Joe Paterno and choices

He just got fired. Did he have it coming or was he a scapegoat? These days, it's hard to tell anymore.

Few would question that not all the facts are in yet, but with the media blitz and that pesky "court of public opinion" basically having already tried and convicted him -- something had to give.

Enter the Board of Trustees at Penn State University. Does anybody know who these people are? Not me. They seem akin to a grand jury, whereby it's a few faceless and nameless individuals that meet in secret, but whatever they decide has the power of changing peoples' lives -- often in a bad way. Then they go back into seclusion somewhere.

According to their spokesperson, they carefully weighed and considered all the factors involved in this mess, then decided to sack the President of the University and Paterno. Whoever these people are -- they must be geniuses with extraordinary telepathic powers. How else to explain that in a matter of a few hours, they could completely analyze this situation and act accordingly?

But wait. Upon fielding questions from reporters, the spokesperson said such things as, We don't know that yet -- or --  I can't answer that -- or -- we're looking into that -- or -- I don't know -- or -- the investigation is ongoing, etc, etc.

My questions would be -- if you don't know all the facts, then why are you firing people? What kind of kangaroo court IS this?

Oh right. Forget due process and everyone's supposed right to have their day in court. There's that thing called image, which must be protected at all costs. The "best interests of the university" and all that. Good grief, they even put a gag on Joe Pa by cancelling a regularly scheduled press conference. Everyone wants him to talk, but he's not allowed to talk, and then he gets fired for -- not talking in the first place. Do you see something wrong with this picture?

Let's cut to the chase. Is Joe Pa a bad guy for his "inaction"? In the end, it all boils down to laws and morals. No one questions that Joe Pa followed the law. The moral thing is trickier. What's immoral to some is perfectly acceptable to others. Smoking, drinking, cursing, intercourse outside of wedlock, sexual positions and preferences for that matter, abortion, killing animals for sport, even eating meat -- the list is endless. Everyone has their own morals and, as far as I'm concerned, to each their own. I'm still trying to figure out why I always had to eat either fish or mac and cheese on Fridays in the school cafeteria when I'm not Catholic. What kind of dumb rule was that? Did a Board of Trustees cook that one up somewhere? Sorry, got off track there for a second.

The point is -- the law is the law, and if one runs afoul of it, one's supposed to pay the consequences. But morals are a choice. Anyone that thinks combining the two into a one size fits all is fooling no one but themselves. That will NEVER work.

Many say Joe Pa had a moral responsibility to call the cops. That's their opinion. Maybe Joe Pa didn't see it that way. If so, that was his moral choice, and he was entitled to it.  Bottom line is -- he didn't do anything legally wrong. What would he have done if it was his own grandkids, you say? Maybe he runs to the cops. Maybe he takes matters into his own hands. Maybe he does the same thing he did or didn't do in this matter. I have no idea, and neither do you. It's irrelevant anyway. Whose kids were allegedly involved shouldn't matter.

It makes one wonder sometimes where all this is going -- or maybe we're there. Cameras at every busy intersection, cameras in every place of business one walks into, the "eyes in the sky" that see us but we don't see them, phone taps, internet monitoring, cop profiling of cars, and the politically correct police adding and deleting words from our language, amongst other things.

Now people want to get into the business of dictating moral choices.

Silly me, I thought this was still America, not Josef Stalin's USSR. Nowadays, it seems like somebody always has to go the gulag, even if they didn't commit a crime. You have a choice. Snitch on your friend, or wait until they snitch on you, but somebody's going.

Call me nostalgic, but I liked the old ways better.

It might just be similar thoughts have occurred to Joe Pa.

An afterthought -- for all you armchair judges, juries, and executioners out there that have already decided Paterno's guilt -- one question......

Bet you thought the same way about OJ and Casey Anthony. How did THAT work out?