The Internet Knows Penn State’s Planned Joe Paterno Tribute Is A Very Bad Idea

For most people, the case is fully closed on Joe Paterno. He was a very good football coach for years and years, beloved by many, but he also likely knew about his assistant coach Jerry Sandusky’s sexual abuse of children for years, perhaps decades, without doing anything about it. That he could ignore such a series of unconscionable, evil acts for so long is unforgivable, no matter how many games he won — well, unless you’re a die-hard Penn State fan.

You don’t have to look very far to find swaths of apologists and deniers on the internet who plug their ears when they hear of JoePa’s misdeeds (or worse, counter that his involvement in the community outweighed criminal negligence), and apparently some of them are still making decisions at Penn State University, which should really be trying to distance itself as much as possible. Yet, on the football team’s promotional schedule for this season, whose name should we see but Joe friggin’ Paterno:

If you’ve come to find a contribution to the wave of justified outrage at the decision to honor Paterno, move along. Honestly, at this point it might be better to just laugh at the Nittany Lions for being so completely tone-deaf that they could have a whole ceremony without saying, “Now, Joe Paterno was a legend who did so much for us *whisper* even if he could have stopped literally dozens of kids from being sexually abused but declined to do so …” Let’s see whether Twitter can cheer us up this time.

https://twitter.com/celebrityhottub/status/771423335917973524

https://twitter.com/xmasape/status/771429069892255745

https://twitter.com/pattymo/status/771431511925133312