Would you allow that Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder, was in other important respects decent and honorable?
How about the millions of members of what we now call the Greatest Generation who were completely on the wrong side of the Civil Rights Movement?
It's the collateral damage of progress. Attitudes that were not uncommon in one era look abhorrent through the lens of history as society's view of a subject evolves. Again, like so many others in this thread I feel compelled to say I'm not excusing Paterno. His legacy is rightly in tatters. But it's possible to look at how we got here and see him as something more nuanced than just plain evil.
I expect that you'll get a lot of grief for this post. I want to make sure I applaud it. It's an incredibly important perspective to have today.
Joe Paterno's legacy will be and should be in tatters. With the benefit of hindsight, all of this is going to be abhorrent. If we're seriously and honestly going to try to understand how this happened and put ourselves in the minds and situations of these people at the time they had to act, then we can't generalize that each and every person's appropriate actions were obvious at the time and the failure to do so is part of some evil conspiracy to inflict damage upon the world. The truth is
always in the middle. As much damage as all these PSU alums are doing to their reputation with the constant support of PSU and Paterno, I think the desire to label all of these people as pure evil is equally absurd. Much like Thomas Jefferson or some of our grandfathers and great grandfathers, it is possible for people to be both good and bad, or, maybe more appropriately,
evolutionary. That the entire institution wasn't able to evolve fast enough in the face of the other scandals going on at the time is a huge problem, and one that will be and should be paid for. But dissecting the information after the fact to make sweeping generalizations about these men in either direction is probably not accomplishing a lot. Except for Sandusky, who is without a doubt a monster.
I guess to sum it up, or maybe say it in a better way. I'm not entirely surprised that a bunch of old men didn't cope with this seemingly outlier and bizarre situation. I wouldn't even be shocked if they believed the story Sandusky told them because they "knew him" and knew he wasn't like that. Even with evidence and investigations and allegations, people defer to their own judgment and their own experiences. Of course, all of this was disastrously wrong. But as a society we sort of do ourselves a disservice when we don't look to honestly examine how this could have happened and instead try to just bundle these people up as a bunch of lunatics.
edit: I think I veered off point to one extent when I started analyzing the facts of this case. With a little time, I'll be able to read the report, because the facts in this instance may reveal that there was just a massive cover up orchestrated by all these fools. So if you read my post and crawled out of your skin because you've read the report and the details more thoroughly than I to this point, then I get where you're coming from.