"Try and explain: scab of a nation, driven insane" (Zappa)

There's no sense flogging this topic til the end of time, but the report by Judge Freeh and his commission into the sickening Penn State situation points fingers directly at Coach Paterno (am I the only one to notice the irony of that name?) and his minions.  You can download the entire report at this link.

Nice shoes, Joe.

One would hope that the beloved (for whatever reason) old coach would have said,"Hmmm. This is inappropriate,  to receive reports that my assistant coach is sexually abusing young boys in the football building shower.  Perhaps I should look into this, and if I find any scintilla of evidence that Sandusky is a predator, I should both fire him and report him to the police."

But no, that didn't happen.  How wonderful that Paterno's family is now claiming that the old fool didn't realize that the man reported to be molesting children was a child molester!  "We wish he'd have been more aggressive in following up," his son Scott Paterno now says. "But clearly he thought it had been handled."

Hypothetical situation:  You're the branch manager of a bank.  Someone reports to you that one of your top staffers has been seen stuffing huge piles of money into his pockets and walking out the door.  You mention it to the brass, but months later you still see this dude hanging around the bank, laughing and carrying on.  You have to wonder why he is still around, so you...

a) call someone and say, "Why is he still around?"

or

b) shut up and keep coaching  managing the bank.

Paterno is the man who for years claimed that PSU's uniforms had to be plain, blue and white, no adornments of any size.  This was all in keeping with his allegedly plain and simple lifestyle, which saw him amass millions of dollars to donate to the school library on a coach's salary.  He would have no logo, nothing on the team's uniforms...until the people at Nike cut him a deal, and suddenly, the Nike swoosh stripe appeared on PSUniforms.  Even the black football shoes he wore with his white socks and rolled up khaki pants- all part of his 'aw shucks' persona - were Nikes, and sported the swoosh.

He also made a big deal of being technologically ignorant, so he said, "I don't do email or twitter or any of that stuff."  Perhaps he should have learned a little more about how things are today.  People have now come to realize that one little boy being anally raped is actually more important than a college football team. 

Joe Pa never got that.  Which is why, after 1998, when he claimed that he thought the whole Sandusky matter had been settled, he was able to go on and set the record for most (hollow) victories by a football coach.  409.

7.  That's how many more young men were assaulted by Sandusky after 1998.

And 7 is greater than 409.