It may be true that most of us wouldn't do a better job of dealing with this situation than McQueary and Paterno, but when we hear something like this it should bring anger and outrage. I don't think people are so much passing moral judgement on others as they are responding to the anger that wells up inside of most of us when we hear about a nasty situation like this. We know what's right when not faced with the direct consequences of doing the right thing - that's true. But part of processing something this ugly is the anger. We're supposed to protect our children. Someone mentioned how helpless those kids must have felt when they saw an adult who COULD have saved them and then didn't. I can't imagine what that does to a child and his outlook on the world in general. Those are the kinds of circumstances which create adults who have no faith or trust in anything or anyone. A child who goes through something like that has very little chance of having a happy and productive adulthood. We need to think about that soberly and let it stick in our minds.
But I think it's productive to get good and mad at Paterno and McQueary and the reason is this. Paterno comes from a generation where you turn your head and don't get involved in the deep, dark, ugly aspects of someone's life. You turn the other way, you cover it up - you don't think about the victims, you just make it disappear by acting like it's not happening. That's what happened in the Catholic church for so long until they just had to finally deal with it and expose the ugliness, and this is no different. We need to see that for what it is - it's WRONG, and as a society, we need to have the discussion as to why it's wrong.
It doesn't matter what we personally would or would not do. We may never be faced with the same situation, but we need to look at ALL of the wrongs in this story and discuss them and pass judgement on them. Having that discussion, dealing with it and exposing the ugliness of not only Sandusky, but of Paterno's and the rest of the administration's attempts to cover it up brings it to the forefront and helps society in general realize that just turning the other way is just as wrong. And if we have that public discussion as a society, just MAYBE we will have the moral courage to handle it the right way if ever faced with it.
