Tea at Trianon: Paterno and an "UnHappy" Legacy

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, November 21, 2022

Paterno and an "UnHappy" Legacy

Thanks to the journalists who have thoroughly researched this story, of which I heard bits and pieces during the years I lived in State College. While I was living there a young teachers was hideously assaulted around the corner from my house. Considering what a small town it is there have been some terribly violent crimes as well as several disappearances, such as the strange case of the vanished district attorney, Ray Gricar. Although I had (and still have) some good friends there, it was also my misfortune to encounter several sociopaths, in that place called "Happy Valley." From ESPN:

The story of Todd Hodne should have been one of those stories—one that prompted change or at the very least one for which people were held accountable. It should have been a story that elicited outrage, but it wasn't, because the story of the Penn State football player who preyed pitilessly on women even as his team and his coach were competing for the national championship was never told. Like Betsy Sailor, who even after she won in court had to find out that the man who victimized her went on to victimize so many others, the women who suffered at Todd Hodne's hands had to suffer in vain, their pain a missed opportunity cloaked in a secrecy and silence that reverberated decades later.

Ten years ago, when the revelations of the secrets kept by Penn State's athletic department resulted in the conviction of Jerry Sandusky on 45 counts of child sexual abuse involving 10 boys and caused the statue of Paterno at Beaver Stadium to come down, Shelley Gottsagen, who in 1975 had participated in the protests against gang rapes at "the football fraternity," read the coverage expecting a reckoning that never happened: "It stunned me. I really thought, I just made that comment so many times when Sandusky's trial was happening ... I can't believe nobody's dug up what happened in the '70s there. The protests and the rapes—it's gone from history. It stunned me. I really thought, 'Why are they not looking?'" When Karen Zelin, who was working alongside Gottsagen in the 1970s, heard about Sandusky, it almost made sense to her: "This is what was happening then. This was common knowledge among us that things were covered up or ignored." Those incidents with women were the prelude of what was to come, says Joanne Tosti-Vasey, the NOW chapter president who called for Paterno to resign in 2006: "That climate of indifference allowed it [Sandusky's crimes] to happen. It took child sexual assault for the public to become outraged."

At the time of the Sandusky revelations—at the time a 2012 report determined that Paterno failed to respond appropriately when made aware of the accusations against his assistant coach—the general public's understanding was that this was the first time this program had been faced with the prospect of a serial sexual predator in its midst. The belief was that the coaching staff and the administration at Penn State had been caught unawares, that something had happened that they never could have imagined or prepared for.

But that was not the case.

Before Jerry Sandusky, there was Todd Hodne. Before the serial sexual predator who ended Paterno's career, there was the serial sexual predator who left his career untouched. (Read more.)