Remembering Joe Paterno
Lots of people are upset about Joe Paterno’s death right now. Lots of other people don’t understand how anybody can be upset given his inactions amid the Sandusky scandal.
I don’t understand why people are so insistent on remembering Paterno in a particular light.
I’m still shocked by the whole story, and I have a lot of difficulty and clashing emotions contrasting the Paterno I knew about with the Paterno I just learned about. I can’t summon a single emotion that encapsulates these two very dichotomous narratives. The bad doesn’t cancel out the good, and the good doesn’t cancel out the bad. It is what it is; he was who he was.
People are complex creatures. I honor the good he did and I loathe what he allowed to happen, all at the same time.