Posnanski and the Paterno book

Double Down said it was going to be a warts-and-all biography from the start.

So maybe there isn't that much to recover from after all.

 

Joe would do well to keep his doubts to himself as he suffers through the writing process. Just because social media exist doesn't mean you need to make a confessional of Twitter.

And he shouldn't be addressing the journalism classes while he's there.

 

What are you guys talking about? Did you read his words? He is still writing the book, and it is likely going to sell even more copies now. And it is going to be a biography that covers all the good and the bad. The point was he wants to wait to see what further info comes out before making assumptions on what Paterno knew/was told and what he should have done. Nobody wants to be seen as defending someone involved in a case like this, and I don't think he's defending Paterno at all. Very well said.

 

I doubt that not because the material wouldn't warrant that, but because I just think this whole situation SO soils Paterno's career and accomplishments that any credibility he had concerning anything else is just gone -- completely -- because of it. It's that nasty, that dirty...It feels dirty even typing about it because there's just no possible excuse.

It's sad, because Paterno himself is not the one accused or arrested. But he was responsible for his program, and even if he didn't know everything, he knew something, and covered it up, underplayed it, whatever, and worse, he kept Sandusky around.

It's not like this was a one-time incident here, and Paterno was trying to give a second chance (a Second Mile?), or trying to give some benefit of doubt or be forgiving of someone. This takes Paterno from a legitimate, credible college football legend of interest to almost anyone who likes college football and drops him down to almost-irrelevant, dirty-old-man status in terms of credibility.

Whatever good Paterno has done over the years, there is just no good explanation for this, no justification that can make anything he might say or offer up in a book that includes this stuff that anybody could stand to read in all seriousness -- not even all the fanboi Penn State fans who might have previously been counted on to eat up this book and drive sales of it.

 

I like Joe a ton. We've had conversations before about how sometimes there does seem to be a certain group that tries to outdo each other. But I, too, would like to know his basis for this statement. Because I've read an awful lot and still don't understand what he's been reading. (And I do hope Nicole sticks with the PR side when she graduates):

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/nyregion/from-coach-to-case-study-in-penn-state-classrooms.html?src=recg
On Thursday morning, Poorman began his class by showing students — many of them clad in Penn State sweatshirts — video clips from the previous few days’ news coverage, culminating in a scene of students toppling a TV news van on Wednesday night. He also brought in a guest, Joe Posnanski, a writer for Sports Illustrated who is working on a book about Paterno.

Posnanski criticized news coverage of the affair, saying that some journalists were trying to outdo one another in expressing outrage, while others had come to town “to bury Joe.”

Nicole Lord, a senior studying communications, said she would have the opposite problem.

“If I were writing a story like this, I would talk blue in the face defending Joe,” she said. “I don’t think I could detach.”

 

Joe's a great writer, but if he thinks Paterno knew nothing about this, he's bought himself a long-term lease in Fairyland.

 

Joe either knew or he comes off as a foolish old man who was a figurehead with no control of his program.

Neither is good.

 

My theory is Pos has just been reading a lot of straightforward news articles. Simple facts about the case, really. But as new facts are coming out all the time, it seems as if media members are trying to outdo each other with the awfulness.

The reality is, the truth is just that bad.

 

Just as JoePa's no doubt in shock, certain Poz is as well . . . because he's not going to be able to turn out anything resembling the book he obviously hoped to write.

 

The awful thing is, the original book Poz probably thought he'd be writing is something I'd never ever read in a million years. The book he's got on his hands now is a can't miss -- if he can do it. I mean, it's a real life King Lear.

 

First, since Poz has written that some of the book money was to go to a Paterno charity, we ought to acknowledge that they're business partners. That doesn't work for me. Poz needs to back out of that deal, and announce that he's backed out, if he wants us to believe it's an honest piece of journalism.
Second, if Joe doesn't have everything from Paterno now -- he clearly doesn't -- he's not about to get it once lawyers take over Paterno's life.
Third, I really hope Joe can do the book. It can make him a better writer than he's ever been. The book he must write will demand that he inhabit the darkness of a man's life. To do that, Joe has to think in ways he has not yet shown us. He has to write a tragedy in three acts, not another romance of Paterno, the library, the graduation rate, the black shoes, the vanilla of it all. He has to show us how it happened -- because the tragedy at Happy Valley has been at least a dozen years in the making, from Sandusky's "retirement" through the 2002-2008 arrests of 46 Penn State players on 163 charges to Paterno's naked arrogance to the full rot now exposed. A cold-eyed look shows Penn State as just another big-time college football program built on cheap labor, except the coach/school takes the money earned by players and instead of keeping it all gives some to the library. That book, I, like Michael Gee, would read.