As I've said here before (here, f'rinstance) I used to have gobs of respect for Professor Alan Dershowitz, the noted legal scholar and Talking Head. An awful lot of it went away not so much because he defended O.J. Simpson but went on a talk show binge defending his defense of O.J. Simpson and of that trial. I didn't expect better from a guy like F. Lee Bailey or Johnnie Cochran but I expected better from Dershowitz, who has been so eloquent and courageous in exposing hate crimes and religious persecution.
So now he's defending Joe Paterno, saying the coach should have been allowed to retire with dignity…as a giant who committed just the one mistake. No, I don't think so. Not unless Paterno did more to stop the abuse of young boys than has been reported thus far. I don't buy Dershowitz's justification that we should cut Paterno some slack because he was of a generation that had been taught it was wrong to "snitch." Wronger than child rape? Paterno received most of the kudos when the school's athletic program won trophies. He deserves a lot of the blame when the school's athletic program is disgraced. He does not deserve dignity.