NICK GILLESPIE: PENN STATE’S PROBLEM ISN’T THE PROFIT MOTIVE. “To put it bluntly, this borders on retarded. McQueary is a coward, for sure, but not because his paycheck was on the line. As with the Catholic Church, Penn State (and especially the corner of it that was Paterno’s personal fiefdom) exerts far more loyalty and omerta precisely because it is not your typical for-profit company. Penn State football wields far more cultural power over its participants and admirers than does Wal-Mart, IBM, or Apple. A job is just a job, but the organizations that have demonstrably worked to shield and indemnify (or at least try to do so) creeps who committed systematic child rape simply don’t exist in the real private sector.”

Count on the likes of Charles Pierce to miss that, though.

UPDATE: Reader Kim Sommer writes: “Silence is also in Hollywood. Michael Jackson, Roman Polanski etc. show us this is true. From Millgram’s experiment and the Stanford Prison experiment this type of group & individual behavior is predicted. It doesn’t excuse anyone but human failings are mappable.”