Posnanski and the Paterno book

Did I miss a post? I was agreeing with you.

 

I'm sorry, but that's crazy. In no way, shape, or form are "trolls" winning this thread. As a frequent contributor, I'm biased, but I think it's been damned enlightening. Read the posts from Double Down, Ralph Russo, Azrael, Jim_Carty, etc., etc. This is a spirited discussion of journalism. This is the site at its absolute best. If you think this is the trolls winning out ... man, don't click on any Jeter threads!

 

I think that he might have misunderstood what you wrote there. I had to read it twice, too. What you meant was putting journalist in quotation marks, as Whitlock did, means that Whitlock's column was not measured. But I can see where someone might read your post quickly and think what you meant was that someone shouldn't call Posnanski a journalist. And that you were putting journalist in quotation marks, as well. See what I mean?

 

Yeah, I can see where confusion is possible.

Let me clarify: Joe Posnanski absolutely is a journalist. Jason Whitlock absolutely is a dipshit. Calling Whitlock's column a measured take is laughable. It's like asking Keith Olbermann to write book review on George W. Bush's memoirs.

 

I'm always going to argue in favor of more disclosure from journalist, but I'd be curious to see typefitter's policy on how this would work.

I mean, are we really going to ask for disclosure every time a writes writes about someone he dislikes? That would be awesome, but I don't see it happening.

And, wouldn't every column by Whitlock require a disclosure that the guy is a clown?

 

So now we rip Whitlock for ripping Posnanski, whom we've ripped to shreds.

"Get in line, Pork Chop!"

 

We mustn't tinker in the realm of gods.

 

Sorry, Ruckus, I was replying to Norrin. For sure, this has been a good thread in parts, and I have no problem at all with people WHO HAVE ACTUALLY READ THE BOOK discussing and critiquing it, obviously. That's good and important. But someone who could read that Whitlock shit and call it "measured" is either an idiot or a troll, and a presence like that, on a thread like this, is like a big ugly scratch on a record, and there get to be enough scratches, you pick up the needle.

 

Good God.

 

I'm halfway thru, y'all.. And I'm enjoying it!!!!!! I still think Posnanski was between multiple rocks and hard places... will post more when I finish.....

 

I finished it.

Some parting thoughts:

* One of the most consistent criticisms of the book seems to be that Posnanski did not fully take advantage of the access he was given. I think that this is a valid criticism. I have mixed feelings about the following criticism, because, whether it's a movie or book, I typically want critics to assess the work that was produced, not the work they would have wanted to see produced. But in this case, I truly think that Posnanski might have written the wrong book, if that makes any sense.

What I really longed for, as I read the final pages, was a "Season on the Brink"- or "Moneyball"-style insider's look at the Penn State football program at the end of the Paterno era. We don't get that here, not at all. I have always been very curious about how that staff operated in these last few seasons, when Paterno was losing it. I wanted particulars. I wanted "Last Night of the Yankees Dynasty." And I did not get that, and it was frustrating. When the scandal broke, Penn State was 8-1 and had a very real chance to win the Big Ten. Posnanski mentions that Paterno was losing his hearing and coaching from the press box because of deteriorating health. How did this staff function? Was Paterno just a figurehead? What decisions was he actually making by that point?

How Penn State continued to excel the last few seasons was something that fascinated me for several seasons. Posnanski had complete access and did not answer the question. Like I said, frustrating.

* At the same time, it's not a full biography, either. It's 373 pages, but a rather quick read. There aren't that many words on every page. The book jacket comparison is to the Maraniss and Cramer sports biographies. But those are long, substantial, footnoted biographies. This is not. It's a fairly insightful tour through Paterno's life, and that approach often works because Posnanski is a pretty insightful guy. But to my mind, if you aren't going to write Penn State "Season on the Brink," then the biography ought to be a little meatier than this one ends up being. I think timing has a lot to do with this. Some of these other bios were years and years in the execution. I think a much better comparison would have been Jane Leavy's works on Koufax and Mantle, in length, scope, and style.

In fairness, I'd like to now read some of the other Paterno biographies out there, like the Fitzpatrick one and Paterno's own autobiography, to see how much new ground Posnanski was able to uncover and what details and events he left out that maybe he should have put in. Because I haven't read those, I don't know how necessary or unnecessary this one was for the sake of posterity and recording history.

* I mentioned that I wanted to know more about the workings of the program. I feel like some of the major events of the last few months of his life were compressed, too. Although we do get some compelling hospital scenes from near the end, I wanted to know more about his diagnosis, treatment, and deterioration. Same with the scandal. This stuff needed to be far more detailed, and could have been just based on the reporting that others had done. I think this was an editorial decision - Posnanski wanted to keep the perspective on his source, which he probably saw as the untold story. However, the result is that it ends up feeling somewhat thin. At one point, he writes that how and why the board made its decision is "not my story to tell." Sorry, but it is. It absolutely is.

* Ultimately, I do think that this is a defense of Joe Paterno. The stuff on the woman in charge of discipline at Penn State, for example, is a journalistic disgrace, and I'm surprised someone as good as Posnanski would make that mistake. He takes her to the cleaners, and there is no indication that he attempted to contact her. At several junctions, he harps on the fact that all of these child welfare professionals involved with Second Mile did not realize what Sandusky was doing, either, so how could poor Joe? This ignores a glaring, glaring difference: Paterno was specifically told that something had gone down, probably twice. They, as far as we know, were not.

It definitely seems that Posnanski, though he doesn't recycle the phrase, adheres to the "single, hazy incident" view of things. When you read it, you get the distinct feeling that McQueary did not really give Paterno a very clear idea of what he witnessed. That's definitely what Posnanski thinks. He does say in several places that Paterno should have done more, and tells Paterno himself that, but, at the same time, I get the feeling he thinks that Paterno was more right than wrong in his handling of it all.

* Way too many generalities. People want Paterno out during the early 2000s. Who? How do they voice that? Not enough of that. Reporters rip him during the scandal, and it is hinted at that it was unfair. Who? What did they say? What was unfair? I wanted more. Too much telling, not enough showing.

* I don't know what the time table was in completing the work, but it seems like a lot of the details of the Freeh Report emails are not in here, though Posnanski seems to refer to some of them. I'll have to read the report and cross check it against what's in the Posnanski book.

* One thing I do like, at least since he did decide to make this a biography, is how he integrates Sandusky and the scandal's events into the narrative of his life. Everything doesn't just come at the end. It starts creeping into the narrative about 2/3 of the way in, in chronological order. So we have the kitchen table meeting a decade ago about the shower incident reported in the book, but then we have several chapters on his coaching. It's really interesting to read it in that way, because it gives you some sense of how this all actually unfolded, whereas before that you have probably compressed all the scandal events in your mind, with the context of a decade of seasons kind of dropping away.

* He did a terrific job with not getting bogged down into the details of games, a major flaw, I think, in my own books (and in my defense, a lot of sports books) that I have to work on in the future. The only game that gets a ton of game detail is the Fiesta Bowl against Miami, and even then, it's pretty well done. I actually would have liked more on that game. I thought it was a major, major event in the historical timeline of college football.

* In fact, since Posnanski took the biography approach, I would have liked more on the game of college football itself. How did it change during this man's lengthy tenure? Did he influence any of those changes? Penn State joins the Big Ten and it all flashes by in the blink of an eye. This was representative of a seismic shift in the sport's landscape, and I don't think it gets the play it deserves.

Anyway, those are my thoughts, although with those I posted along the way. I probably could have been a little more eloquent and specific given some more time to craft it, but I kind of wanted to get it down to get the discussion going and get on with my day (and the next book on my stack, Maraniss's "Obama: The Story.")

 

My thought, in one graf from my NSJC column this week...

Somebody at the Simon & Schuster publishing house should have told Joe Posnanski, “We’ve changed our minds. The ‘Paterno’ biography doesn’t work now. You keep the advance. But do a different book. Write your time with Paterno, the inside-the-house scenes no one else has. Then keep reporting the story. Go to Sandusky in jail. Get McQueary, Emmert, and any of the abused. Spanier and his lawyers are talking. Go to the perjury trials for Curley and Schultz. Tell us how Happy Valley is after the statue came down. How it is with the new coach, with Paterno’s players who stayed. We’ll publish it next spring.”