Why the Penn State Scandal Matters

The Penn State, Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky scandal was a very special, perfect storm, situation. And to be sure, I am coming at it from the position that Jerry Sandusky is almost, with complete certainty, innocent of the things he was charged with. In this post, I want to explain why it matters in the big scheme of things. For those new to this point of view, I'll just have to say that there is a growing list of knowledgeable people who find it credible, including renowned science writer, Mark Pendergrast, former Federal Investigative Service agent, John Snedden, memory expert, Elizabeth Loftus, journalist, Ralph Cipriano, and mainly, journalist, John Ziegler, who's done the most extensive documentation at his site, framingpaterno.com. There are also a lot of journalist who interview him and come away impressed.

There is a lot of injustice in the world and nobody can focus on all of it. How many victims were there? There were three administrators and an aging, long retired coach. Another legendary head coach was also fired. These people had their hard earned reputations destroyed. This is not a lot of people in the big scheme. The university was scammed out of over $100 million. I suppose it could be argued, using the broken window fallacy, that it was paid for by the insurance company, and that it helped stimulate, among other sectors, the fancy sports car market. A charity that attempted to help at risk kids was also dissolved. Something that should also be recognized  is that a lot of people had emotional investments in these institutions.

My Assault on Reason

Late last Friday afternoon I thought I'd try implementing an idea on how to get the latest Penn State scandal revelations into the public discussion.  I thought I'd go to Reason's Hit and Run blog and post comments to most of their writers recent posts. So I commented on these posts and tried to make them at least tangentially related to the content covered:

How To Talk to People Who Think You're Evil and/or Insane: Podcast

The Hidden Legacy of Columbine: Ignorance About School Violence

Some California Cities Are Making It Harder to Quit Smoking

Southern Poverty Law Center Scraps Its Anti-Muslim Hate List

CDC, in Surveys It Never Bothered Making Public, Provides More Evidence That Plenty of Americans Innocently Defend Themselves with Guns

When I went back to look at them Saturday, I found that my comments had been deleted and that, while I was allowed to log in, I was not allowed to comment.

Ziegler's Amazon Review Gone -- Picture Remains

I recently read the book, Silent No More. My local library had it in a digital form that I could download to my computer, where it would remain on my computer until it expired on the due date. I also wrote an Amazon review. This is the book by victim number one in the case against Jerry Sandusky. While scrolling down the Amazon page for this book, I was happy to see a picture of John Ziegler waiting to assault the consciences of any of the principals of this case who happen to do the same. I even mentioned it in my review. But I couldn't find any way to click from this picture to the review.

What Kind of Guy is John Ziegler? Ask OJ

On the theme of canned facts (facts that are not reported), there are various reasons why relevant facts are canned, which include, being ignored, being suppressed or simply not being believed. Another reason is that they may have been forgotten. Since I've (to use the pejorative vernacular) bought into John Ziegler's narrative of the Penn State scandal, I thought I'd look into some of the other stuff that Ziegler's done in his journalistic career.

For a number of years, he did a radio talk show with a co-host named Leah Brandon. There's an archive here, where the episodes are easily downloadable (I like to listen to such things on an ipod). I've found a few of his shows, where he could be said to have achieved a bit of infamy. He was a very avid follower of the OJ Simpson case. He had dated Kim Goldman, sister of OJ victim, Ron Goldman. He interviews her here, in the second hour of his show. In the next hour, here, he gives a very entertaining description of how he disrupted a sports memorabilia event attended by OJ. The Goldmans won a civil judgment against OJ and these autograph signing events offered a way for OJ to get around paying cash to the Goldmans. Ziegler found out that there was going to be one of these things very close to where he was living, so he went and told the promoter, "over my dead body!" He successfully managed to prevent OJ from participating in this event and arguable forced him to have to deal with less reputable, sleazy characters, which eventually got him arrested and incarcerated for kidnapping. I highly recommend listening to these episodes.

Institutional Fact Canning at Penn State

Penn State has examples of the institutional ignoring of facts (or at least sources of facts) in both the Paterno/Sandusky scandal and their investigation of Michael Mann.

Now what most people would think of as ignoring facts in the Paterno/Sandusky case would be coach Joe Paterno, president Graham Spanier, vice president Gary Schultz, and athletic director Tim Curley ignoring sex crimes by Jerry Sandusky and trying to keep them under wraps. But Sandusky got indicted and convicted, Paterno got fired, and Spanier, Schultz and Curley  each got convicted of child endangerment. Then Penn State hired a former FBI director, Louis Freeh, to write a report to explain it all (for $8 million). For the public, the monster was caught and the institutional miscreants were punished. It all looks pretty tidy, unless you've been reading John Ziegler's site, Framing Paterno, or Mark Pendergrast's book, The Most Hated Man in America.

Twitter Etiquette

Well, I'm learning a lot about Twitter etiquette. I wanted to make a lot of climate bloggers and commentators aware of how what everybody thinks they know about the Penn State scandal is likely wrong, and how it might be related to the climate conversation. So I tweeted my post out with as many Twitter names as I could fit per tweet. When one of these tweets got some responses, it produced a lot of static (tweets to wade through) for the rest of the people listed on the tweet. From now on I'll use single tweets or small specifically targeted groupings. Using a lot of names in one tweet is lazy.

A couple people pointed out how to mute the conversation. I've also just found out you can mouse over the names in a reply, and it will let you click for a full check off list. I should probably mention that I never use the Twitter app or home page. I can never keep up.  I prefer go through bookmarked Twitter profiles in a browser.

Climate Change and Jerry Sandusky

What does Jerry Sandusky have to do with Climate Change? Well, on a very tangential level, Rand Simberg called Michael Mann the "Jerry Sandusky of climate science". In the wake of the Sandusky scandal, Penn State president, Graham Spanier was convicted of child endangerment. Michael Mann touts a letter of support he got from Spanier in his book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, as I have snickeringly  pointed out in a blog comment thread. Well I've just run across one of the most astounding stories I've ever read and it's been hiding right in plain sight!

At Michael Shermer's site for his Skeptic magazine, I ran across a review of a new book by a very respectable science writer named Mark Pendergrast. It is entitled, The Most Hated Man in America -- Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgement, in which he argues that Sandusky is most likely innocent! Now this is a very sensitive subject and Shermer even included a disclaimer for the review. Some prominent skeptic movement skeptics, such as Jerry Coyne and Danial Dennet have commented on it. It's also gotten some derision, most notably in a couple posts by PZ Myers.