Joe Paterno's Tragedy

Disclaimer: First, I admit that a note like this could be, in the words of my internet-savvy wife, "too soon". But, to be honest, I don't know if any time in the future will ever not be too soon. What happened at Penn State over the last ten years is one of the most terrible tragedies I have ever heard of. I pray the adage "time heals all wounds" will apply to the scars of those who suffered (and are still suffering)l. I also pray thhat this adage will apply to the men who, through negligence, allowed this to happen. But I know it will not. God heals the victims of tragedies and even the tragic heros. But He does not heal the writers of tragedies when the victims are His little ones.

This is Joe Paterno's tragedy because he is the writer, not the star. 

***

Long before Shakespeare, Western tragic drama was a sadistic mess of action at which even Rambo would blush. Husband killed wife, brother killed brother, mindless butchery on the road to vengeance was never blurred by what Shakespeare calls the "pale cast of thought." The storyline for every play could be summed up by the Mosaic law "an eye for an eye," and drama was beholden to this idea until a Greek playwrite named Aeschylus changed everything with three lines. 

In the second of Aeschylus' collection of plays entitled Oresteia, Orestes is on the verge of exacting revenge on his mother, when she begs for pity and reminds him of their familial bond. The action that caused a surprised gasp to sound through the theater was an inaction--the first of its kind. Orestes stops to have a conversation: 

Orestes. What shall I do, Pylades? Be shamed to kill my mother?

Pylades. What then becomes thereafter of the oracles

     declared by Loxias at Pytho? What of sworn oaths?

     Count all men hateful to you rather than the gods.

Orestes. I judge that you win. Your advice is good.  

The moment between thought and action was revolutionary. Orestes is right: it is a terrible thing to kill your own mother. The dilemma causes him to pause and reflect on his future action. These three lines of thought in Orestia eventually turned into Shakespeare's twelve-hundred and fifty lines in Hamlet. Many of William Shakespeare's tragedies are case studies of humanity, and Hamlet in particular focuses on a question: What happens to our resolve in the moment when reflection defers action?

***

In 2002, in the locker room at Penn State University, Mike McQueary, at the time a graduate assistant to Joe Paterno, noticed former coach Jerry Sandusky sodomizing a young boy in the shower. McQueary was obviously disturbed by this sight reported what he saw to Paterno. Joe Paterno then reported the crime to Athletic Director Tim Curley and Vice President Gary Schultz. Sandusky was banned from using campus facilities. 

But that's not all. We also know a janitor, several parents, and even two police officers knew about Sandusky's perversions long before the shower scene witnessed by McQueary. 

At least ten people knew about Sandusky's crimes, yet no one called the police. Why?

This question gnaws on me, and I disagree with the easy answer that it was a university cover-up. I think we are so quick to latch on to the cover-up hypothesis because, if we examine this closely, we would see a terrifying breakdown in our own society and, perhaps, in ourselves. Orestes paused for a few seconds; Hamlet for a few months. These men paused for ten years, and would have remained frozen even longer. 

Recently, I watched a video in which a reporter staged a kidnapping on a busy sidewalk. The child was an actress that convincingly screamed "Stop! You're not my dad!" several times as the man held her by the arm and dragged her away. Undercover police were waiting at the corner to intervene every time someone tried to stop him. There was only one problem: The police never needed to intervene. Hardly anyone attempted to stop this alleged kidnapper. The scenario was repeated several times, nearly always with the same result.

The camera provided closeups of the bystanders' faces as they passed, with many actually dodging the victim and her assailant. The bystanders knew they needed to intervene but, as the moment passed with each step, their resolve diminished to the point that a few bystanders looked back in annoyance, rather than concern. These people saw a man taking advantage of a little girl who bleated for help as he dragged her away, and no one intervened. The line between Joe Paterno and ourselves is thinner than we think.  

Hamlet wonders the same thing I did upon watching this video and studying the Penn State tragedy. In Act IV, once again contemplating the revenge his father's ghost entreated of him, Hamlet says in bewilderment:

I do not know

Why yet I live to say, "This thing's to do,"

Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means

To do't.  (IV, iv, 43-46)

He knows what he must do. He has everything he needs. So why is the job still not done? To find the answer, we must examine a scene in the play where Hamlet has the perfect opportunity exact his revenge. He and his uncle, Claudius, are alone, and Claudius is kneeling in prayer. The stage is set for action. Hamlet says so himself:

Now might I do it pat, now 'a is a-praying,

And now I'll do't. And so 'a goes to heaven,

And so I am revenged. That would be scanned. 

A villian kills my father, and for that 

I, his sole son, do this same villain send 

To heaven.  (III, iii, 73-78)

To scan, to survey, scrutinize, examine. The entire play is Hamlet's scanning of the act he must do. And the scan perpetually delays the act because, when he scans, his resolve becomes "Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought...and lose the name of action." To be or not to be  . . . is that really the question, Hamlet? It sounds like the question should be "To act or not to act."

This was probably Paterno's question as well. College football coaches are incredibly focused scanners. They spend weeks, even months, surveying a team's strengths and weaknesses. They scrutinize defensive postures and offensive attacks, they examine playbooks and stat sheets. Is it any wonder, then, that Paterno scanned this situation before action? A distraught young man brings allegations that confirm his deepest fears about a man he once respected.

I believe he knew the police should have been called. But, in the interim, he told the athletic director and school president. Now there are three other officials who know about the incident. Just as there were three or four people on the sidewalk looking at each other, wondering why a child was screaming as a man pulled on her arm. Might it be that each person assumed another would call the police? And, even more terrifying: Does the fear of mistake, of embarrassment, trump the desire to act? And in the face of surmounting evidence? 

And like a man to double business bound

I stand in pause where I shall first begin,

And both neglect.  (III, iii, 41-43)

After a week, no Pennyslvania State police officer knocked on Paterno's door. No news broke of an investigation against a former Penn State football coach.  Perhaps during practice one morning that week, he stood with his socks soaked through by the dewy grass, examining his quarterback through his trademark glasses, and thought:

What would he do

Had he the motive and the cue for passion 

That I have?   (II, ii, 570-572)

Now, those people on the street are looking back at the whining girl in embarrassment as they turn the corner. If they call the police now, they will have to face the question, "You had the chance to stop this man on the spot. Why didn't you do something besides call the police after the fact?"  

What to ourselves in passion we propose,

The passion ending, doth the purpose lose... (III, ii, 217-220)

This is not an acceptable answer. Nor is:

I do not know

Why yet I live to say, "This thing's to do." (IV, iv, 43-44)

That question must have taken on more weight, became more unanswerable, with each passing week, month, and year of Paterno's life. 

***

There is a remedy to the cowardly scanning that publicly destroyed Paterno, and privately destroys each of us when we handicap ourselves with thought. It comes from Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, the villian of the play. 

That we would do

We should do when we would; for this "would" changes

And hath abatements and delays as many

As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;

And then this "should" is like a spendthrift sigh,

That hurts by easing.  (IV, vii, 118-123) 

In Shakespeare's time, people believed a sigh provided ease because it thinned the blood. Another result of this, they thought, was a shortened lifespan, so people tried to refrain from sighing as much as possible.

Hence, as time passes, telling ourselves we should act might ease our conscience for the moment, but inevitably hurts us, as well as the victims of our negligence. For however many times in the last ten years Paterno thought he should call the police, his "would" had already birthed a bastardly justification that he had done what he was supposed to.  

Now, he is rightfully disgraced. The wrath of the nation, with the exception of a few blind individuals, is upon him. He is no longer a coach and no longer revered as a man of integrity. Recently, the commissioner for the Big Ten Conference erased Paterno's name from the Paterno-Stagg Trophy, a prize to be awarded to the conference champion at every year's end for decades to come.

Nothing is more symbolic of the effect Paterno's inaction had on his life than that word: Erased. The opposite of "to be." It is our actions, and inactions, that define who we are.

Which means that Hamlet had it right all along: To be or not to be really is the question, for all of us.