ORD_Buckeye
Wrong glass, Sir.
https://bwi.forums.rivals.com/threa...y-podcast-on-scandal-to-start-in-2021.285749/
People don't like to be wrong. People don't like to be forced to change their minds. I think that's why they have a 5-page discussion about Sandusky, and whether he did anything wrong. They have been told for so long that Paterno is a saint, and it is so deep in their culture, that anything that blemishes him must be wrong.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds
This is a pretty interesting article, if you have time (I do, since our company is getting bought out, and we're going through a million meetings from our current leadership where they're basically saying, "This is the company line - live with it or don't. We don't really care."). Basically, there are some experiments where people are asked a bunch of A or B questions. Some are told they're right a very high number of times, and the others are told they're worse than randomly guessing. Even after telling them all that those statistics are wrong - they're all about the same as a Random Guesser - those who were originally told that they were awesome at guessing continue to believe that they're awesome at guessing. (I didn't read the whole article - maybe it has boobs at the bottom.)
There's a weird show on Netflix called "Behind the Curve". I'm not endorsing it, but it's about flat earthers and how they're all goobers. One dude does an experiment that proves the earth is spinning. That's not what he wanted it to show - he wanted it to show that the earth is sitting still. So he makes up an excuse for why his experiment "didn't work". And he tries again. Of course, it "doesn't work", again. Some people, instead of being forced to change their minds, insist that the facts are wrong.
The 4-5 Penn State fans I've talked to about this since 2011 are normal people and agree that Paterno should have been fired. The rest, though, get on message boards and argue whether Sandusky even did anything wrong. It's easier than believing that they were wrong.
I've long maintained that the Paterno sainthood myth had become intertwined with their own personal psychological identity and sense of self worth and professed superiority. They didn't just root for a better foosball team than yours. They were inherently better, more moral people than you and me because they rooted for HIS foosball team. When they say "We Are Because He Was," it's not some trite saying of fanhood like "Go Bucks" or "Hook Em." They mean it in a deeply fundamental manner central to their very sense of identity. In other words and to put it more clinically, they are very, very fucked up people.
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