Thursday, January 26, 2012
Even Our Heroes Are Not Perfect
Today I noticed something quite important while I
was attending the memorial for Joe Paterno.
Amongst the Bryce Jordan Center, I felt a sense of unity. It was the identity I felt with Penn State
from the beginning when I first chose to come to Penn State. During all the speeches and emotions that
were expressed throughout the memorial, I came to conclude that, aside the
scandal that was revealed a couple months ago, Joe Paterno impacted the
university tremendously in many ways. He
influenced the lives of many, not just his football players, but people he did
not even know. He donated and invested
so much into the university as a whole.
He donated money to buildings, the library and helped to start the
Paterno Fellows Program. That program
helps and allows students to achieve greater success. It was founded on his belief of “success with
honor”. I am currently a Paterno Fellows
aspirant and never have I felt more proud of my university and for all that Joe
Paterno did for the school. One of the
speakers, Phillip Knight, who is the co-founder of the sports brand Nike, said
that throughout his life he had heroes and for the last eleven years Joe
Paterno was his hero. It was then and there
that I noticed the rhetoric in all of this.
The irony to everything that followed this is that no human is
perfect. Even someone as loving,
charismatic, generous and unique as Joe Paterno can fall. Until then, I was one of the few there that
resented Paterno for knowing what Sandusky was doing and not having done enough
to stop it back in 1999. Maybe my
beliefs on the molestation of children to be worst crime known to man influenced
that belief and maybe I came to see this irony because I was influenced by the
many sadden by his loss because there was something there in the air. The celebration of his life and legacy
allowed me to see that the mightier and bigger they are, the harder they
fall. No one is perfect and
unfortunately Joe made a big mistake but that doesn’t necessarily make him a
bad person.
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You bring up a very good point that people before the scandal viewed Joe Paterno as a legend, more than a human being. In the few interviews he did with the media, he always said he wished he did more to stop the child abuse that was happening. Unfortunately, his legacy may have been irreparably tarnished by this sin of omission. Maybe, in some sort of twisted way, the fall of Joe Paterno let us know that even the most revered among us are still just as human as everyone else.
ReplyDelete"...the mightier and bigger [people] are, the harder they fall." This is a very strong point. If a unknown person were to have made the same mistake as Joe Pa did, his fall would not have been as detrimental as Joe Pa's was. But that's the price that one pays for fame. But to me what was surprising was how quickly everyone's opinions of the man changed. Just a couple months ago he was being attacked by newspapers and news stations and now everyone is praising him. To me, this kind of portrays how corrupt the media is. By changing their opinions of the man in esentially a couple weeks, we should learn to never fully trust the news.
ReplyDeleteI like how you bring up the point that though Joe Paterno was a great human being who did a lot, he still did have his fall. He was a human like every other human being but I feel that before the Sandusky scandal, that trait of his was not recognized. It is true that he did a lot for the university but it can also not be ignored that he let a huge scandal pass. I believe that Joe's mistakes taught us all a little something about how life works.
ReplyDeleteAnmol, I would have to disagree with that all the good that he did was not reconginzed prior to the scandal. Maybe not in the media, but here at Penn State he definitely was.
DeleteJoe is the face of Penn State. With that being said, he has a lot of pressure on his shoulders to be great, and true. Many people believe he could have done more but the fact is he did his job. I believe that he told the right person, but the right person did not follow through with the right actions. They when shit hit the fan, they put the heat on Joe because he is the figure and brand of Penn State and the media would feed into it. Obviously, someone knew what they were doing because it worked. Because Joe is so faithful to our University, I think he wouldn't tell a soul about the reality of the situation especially if it meant selling someone out. Inturn, he took the fall; ALL of it.
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