Two Years Later: What You Have to Believe to Buy the Media's Narrative

The “Big Lie Theory,” which history credits to Adolf Hitler, is based on the notion that the larger the deception the more people will be prone to believe it because they won’t be able to comprehend how anyone could get away with such a brazen act of dishonesty.

Based on what we now know, exactly two years later, about the Jerry Sandusky scandal, it is clear that the “Big Lie Theory” played a critical role in how the story was allowed to develop, especially with regard to the blame for it placed on Joe Paterno.

In the Sandusky case, to belief in the conventional “wisdom” one isn’t just asked to swallow a general narrative which seems on its face to be patently absurd (a legendary coach rapes numerous boys for many years and a prestigious school/football program covers up for his crimes), but it also requires a person to suspend the use of basic logic when evaluating the “evidence” which allegedly supports this narrative.

With that in mind, here, in no particular order, are the things you must believe in order for the generally accepted media narrative to be true. For the record, I am not saying that all of these things didn’t or couldn’t happen, but rather only that they all had to have occurred for that narrative to be even plausible. Individually each might be theoretically possible, but I think you will agree that, together, they create odds against all of them being true which are roughly akin to a giant asteroid hitting the earth… twice… on the same day.

To accept the media’s narrative of what happened here you have to believe that...

Joe Paterno contradicted a lifetime of admirable work in order to protect a child molester he didn’t like, who didn’t like him, and who no longer worked for him.

Joe Paterno protected a pedophile because, for the first time in his career, he feared bad publicity, which he had no logical reason to even think was likely to come his way if he turned him in.

Joe Paterno, on the night he was fired, publicly humiliated, and had his ten-year criminal cover-up blown to bits, smiled and waved to the crowd outside his house, criticized no one, and told the students to stop rallying and go study.

Joe Paterno decided to let Mike McQueary testify truthfully and did so himself even though he knew it would destroy his career/program and yet did nothing to prepare for that inevitable reality (instead he invited a book author to shadow him) and even laughed at the end of his final interview with the attorney general’s office just before the story broke.

Joe Paterno clearly “should have done more” (even though he never said that) and the fact that had he done anything “more” he would have been violating policy and perhaps the law (not to mention creating other big problems) is simply irrelevant.

Joe Paterno being "praised" on the first day of the scandal by the OAG in an article by the woman who would later win a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the case was an example of bad reporting, but that should in no way reflect on the reporter herself.

Joe Paterno, knowing his career and maybe even freedom was on the line as the cover-up was falling apart, decided not to hire a high-powered lawyer or PR guru, but instead chose to have his undistinguished son handle both duties. He also thought that he could somehow get away with just announcing his retirement and would be able to finish his final season as head coach.

Scott Paterno didn’t really completely screw up the PR response to this situation despite massive evidence to the contrary.

Joe Paterno was by far the most powerful/connected man in State College, but he was also fired over a cell phone the day after not being allowed to speak at a press conference.

Joe Paterno was supposed to know that ex-employee Jerry Sandusky is a pedophile before anyone else did even though Dottie Sandusky still doesn’t believe this is the case even after the entire world thinks it is true.

Dottie Sandusky is both a liar and delusional. She is also standing by Jerry against her own self interest for no apparent reason.

Jerry Sandusky, who still strongly maintains his innocence, was able to be one of the most successful assistant coaches in college football history, and build a massive children’s charity, despite the fact that he is not only a serial pedophile but is also pathologically delusional and psychotic.

Joe Paterno led/forced a cover-up of child molestation which led to the life and career of Tim Curley being destroyed and yet when Paterno died Curley released a statement, potentially closing off an important legal defense, praising him for his “honor and integrity.”

Its just a coincidence that not ONE person has ever come forward to say that they or anyone at Penn State knew that Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile, even though that person would be universally praised in the media if they came forward.

Frank Fina, the lead prosecutor in the Sandusky case, was lying for no apparent reason, or at least very badly mistaken, when he said on national television that Paterno was not involved in a cover-up.

Bob Costas, the most-respected, risk-adverse, and highest-paid sportscaster in the country, decided to risk it all by changing his mind about Paterno’s involvement in a cover-up, simply because he wanted to make himself vulnerable to criticism, or even worse.

Louis Freeh’s investigation is completely credible even though he spoke to only one person remotely close to the case, has had the results of two other investigations overturned, and, despite promising to do so,  has never answered extensive questions about his report.

Joe Paterno lied about knowing of the 1998 incident/investigation, even though it would have been illegal for him to know about it and what occurred was not close to being criminal. He then decided to keep a known pedophile on the coaching staff for another two seasons (even though the Freeh Report indicated that Paterno began Sandusky's retirement discussion before the 1998 incident).

The 1998 episode was a huge deal which should have shown everyone at Penn State that Sandusky was a pedophile, even though investigators cleared Sandusky of criminal wrong-doing and the victim’s mother allowed her son to continue a 13 year, incident-free, relationship with him.

It was “known” that Sandusky was a pedophile in 1998 and yet the University of Virginia, a school with extremely close ties to the Penn State coaching staff at that time, offered him a contract to be their head football coach at the end of the 2000 season.

Many teenage boys went extended periods of time in situations where they were continually forced into sex acts with an old man and told absolutely no one anything about this because… they wanted Penn State football tickets (but those very same people would never exaggerate their stories for millions of dollars).

A criminal case based completely in the notion that adolescent boys don’t want to do anything to let others know that they are being sexually abused by a man, began with the first victim (in 1998) alerting his mother something was amiss the very day he got home after only having taken a shower with Sandusky and having been lifted up to wash the shampoo from his hair.

Mike McQueary’s (probably investigator-enhanced) ten-year-old recollection of a three-second glance through a mirror is a more reliable indicator of what he saw than his own actions and non actions after the event are.

Mike McQueary saw a horrendous sexual assault, but never went to the police, no one he told about it told him to go to police, he didn’t stop it or even speak to the kid, and he forgot the day, the month, and the year in which it happened.

Mike McQueary was the only witness in a massive cover-up but he was not given an open coaching job at the time it happened and is not alleging that he was forced to be part of a cover-up even though doing so would be worth millions of dollars in his lawsuit against Penn State.

The continuous statements of the year of 2011 by the victim (#2) in the McQueary episode, made as a 24-year-old, married, Marine, in which he states, even on the day Paterno was fired, that nothing sexual ever happened with Sandusky and that McQueary is wrong, are a total lie, even though neither he nor his lawyers have ever said that.

Jerry Sandusky decided to sexually assault a nearly 14-year-old football player in the only section of a large shower area which would be immediately visible to someone if they came into the locker room unexpectedly.

The fact that the only three specific allegations connected to Penn State (1998, 2000, 2001) have a total of ZERO complaining victims asserting they were sexually assaulted by Sandusky in those episodes is purely coincidental.

Jerry Sandusky blatantly sexually abused many boys, even though not one person ever claimed that in their first version of their story before he was arrested and Penn State immediately promised to take care of almost any potential victim with large financial settlements.

Jerry Sandusky serially and brutally abused many boys over many years, but not one person (other than Victim 6) ever told anyone else anything at all about it in a contemporaneous fashion.

Jerry Sandusky forced many boys into overt sex acts, but the prosecution just decided it was more effective to indict him with twice as many known victims (4) who never claimed “sex” as those who did (2).

The 16 or so “post-trial” victims who got settlements from Penn State were totally credible even though they didn’t come forward until after Sandusky’s arrest (well after the story was known publicly) and Penn State indicated they would pay all victims, and the prosecution chose not to use them at trial (even though they were still in need of credible victims claiming sex or connecting the case to Penn State).

Its not odd that Jerry Sandusky had easy access to dozens of foster and adopted children but only one of them, Matt Sandusky, has ever alleged abuse and he did so through “repressed memory therapy” after telling the entire family after the first day of the trial that he could “lie” and make a lot of money from it (he also doesn’t come close to alleging a sex act).

Jerry Sandusky is one of the very few sexually predatory pedophiles who never used alcohol, pornography, or suggestive language, apparently never tried to pay off victims, was never abused himself, had a good relationship with his father, and didn’t confess even after being convicted.

Jerry Sandusky was able to get away with being serial sexual abuser for several decades and yet was somehow not able to properly answer the question “Are you sexually attracted to young boys?” in a phone interview with Bob Costas.

Jerry Sandusky, a man who was largely “convicted” in the public’s mind because he was too honest in the Costas interview, is lying about nearly everything else he says regarding issues which have nothing to do with his own guilt and which could have theoretically helped get him a lighter sentence (for instance, he says the idea of a Penn State cover up was “ridiculous”).

Either Graham Spanier (an esteemed college president and child abuse victim) decided to propose, for no apparent reason, the criminal cover up to protect an ex-employee who no one liked, or Tim Curley and Gary Schultz had to decide to propose the same nonsensical cover-up to their boss with an 99% expectation that they would be fired if Spanier didn’t go for it.

The fact that Spanier, Schultz and Curley have not flipped on each other (or whoever the mysterious person was who came up with the cover-up idea) in exchange for a lighter sentence, is simply coincidental and not at all an indication that there was no cover up.

Spanier, Schultz and Curley knew their cover-up was going to be blown up, but they voluntarily testified to the grand jury, didn’t hire their own lawyers, and didn’t even bother to get their stories completely straight.

The cover-up at Penn State was likely the first in history where about a dozen people knew of the allegation soon after it happened, the only witness (according to his own lawsuit against Penn State) was not part of the cover-up, and none of the primary participants have flipped on each other.

Rick Reilly, Buzz Bissinger and Sally Jenkins, who were, despite massive evidence against him, all Lance Armstrong’s biggest media defenders until the bitter end, are somehow right about Joe Paterno, without any evidence at all.

Mark Emmert, a man who knows very little about the case, made a perfect decision, in a record amount of time, while under unprecedented pressure to do so.

The Penn State Board of Trustees, made a great decision to fire Paterno/Spanier, even though they had lots of false information, very little time to deliberate, and were under intense outside pressure to act in exactly that way.

Penn State effective pleading guilty for all the primary parties is a valid reason to presume guilt, even though they have a profound self interest in not remotely fighting the allegations and instead embracing the media’s narrative.

The people who know the most about the story are overwhelmingly convinced that Paterno/Penn State are not credible in this only because they are brain-washed “Joebots.”

Those who know the least about this incredibly complex story are correct about what happened only thanks to little more than pure luck.

The fact that not even ONE of Joe Paterno’s biggest/loudest media critics are willing to debate his “guilt” and all actively avoid even answering basic questions about his “guilt,” is purely a coincidence.

It is perfectly acceptable to punish a dead person based the most horrendous interpretation of events and before all the facts are known, and to not change that punishment once the worst credible allegation you can ultimately still support (“He didn’t do enough!”) is far less egregious.

I, John Ziegler, must either be one of the dumbest people in the world or, at the very least, have a death wish for my career and economic security.