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Sandusky Gets 30-60, Makes Fashion Statement

Posted on October 9, 2012 Written by The Nittany Turkey

Last visit to the "outside."

The long-awaited sentencing hearing for convicted pedophile Jerry Sandusky has concluded. Judge John Cleland sentenced the tickle monster to at least 30 years and no more than 60 years in the state prison at Camp Hill, near Harrisburg.

Last visit to the "outside."
“Jer” arrives at the Centre County Courthouse for sentencing.

The law provided for a longer sentence, but for what? Jer will die in jail, whether of natural causes or otherwise. Things can get pretty unnatural in there. Everybody knows that.

He’ll get credit for the 112 days he’s served at the Centre County Jail, where he’ll stay for another 10 days until his final move takes place.

Still Claims Innocence

Sandusky appeared in court nattily  although somewhat conspicuously attired in a gay, Da-Glo red, short-sleeved, vee-necked jumpsuit with “CENTRE COUNTY” stenciled across its back. It was cinched at the waist by a non-leather, non-metallic accessory that made eminent, albeit low-key, fashion sense when taken in sartorial combination with his clean, white Nike cross-trainers. Accented by off-white nylon cable ties adorning Mr. Jeri’s wrists, the runway glowed with this study in simplicity. It was ageless, yet so 2013! This will make a wonderful wardrobe augmentation to cheer up those drab, gray Pennsylvania fall days. You’ll have all the sexy boys in the Camp Hill big house jumping for joy wearing your hot little playsuit that subtly tells them just who you are while it glaringly shrieks that you do indeed have something they want! This sassy fall jumpsuit by Justice-Suchs, Ltd., Coturiers to the General Inmate Population is available at your local CintAs for only a minuscule charge to your favorite county taxpayer. Let’s have a round of applause for our sexy runway model, Jeri!

And remember, they call it “justus” because when you get there, that’s what you find: just us. (The late Richard Pryor still makes me laugh when that one pops into my brain.)

But I digress.

He spoke up in his own behalf.

“I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak today,” Sandusky said. “I feel a need to talk, not from arrogance but from my heart and there’s so much that I want to say that I’ve been advised not to say … I’m filled with motivation, determination.

“I didn’t do these alleged disgusting acts,” Sandusky said.

They’re all innocent. Every one of them serving time where he’ll be going. He’ll get to tell this to the Court of Inmate Opinion. Chances are that they won’t believe him, either. He’ll just be another fat-assed rich boy to them. Alleged, indeed!

“This was the worst loss of my life, but not the first,” he went on. Please don’t close the book today, [as] there’s a lot left to learn.

“As I began to relive everything – my feelings that so many people were hurt … It was a horrible time in life to witness, to be a part of. Many moments have been spent looking for a purpose.

“Maybe it will help others,” he said, that the tale told over the past year has prevented other vulnerable children from being abused.

“I would hope that it would happen … I would cherish the opportunity to be a little candle for those, as it goes on, as they have been a huge light for me. Hopefully it can get better in our hearts, they are suffering.

“Somehow, someway, something good will come out of this.”

Jerry was really pouring it on at this point, although his voice hadn’t betrayed his sentencing anxiety up to this point, when it began to crack. He undoubtedly knew that after his last prepared words quavered out of his mouth, he would be committing the rest of his life to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s applied rock crushing and license plate manufacturing facilities.

“Today is a difficult day, I’m being labeled and sentenced. We will continue to hold our heads up to face what we must and to cling to what we have.

“We’re going to smile because I’ve always smiled through the pain and we’re going to laugh and we’re going to cry.”

Mostly cry. Your appeals will go nowhere, Jerry. Your fate is sealed. On to Camp Hill.

Erickson Issues Statement

Penn State President Rod Erickson issued a lame statement timed to coincide with the sentence announcement. I won’t even bother publishing the platitude. Check the link if you really want to read it. You could probably have written it yourself.

Judge Cleland’s words to the victims, however, are worth re-visiting. He wanted them to hold their heads up and not let the predicament Sandusky put them in be a source of continuing embarrassment.

“You should not be ashamed. His conduct was no fault of your own. It is for your courage and not for your assault that you will be remembered.”

Camp Hill Awaits

Formally known as the State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill, the prison is located in Lower Allen Township, Cumberland County, near Camp Hill in Greater Harrisburg. Its inmate population was around 3,400, as of 2008. It was originally a reform school.

According to a study by the USDOJ in 2010, 1.2% of inmates who responded to a survey reported that they had been sexually victimized at the prison.

Everybody knows (in other words, they’re mostly making shit up because they saw something on TV) that a guy like Sandusky will be someone’s bitch in short order. See, when your friends who get scared when they get a parking ticket tell you about dis shit, dey gotta sound like dey done served some time theyselves, for creds, yo. Dat way, you don’t ask they asses jus’ how dey know dis shit. They don’t. They’re just repeating crap that “everybody knows”, stuff that has been repeated ad nauseam on TV by other schmucks who don’t know what they talking bout.

Overcrowding at Camp Hill was determined to be one of the primary causes of the 1989 riot that destroyed sleeping quarters for 500 inmates and injured hundreds of inmates and staff. If you think they were overcrowded before the damn riot, what the hell happened after they lost 500 beds? Sure wasn’t the Harrisburg Hilton, was it?

It was kind of like the Obama Administration, though, as the guards apparently had good information that an inmate rebellion had been planned, but their pleas for reinforcements and a lock-down were ignored by the prison administration. Shades of Benghazi, yo.

Perhaps Jerry can coach the football team to give the boys some recreational outlets for their aggression and he’ll be the hero for thwarting another three-day riot.

But he’ll still be somebody’s bitch. Those hard-core inmates don’t take kindly to Sandusky’s kind, you know.

Everybody knows that.

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Filed Under: Penn State Football, Penn State Scandal Tagged With: Camp Hill Prison, Jerry Sandusky, John Cleland, Sandusky Scandal

Big Red Sues PSU

Posted on October 2, 2012 Written by The Nittany Turkey

Mike McQueary
Former Penn State wide receiver coach and recruiting coordinator Mike McQueary.

I knew we wouldn’t be able to get through a football season without the Sandusky scandal screwing with us. So, now here we go. Mike McQueary, famous Showergate eyewitness, has filed suit against Penn State and is asking for millions for the impact that his whistle-blowing will have on the remainder of his life and his ability to produce income.

No matter what you might think of McQueary himself, you have to feel that by putting himself in the position he did, his future earnings would be severely impacted. Who would hire him? Where is he going to be getting his income? He’s about the only one involved in the Sandusky caper other than Joe Paterno who doesn’t have a book deal. Victims have book deals. Sandusky is writing another book. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a couple of trustees announcing books, as as shady and unethical as some of those dudes have been.

Who knows what is left of McQueary’s life. Yeah, sure, he’s been spotted around Happy Valley, but how happy is he. Not very, I’d bet. Crap like he’s shoveling usually drags one down with it, creating estrangement from family and community. Mike McQueary is exposed and alone. ????? ??? And I have no problem at all with him asking State to compensate him.

The suit seeks million, which is a reasonable approximation of what McQueary’s salary and benefits would have been for 25 years of standing on the sidelines listening to Joe’s ghost yelling at him, or whatever his job might have been. ????? ????? His salary was $140,400, plus some additional bonuses and benefits.

McQueary has been on “administrative leave” since November 14. He was the only assistant coach under Paterno who was not given the courtesy of an interview by the new regime.

I think McQueary is the quintessential poster boy for whistleblower suits. ??????? ?????? He’ll almost need a new identity in order to lead some semblance of a normal life henceforth.

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Filed Under: Penn State Football, Penn State Scandal Tagged With: Mike McQueary, Sandusky Scandal, showergate, whistle blower

Laser Focus: The Chilllllllllldren

Posted on September 20, 2012 Written by The Nittany Turkey

I set out to write this earlier, but then I got cranked up about my encounter with DirecTV, which was to have been a lead-in paragraph for this post but became a post of its own due to festering anger momentum.

So, reel me in, already. I’m here to write about Penn State.

Oops, I feel another rant coming and I can’t control it. Damn!

“[The trustees] don’t want to put these victims, who have been through so much already, through anything more in terms of what we need to do to get it resolved.” —Karen Peetz, Chair, PSU BOT

Have you noticed that some of the inflammatory web sites out there whose names I shall not mention that go off on the Freeh report and the Surmas and all of that stuff have issues with loosely couched representations replete with words like “obviously”, “clearly”, mixed with “seems to point to”, and — that favorite of my family — “I’m pretty sure that…”? Don’t you get the same feeling that I do — when you’re at those sites, you’re essentially walking into a barroom bullshit conversation about the Penn State scandal where hyperbole reigns supreme and nobody is holding anybody else to journalistic standards that differentiate fact from opinion? These sites don’t even exhibit tabloid levels of journalistic integrity.

It seems to this Turkey that the purpose of those sites, as I mention, is to inflame, not to inform. While I don’t doubt that the Surmas wield considerable power, and Tom Corbett is a power monger, it doesn’t do these people’s causes any good — and we haven’t yet figured out precisely where they think they’re heading with all this flaptrap yapping — to lead readers to believe that they stand on authoritative ground when they’re so easily caught being journalistically lazy.

I think the people who are doing most of the squawking, calling upon the rest of us to join them in their casus belli, fit into a few distinct categories, which I shall propose below.

  1. Those who merely want to see Joe Paterno’s name cleared
  2. Those who suspect a grand, statewide conspiracy to divert negative attention from Governor Tom Corbett and his henchmen
  3. Those who have an agenda of their own, such as publishing a book
  4. Those who think that if they present enough “facts”, the NCAA will mitigate their sanctions against Penn State. I shall label this category “Imbeciles”.

About Category Four, do any of you really think that the NCAA will change its mind about punishing PSU? (I can hear you saying, “Well, bla bla bla, if Curley and Schultz are found not guilty and we bring more information to light about the misrepresentations and inaccuracies in the Freeh report and we get a few trustees to resign and and and…” Warm, steaming bullshit! Ain’t gonna happen. Yes, I know, you’re asking what the hell I know that makes me an authority on what the NCAA will do. Nothing. I know nothing—except that Penn State signed a consent decree that agreed to the punishments without qualification, and without the right to appeal. There are no “rights”! Erickson signed them away when he inscribed his Rod-E on the decree. So, if you’re hoping for some redemption in this area, fuggedaboudit!

I’ve stated my opinion that if the NCAA were to mitigate any of Penn State’s sentence at all, it would be the vacated wins, which were arbitrary, capricious, and vindictive. Of course, all those adjectives wouldn’t come up if the win vacation was ever rescinded. Most likely, it won’t happen at all, but if it does, they’ll wait until Bobby Bowden goes to that great dadgum press box in the sky and the other PSU sanctions have run their course.

Just my opinion, and you know what they say about opinions.

You don’t? Okay, I’ll tell you: Opinions are like assholes. Everyone’s got to have one and they all stink.

However, it is when opinion is represented as fact that it gets dangerous. Perhaps this tendency stems from Washington, which enjoys deluding voters with “truth” that is 180 degrees out of phase with reality. At the very least, when caught by the reader, factual inaccuracies destroy the writer’s credibility in the mind of the reader, thus defeating the central purpose of the inflammatory sites — to be believed.

And why can’t they pay some attention to grammar? These are supposedly Penn State grads who should be able to write complete sentences in which words are spelled correctly. What’s that you say? It’s not the paint job on the car but the engine under the hood? Bullshit! If you want to be believed, write grammatically and factually sound essays. Learn the difference between “its” and “it’s”. And learn how to spell Pittsburgh!

A really easy, albeit somewhat inconsequential and innocuous misrepresentation of fact that I’ll blame on journalistic laziness appeared in that same post in the site whose name I wasn’t going to mention. In a LISTSERV email to Penn State lettermen subscribers, Pittsburg [sic] dentist and PSU alumnus Vic Surma is whining about Paterno’s treatment of pet players, presumably ones who were mission critical:

“As of last year, Dan connroy [sic] another stud linebacker was convicted of heinous phone calls to a mentally challenged coach , can you think of anything more vile? What did Paterno do? suspend him for three games against 3 virtual high school teams? Get a grip. We’re dealing wioth [sic] a corrupt society hidden in the hills of PA. for 40 years.”

Our champion of clearing Joe’s name, the lazy journalist, chose to impugn Vic Surma’s statement about Connor by relying on some vague memories, I suppose, because his “clarification” was factually inaccurate:

“Certainly not Dan Conroy (sic) Connor. Connor was upset with linebacker coach Joe Sarra  who is not mentally challenged and Vic Surma claims Dan was not punished enough.”

I see where you’re going with this, Mr. Journalistically Lazy, and before we get there, I have to correct some of your implicit assumptions. Sarra had already retired from his job as a position coach two months before Connor started his immature little prank calling campaign against him. In a response to a direct question back in November 2011, Connor Tweeted:

“I pranked [sic] called Sarra because he was a crazy guy who would hang around stadium. Dumb/Jerk move by me.”

Remember that Connor’s calls and suspension took place in 2005. By the time he tweeted the above, in 2011, he had presumably matured a bit, and was playing in the NFL.

Sarra was a good friend of Joe Paterno. Joe was completely outraged about Connor’s voyage to the moronosphere. Was a three game suspension enough? Remember, Connor’s offense was not insubordination against a superior, an active position coach, but immaturity in abrogating proper off-campus decorum. He was not the only player involved in sardonically clowning around with Sarra. Not only was Connor suspended, but also the other two players, Jim Kanuch and Nolan McCready.

Of course, here’s where our old friend Vicky Triponey rears her lovely head. (How I love to digress into all things Vicky!) The Judicial Affairs office ordered Connor to perform 20 hours of community service and exacted upon him a 10-day deferred expulsion. (Whatever the hell that might be!) In time, both sentences were reduced. There was, of course, speculation that Paterno had intervened. He never admitted it, but in response to questions about it, he did say that frequently misbehaving players deserved a second chance.

Back to the three-game suspension, the three games Connor missed — high school teams, as Surma called them — were South Florida, Cincinnati, and Central Michigan. Connor returned for the B1G schedule that year as a sophomore, playing behind Poz. He was not yet a “stud linebacker”, but he would become one in his junior and senior years, long after he had learned his lesson about maturity.

See? That was fun. I remember most of that, but I dug up information to fill the gaps from readily available sources. Screwing up a minor point like this can impugn one’s credibility with some readers to the extent that the major point is lost. So, spend some time and get it right.

And please learn how to spell Pittsburgh.

 

Well, we’re sure as hell in Rant Mode, aren’t we today? This Turkey has been having some pretty interesting brainal reactions to weighing the emotional anchor of Effexor this week. I’m suddenly bursting with energy. Beware! I just might bore the hell out of you!

Dadgum it, I digress Bowdenoulsly.

Back to the Laser Focus, already!

Penn State President Rod Erickson has been hard at work lately, at least within the past one day, trying to create a methodology for dealing with victim compensation in the Sandusky scandal. He has retained the law firm of Ken Feinberg, famous for having run the 9/11 compensation fund, to arbitrate claims and resolve pending litigation.

******

Erickson also conducted an open session for students on Wednesday, allowing them to ask question about anything that popped into their heads. Naturally, the NCAA sanctions were still way the hell up there on the list.

******

The NCAA has appointed a so-called task force to provide oversight (in other words, put the clamps on) over Penn State’s distribution of the $60 million fine assessed to it.

******

Could the Penn State Board of Trustees soon be under investigation for improper handling of the NCAA sanctions against Penn State? Hmmmm, perhaps, maybe.

******

Lawyers for Tim Curley and Gary Schultz have asked the courts to try their clients separately.

******

A pro-Joe billboard has popped up in State College near the intersection of Pugh and Beaver.

******

 

Hey, I think that’s it for today. I’ll be back, of course, for my preview and prediction for the forthcoming Temple game. I’ll try not to be too last-minutey with it.

 

 

 

 

 

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Filed Under: Penn State Football, Penn State Scandal Tagged With: board of trustees, journalistic integrity, Sandusky Scandal

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The Nittany Turkey is a retired techno-geek who thinks he knows something about Penn State football and everything else in the world. If there's a topic, we have an opinion on it, and you know what "they" say about opinions! Most of what is posted here involves a heavy dose of hip-shooting conjecture, but unlike some other blogs, we don't represent it as fact. Read More…

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