24 seasons, is the founder of the Second Mile, a charitable organization concerned with the welfare of children. For his work in charity, Sandusky was honored by the Washington Branch of the NAACP on May 7.

"Sandusky received the annual Human Rights Award with his father, Art, the former Brownson House director. As Brownson House director, Art Sandusky helped many black youths get involved in athletics."

traditionalguy said...

The Professor is interested in the Thomas Jefferson way of thinking.

Jefferson always did as well as he thought he could for young black teens at risk on his Montecello plantation...he loved them too, especially at night in his bedroom.

Anonymous said...

Thomas -- There is certainly a great argument for paying college athletes. It is a travesty of a sham that they are not paid. But that's not the argument you are making. The argument you are making is that these people don't belong in college.

Or are you just jumping around, here to there, trying to score points?

Ann Althouse said...

Canuck quotes me ("My question isn't about how vulnerable the boys really were. My question is about why the decisions that were made were made. What factors influenced these men in positions of trust to go in the direction that they did?") ... then has 5 ideas:

"... 5) No empathy for the child."

And... so you see my point?

Why no empathy for the child? Something about the way that child looked, being raped in the shower, that somehow failed to shock him to his very core, that somehow seemed like something that could be handled?

Shouting Thomas said...

I'd suggest that you, Machos, go back and read the excerpt from the article I just wrote.

PSU is not an average athletic program. It is an elite program.

Read this again:

Athletes in the sport of football also struggled to graduate. Three programs currently ranked in the Associated Press's top 25 — the University of Texas, Georgia Tech, and the University of Oregon — each had graduation-success rates of 49 percent.

And now, Machos, you've got your temper up. When you get your temper up, you turn into a dumb fuck.

First away. Pull out ever slander you can think of. It's you're style.

Shouting Thomas said...

Thomas -- There is certainly a great argument for paying college athletes. It is a travesty of a sham that they are not paid. But that's not the argument you are making. The argument you are making is that these people don't belong in college.

Or are you just jumping around, here to there, trying to score points?


Differing solutions occur to me, but I doubt that I will be consulted.

1. You could fiddle with the current structure and try to give the kids some money. With the explosion of super conferences of 16 teams, and massive new media contracts, I don't think this is going to fly.

2. You could insist that athletes actually be students and that they take real courses. This would change the composition of college athletics quite substantially, and I doubt if it has any constituency.

3. You could maintain the football and basketball department's tangential relationship with the university, while basically turning those programs into professional minor league sports, with the players able to compete as free agents for a salary.

Anonymous said...

I don't have my temper up. I'm just pointing out, again, that you are a racist.

The overall rate of graduation among Division I football players is 67 percent. You are pulling out schools where it is lower than that. I could pull out schools where it is really high. So what? Note also that one of the schools you name, Georgia Tech, is a very difficult school -- much more difficult than, say, Illinois -- where a substantial percentage of each freshman class either flunks out or transfers each year.

WineSlob said...

Perhaps a more incendiary question than how race may have affected things here is whether the PC suppression of any criticism of the "gay commumity" was at work here.

Had the witness caught Sandusky raping a little girl, he arguably would have stepped in. But here, maybe he saw not a rape but a gay shower scene . . . maybe not to be totally condemned, but tolerated. He held his nose and reported it to Paterno, being careful not to sound too anti-gay.

Can you hear the "gay community": HOMOPHOBE! GAY HATER!

In 1991, infamous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer murdered a 14 year old kid, Konerak Sinthasomphone, after Milwaukee police officers who had seen the kid wandering naked in the street allowed themselves to be deceived by the PC Gay Crap and Dahmer, who claimed the kid was his gay lover. The Milwaukee cops let the kid go to his death at the hands of Dahmer, and later acknowledged that they were influenced by feeling like they had to bend over backwards to tolerate the supposed gay relationship . . .

Arguably this Gay PC Crap has left quite a trail of crime victims . . .

Shouting Thomas said...

I don't have my temper up. I'm just pointing out, again, that you are a racist.

No, you don't have your temper up, but every time you disagree substantially, you turn into a raging fucking asshole and accuse your opponent of racism.

When you get yourself into this posture, you basically become a complete fucking idiot.

Which you have done again. Congratulation!

Now, huff and puff like a fucking idiot. I can count on you, I know. Disgrace yourself completely.

Anonymous said...

How is a football player or basketball player who graduates with a degree in teaching gym or recreational management any different than one who does not play those sports who graduates with the same degree?

Anonymous said...

P.S. -- Thomas you are definitely a racist. This is because you are constantly classifying by race and saying things that are racist.

I also would suggest that it is you who has his temper up.

Shouting Thomas said...

Georgia Tech, is a very difficult school -- much more difficult than, say, Illinois -- where a substantial percentage of each freshman class either flunks out or transfers each year.

Georgia Tech is an engineering school.

I guarantee you that a tiny percentage of football players are taking engineering courses.

You are too stupid, apparently, to know that the U of IL is also an elite engineering school.

I suspect that few, if any, basketball or football players are in the engineering school.

I'll check.

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TMink said...

Althouse, there is another possibility about the lack of empathy. People who were sexually abused themselves sometimes powerfully dissociate when they encounter strong abuse cues. It could be that the assistant was a survivor himself and spaced out when he saw the boy being abused.

This sounds completely unlikely to me, but it can happen.

I think he was worried about his job personally.

Trey

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MadisonMan said...

Why no empathy for the child?

My opinion is that any empathy he may have had was overwhelmed by the shock of seeing who the rapist was. That explains, I think, the lack of action in the locker room. Action on Mr. McQueary's part, that is.

The reasons for his later inaction are probably more related to the culture in which he worked.

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I'm Full of Soup said...

Seven:

The unpersuadeable are hard to crack.

MayBee said...

My opinion is that any empathy he may have had was overwhelmed by the shock of seeing who the rapist was. That explains, I think, the lack of action in the locker room. Action on Mr. McQueary's part, that is.

I agree with MadMan.

What makes a mother ignore the sounds of her new husband molesting her child in the next room? Not racism.

Automatic_Wing said...

So according to Mr. Seven Machos, the man who knows everything about colleges and universities, D1 football and basketball players are totally qualified to attend the schools they're going to and don't take Mickey Mouse courses anymore than anyone else.

Great to know, LOL. Do you believe in the fucking Easter Bunny, too?

MayBee said...

Another option is that McQeary was really not all that surprised.

Anonymous said...

So according to Mr. Seven Machos, the man who knows everything about colleges and universities

Really, dude. There is nobody in the world who knows more about American colleges and universities than I know. Believe it or don't. But I know my resume.

As far as the rest of your post, it's not the indisputable fact that jocks are dumb that bothers me. Look no further than Rick Perry.

The issue here is that Thomas uses a certain adjective to describe the athletes he's talking about. That adjective is the word black. It's the black part that is the issue. That's the racist part. Nothing racist about the word athlete. Plenty racist about the word black. Further, this isn't Thomas's first rodeo when it comes to racism.

glenn said...

Two things. 1. The race of the kids doesn't matter, their social ststus does. The victims were from "those" families, not "our" families. They weren't "our" people and therefore they weren't important. Joe Paterno and Jerry Sandusky were "our" people so we had to protect them. Besides there's that little matter of $50+Million from the football team. 2. When I was a supervisor the first 10 guys on my employee roster (despite not having P.H.D.'s and stuff) would have known exactly what to do if they caught some mook in the shower with a 10 year old pinned to the wall.

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traditionalguy said...

As for graduation rates at Georgia Tech, it drags them down when the NBA and the NFL yank them out early.

Something about making them wealthy.


Most football players avoid Ga Tech unless they are in the top of their class academically...and those guys are attracted instead.

It is the Basketball where the 1 year and gone to the NBA is now the rule.

Anonymous said...

Thomas -- You did this exact same thing when we discussed IQ. If I recall correctly, it was your belief that you can classify IQ by races, and that certain races have higher IQs than other races. I called you a racist. You went into the same crazy rants. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Interestingly, and speaking of the Easter Bunny, Maguro is also a big proponent of the gross fiction that is IQ.

Anonymous said...

Trad -- Think of how much Bill Gates is dragging down the graduation rate at Harvard. I believe Gates was a power forward on the basketball team. Is that right?

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glenn said...

And the reason why "Walkaway" McCreary hasn't been fired is because the Pennsylvania whistleblower laws are broadly written and he might qualify. The legal eagles are busy right now figuring that out.

Anonymous said...

Okay, Thomas. See you tomorrow or the next day.

Automatic_Wing said...

Another option is that McQeary was really not all that surprised.

Certainly possible. One of the things that we're going to find out now that this has all blown up is whether PSU made a deal to hush things up in exchange for Sandusky's retirement in 1999. The timing of the retirement was extremely strange - elite college asisstants simply don't retire at age 55. And it was one year after the first formal allegations against Sandusky in 1998.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if they find out that Sandusky's "issues" were common knowledge among the football staff several years before the McQueary incident in 2002.

Freeman Hunt said...

How is a football player or basketball player who graduates with a degree in teaching gym or recreational management any different than one who does not play those sports who graduates with the same degree?

For some, it's the same. For some, it's not. Athletes at big schools usually have special tutors, and many of those tutors are willing to do their work for them. My mother used to be a tutor for athletes, and many of them who came to her were shocked when she wouldn't do their work for them. There is also sometimes an expectation of special privilege for athletes in grading.

Obviously a lot of athletes don't game the system and just get their degrees, but there is plenty of system gaming going on.

None of that has anything to do with race though, so I'm not sure what's being argued about there.

Anonymous said...

Freeman -- Again, the issue is that Thomas focuses in on black athletes. He uses the phrase "black athletes." He makes no mention of white athletes. There's no Jeremy Shockey. No Stephen Garcia.

As for the tutors, I wondered if anyone would bring it up. Tutoring is freely available on all of these campuses. Writing and math centers, extra help, etc. The difference is that the athletic programs make the athletes go to it. Are there instances of plagiarism? Sure. Do rich white girls at USC hire students to write their papers a lot? Sure.

As for special grading, certainly not at big schools and certainly not during the first two years. It's all anonymous Scantron. How could they?

If Thomas would just have talked about a dumb jock problem, I would have no problem. But he can't do that. It's not in him.

paminwi said...

"McQueary's reaction was the result of a lot of things, but he did tried to do something and he did more than he had to. The vilification of McQueary is going to have a chiling effect on the reporting of incidents like this. Could McQueary have done more--yes. Could he have done less--yes."

This is one of the times in your life you really find out what you are made of. This man (and I even hesitate to call him that) had an opportunity to stop a heinous act and SAVE A CHILD and he DID NOT DO IT! McQueary is a big guy and he could have taken down another big guy who was so busy molesting a child he didn't know anyone else was around. Are you telling me he couldn't have knocked the crap out of Sandusky, taken care of the kid and called the police on the cell phone everyone carries in their pocket? (I mean, this isn't the dark ages where you have to go look for a pay phone to make a call).

McQueary is a failure as a human being and he need to be gone from the football program and not on suspension. Time to clean house and quickly.

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Brian Brown said...

I'm left wondering why Paterno, Curley, and Schultz thought they could cover this up.

I mean, it is a huge gamble that the child would never report it and/or McQuery's dad would not follow up. Unless a big sum of cash were involved.

This is what happens when you allow one man to be your little tin god of the town I guess. The myopia is staggering.

Thomas said...

Carrie has this right. If McQueary had said nothing at all, rather than doing the legal minimum of reporting it to Paterno, he'd be working on Saturday and would have a career ahead. Admitting you know anything at all is dangerous, and willful ignorance, even feigned ignorance, is safe.

Why did McQueary do what he did? It's difficult to say. Here was a man he'd known most of his life, respected, trusted, relied on. A man who had been his coach and then his boss. And this man was doing something heinous. It isn't obvious to me that the right reaction would be automatic in those circumstances. (Heck, if we thought that the right reaction would be automatic, we'd repeal those mandatory reporting laws, wouldn't we?)

Why did the administrators do what they did? Was it a lack of empathy? Maybe. It's possible that they'd encouraged the prosecutor in 1998 to take it easy on Sandusky, and were worried that their role would be revealed. There are a million possibilities, and we just don't know yet.

Automatic_Wing said...

Interestingly, and speaking of the Easter Bunny, Maguro is also a big proponent of the gross fiction that is IQ.

Not sure how you can say that IQ is a fiction. It certainly doesn't tell you everything about a person, but you've got a hell of a lot better chance to succeed in life if you've got a 120 IQ rather than an 80 IQ. No doubt about that.

frank said...

How much racism exists among gays? What's the racial breakdown among gays? How about female, bisexual, black pedophiles? Are they [black, lesbian, bisexual pedophiles] the snail darters we spend time & money worrying about? We need some basic stats before Ann asks a 'relevant' question.

Anonymous said...

Maguro -- Santa Claus has a better chance of making it to every house on Christmas Eve if he uses the Rudolph when it's foggy out.

Nobody has an IQ of 80 or 120. This is because IQ is utterly a fable. It is phrenology. It is palm reading.

Shouting Thomas said...

Nobody has an IQ of 80 or 120. This is because IQ is utterly a fable. It is phrenology. It is palm reading.

Jesus, I didn't know you were a complete moron. You had to prove it.

Here's the wikipedia entry on IQ.

A Google search produces 19,000,000 entries on the subject of IQ.

The SAT, which is what colleges use to sort out applicants, is an IQ test.

Automatic_Wing said...

Nobody has an IQ of 80 or 120. This is because IQ is utterly a fable. It is phrenology. It is palm reading.

Palm reading implies completely random outcomes.

Are you telling me that, say, the Wonderlic test produces truly random results? That someone that 's really smart and someone that's really dumb have about the same chance of scoring well on the test?

I mean, you do believe that some people are smarter than others, right? If not, no point in continuing the conversation.

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Anonymous said...

The SAT, which is what colleges use to sort out applicants, is an IQ test.

Tell us what is on the SAT. Tell us how it measures IQ. Tell us, in fact, what IQ is. Tell us what was on the SAT in 1980. In i990. In 2000. Why the changes? Isn't IQ static? What does SAT stand for? Who writes it?

Tell us about how different races have higher IQs than other races, but that this claim does not make you racist.

Also, a Google search of palm reading produces 42,000,000 entries.

Also, love the Wikipedia link. That's authoritative.

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Anonymous said...

Maguro -- We've had this discussion ad infinitum. Of course people vary in intelligence.

IQ is a fable because it assumes that there is one kind of intelligence, that it is static and cannot change, that it is measurable and quantifiable, and much more. IQ is an a myth, a fable, a sad relic of an antiquated time.

By the way, ask a palm reader if palm reading is the result of random outcomes. What do you suppose that person will say?

Anonymous said...

Do you know anything about the actual substance of the SAT, Thomas? How long is it? What is the scoring system? Is there a penalty for guessing?

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Anonymous said...

"And... so you see my point?"

"Why no empathy for the child? Something about the way that child looked, being raped in the shower, that somehow failed to shock him to his very core, that somehow seemed like something that could be handled?"

I do see your point and it's not outside the realm of possibility. I personally suspect that Sandusky may have targeted children of all races. But it's quite likely that the child McQueary saw being raped was white.

In terms of how the child looked -- I wouldn't be surprised if the child was in shock. McQueary may have been more likely to do something if the child was screaming.

We do know Sandusky targeted vulnerable children. McQueary would have seen the Second Mile children around practice. McQueary may have assumed the child was without or had little protection-- institutional, legal, class, familial.

I think the fact McQueary knew Sandusky & grew up with him was one of the larger reasons for his horrible lack of reaction. He was probably truly shocked to see what he saw. That said - I still don't understand why he, at a minimum, didn't call 911.

I think we all want to understand the why of this because comprehending why might make this evil a bit more explicable.

It's hard to find any measure of grace except in the courage of the children who came forward. These children (now teenagers) saved other children through their actions.

rcocean said...

"Well, a group of former college athletes has organized to demand that athletes be paid. They estimate that the average market value of a football or basketball player to be $100,000 to $350,000."

So what? What about all the college athletes who aren't worth squat? Are you only going to pay the athletes from Football and Basketball? What about the colleges that lose money on their Football and/or Basketball programs?

What about all the bench-warmers? Do they get paid too? Finally, why not pay High School football players, think of all the money they rake in.

Anonymous said...

Okay. So you don't know anything about the SAT. And you admit that. Good. That's a good start.

How, then, can you be certain that the SAT is an IQ test if you admittedly know exactly nothing about it?

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rcocean said...

Shouting Thomas and Seven Nachos are the same person in case you haven't caught on.

Its always a beautiful sight - A man and his sockpuppet.

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Johanna Lapp said...

One reason Paterno was so well-respected is that his players met and exceeded the NCAA's academic standards. They maintained grade point averages and graduated on time in numbers that put most other major colleges to shame. And in real academic majors, not schlock-for-jocks subjects?

Many colleges exploit their players - "use 'em and lose 'em" - but Penn State wasn't one of those.

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Cedarford said...

7 Machos - Jew homosexual who used to work for State Dept, personally, on behalf of his "special friend, the 51st State".

Now 7-up is busy screaming racist!!

newton said...

"BTW, McQueary was just put on indefinite administrative leave."

Let us not forget here that McQueary is The potential star witness on the trial of that pervert. If this reaches Federal levels... Oh My...

And judging from the comments overwhelmingly condemning him for not doing enough to stop the insanity, I have three words for him: Witness Protection Program.

Ann Althouse said...

Do not use the comments here to have a repetitive exchange of insults.

William said...

In all of the Catholic scandals I read about, the priest seems to have picked on kids of his own race and, of course, faith. They say serial murderers mostly kill within their own race. Perhaps a similar thing goes on with pedophiles. At any rate, if Sandusky were targeting black kids, you can be sure that that interesting portion of his pathology would have been leaked by now.

William said...

I have sympathy for McQueary. There are bonds within a society that not only trump morality, but those bonds are themselves perceived as the higher morality. If church prelates whose lives are supposed to be dedicated to following the paths of righteousness fall into this trap, then cut the asst coach a little slack......During WWI, young men used to line up in the trenches to go over the top. They waited patiently until the whistle blew. They knew they were going to die but they waited patiently. When the whistle blew, they climbed the ladder and died. On some days, there were as many as 100,000 casualties, and it went on for years. Everyone knew it was madness, but the trick was not to say anything.....Some men like Robert Service and Sigfried Sassoon complained about it, but, despite admirable war records, they were condemned for their complaints. If only war involved buggering young men instead of killing, maiming, and gassing them, then perhaps an anti war stance would be more acceptable.

ken in tx said...
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ken in tx said...

I think the reason McQueary did not take stronger action is because the boy was not reacting negatively. He was not yelling, screaming, of begging someone to save him. He might even have been hunching back. Children are not asexual. I am a retired teacher. Take my word for it. Current PC is to tell students it is OK to have homosexual sex.

Revenant said...

He might even have been hunching back

You might want to read the grand jury report before speaking directly from your ass.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Yes, please be original when using insults! Heh and no repeats!

kjbe said...

MadMan, what you said, (better than I, a little further upstream).

Ralph L said...

He was not yelling, screaming, of begging someone to save him
It probably wasn't his first time. Here's hoping Sandusky is a true pencil-dick.

One reason he chose "at risk" boys is so people wouldn't be surprised if they acted up after his attentions.

Wally Kalbacken said...

Give professor Althouse a break here! I've never seen so many comments deleted. Well, not the comments that were deleted, but the statement "Comment Deleted." Cut her some slack! Stop buggering up this blog!

MikeDC said...

Worst post ever Althouse.

Why didn't McQueary and his dad do enough? Probably because mostly smart people convince themselves to do the easy thing instead of the right thing all the time. "I couldn't have seen that!" "Because if you really saw that, you would have put a stop to it, right?!" "Right, OK, I didn't see *THAT*, but it really looked like that, I'll tell coach. OK, everything's taken care of"

Or gee... maybe they said to each other, "Yeah, but he was raping a little black kid, so I'll still tell on him, but instead of going to the cops, I'll tell the coach."

Yeah, that makes sense.

Freeman Hunt said...

As for the tutors, I wondered if anyone would bring it up. Tutoring is freely available on all of these campuses. Writing and math centers, extra help, etc. The difference is that the athletic programs make the athletes go to it.

No, they're not made to go to the regular tutoring. They have their own tutors. Here, the athletic dorm has its own staff of tutors, and the basketball team has a further separate set of tutors. Totally different dynamic.

As for special grading, certainly not at big schools and certainly not during the first two years. It's all anonymous Scantron. How could they?

Yes, at big schools. The school I keep referring to is big. You pad with extra credit, participation, and subjective measures. A professor does not have to give the grade provided by a Scantron.

Heck, my own statistics professor in college told me, "Well, you missed these vocab questions from the glossary, but I only put them on the test so that the people who don't understand statistics would get something right. I don't actually care about those questions. Your answers on the real questions indicate that you understand statistics better than anyone else in the class, so I'm giving you an A." That's pretty common. I also had an Arabic professor who didn't like me mark me down a grade for no reason. When I confronted him about it, he said, "It is already done! Nothing I can do about it!" Heh. We sort of hated each other, so it was all good. Another guy I knew in a different Arabic class had not even mastered the alphabet by the end of the semester (!!!), but the teacher had a special fondness for him and gave him an A.

Grades are largely fungible.

But none of this is to disparage athletes. Most of them don't take advantage of such perks, and it's the system that's providing them.

Gary Rosen said...

"Do not use the comments here to have a repetitive exchange of insults."

A little late for that, isn't it, Ann? You've been tolerating C-fudd's unhinged antisemitism for a while now after he has been banned from nearly every other blog he previously infected. And his phony "knowledgability" consists almost entirely of unsupported rants and slander gleaned from the Stormfront websites he spends most of his waking hours surfing. Nearly every one of his "facts" turns out to be a barefaced lie.

Gary Rosen said...

" Jew homosexual who used to work for State Dept,"

Pretty ironic coming from Althouse's leading defender and apologist for molesters and pederasts. Not surprising either that his best bud rcocean looks to NAMBLA for moral support.

Roger J. said...

Either Mary was trying to post, or our hostess finally intervened in the 7Machos ST contretemps--Thanks

I do agree with the commenter who said the race of the victims was totally immaterial.

Ralph L said...

The only problem is now we don't get the full effect of the fools they made of themselves. Having been gratuitously insulted by both of them recently, I won't be heartbroken if they go elsewhere.

ndspinelli said...

Well, I spent my afternoon @ my acupuncturist, watching a flick, and having a nice dinner. I'm glad I did. When I read all these posts I'm going to use my deductive skills and say saintshoutingthomas got flagged numerous times.

On the premise posed by the professor. Having gone to college in Pa. I assumed most, if not all the victims, were white. However, when I saw the map of the # of kids involved w/ Second Mile by county, which ESPN published, I amended my assumption and thought some victims could be black or mullato.

Tangentially, When I went back to school to get my history teaching certification and took a Black/Latino history course, the professor was a Stanford grad. He was good and quite liberal. This was in 2000 and the term biracial was the pc term. He would not allow us to use the term and we had to use mullato. His explanation was lengthy but very persuasive. He encouraged us to refrain from the pc term of biracial. I keep in touch w/ him and honor his request.

mariner said...

I was more than halfway through the comments before WineSlob finally asked what I consider to be real question here:

Perhaps a more incendiary question than how race may have affected things here is whether the PC suppression of any criticism of the "gay commumity" was at work here.


There is NO doubt in my mind that if Sandusky had raped girls he'd have been in prison long ago.

Automatic_Wing said...

Who uses the term "mulatto" anymore, spinelli? This isn't 1920.

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