Chairman of giant company shows JoePa mourners how giant companies placate the public after shit goes down

Nike's Phil Knight spoke at Paterno's memorial service. He delivered a message about where blame should go for the Sandusky debacle that's pure, sweet, delicious corporate PR bullshit. It's amazing.

Commenting on those events, Knight said, "it turns out (Paterno) gave full disclosure to his superiors, information that went up the chains to the head of the campus police and the president of the school.

And when they didn't do anything, Paterno's duty remained fulfilled. Nope, nothing else to do at that point. No reason to follow up , go to the cops, confront Sandusky or ban him from your facilities. Once you've talked to a few people about the problem it's time to sit back, pop a few cold ones, and unfurl the "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner.

The matter was in the hands of a world-class university, and by a president with an outstanding national reputation."

World-class universities being well known as the kind of entities that are outstanding at conducting internal investigations into important and respected members of the football program.

Knight added,

With all the empathy Tony Hayward used when discussing the Gulf oil spill,

"...this much is clear to me. If there is a villain in this tragedy, it lies in that investigation and not in Joe Paterno."

/standing ovation

You see everyone, there's no PERSON at fault here. Certainly not the person you're all here to celebrate today. No no no, this scandal is much bigger than any one identifiable human. The problem is with the system! It's the process that's really to blame for all the rape and continued enablement of rape that happened here! It's really all about the way stuff happened and specifically not the humans that let it happen. Put another way: mistakes were made, specifically not by your hero. But isn't it time for the healing to begin? Let's start that healing process by pretending like Paterno didn't do anything wrong. That'll make everyone (except the rape victims) feel better.

To be fair to Knight, he pretty much had to address the scandal in his speech at some point. And saying "Joe screwed up" would have been met with a loud barrage of gasps, boos and fainting women. But this is just comically brilliant message-shaping from a guy whose job demands that he excel at it. I hope the people in that crowd appreciate the magic they witnessed in that moment.