A sensible point in the Washington Post!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2011

No one yet knows what was said: As best we can tell, the New York Times hasn’t reported the existence of the Mike McQueary e-mails which are so famous on cable.

In the e-mails, McQueary said, among other things, that he “did have discussions with police and with the official at the university in charge of police” concerning Jerry Sandusky’s alleged assault on a boy in 2002.

Are those e-mails newsworthy at all? We’re not sure. But the Washington Post ran a news report this morning which includes a key point. The report appears in the paper’s sports section, sourced to the Associated Press:

ASSOCIATED PRESS (11/17/11): “At this point we have no record of any police report being filed in 2002” by McQueary in connection with the Sandusky case, university spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz said, adding police searched their records Wednesday.

The football building is on university property, so campus police would have been the most likely to respond for a police call.

Mountz also noted the 23-page grand jury report was the state attorney general's summary of testimony, so it's unclear what McQueary's full testimony was.

That highlighted point is quite basic. No one has a transcript or tape of McQueary’s grand jury testimony. For that reason, no one really knows what McQueary said.

Cable screamers are working from fleeting accounts in the grand jury report concerning McQweary’s conduct and testimony. But that report is not a full record. It doesn’t tell you all the things McQueary did and said.

Cable screamers don’t reed reel gudd. In fairness, they are highly skilled at getting lynch mobs into the streets and posing about the many brave things they would have done in McQueary’s place.

These are very bad people. They have done very bad things in the past. They’ll do the same thing again. It's how the clowns roll on cable.

The record here is very sparse—but the screaming is quite loud. In 1999, Chris Matthews almost a got a journalist killed due to his reprehensible, mob-running conduct. (For one of the most irresponsible moments in cable history, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/20/99.) Last night, he was making ridiculous statements about the current case.

Joan and David were there to smile and tell you all was well.

One point does seem to be clear: One point does seem to be clear about that e-mail. McQweary said he “did have discussions with police and with the official at the university in charge of police.” In the latter part of that statement, he presumably refers to his interview with Gary Schultz, the university official charged with overseeing the campus police. Schultz is one of the two Penn State officials who have been indicted for failing to report McQweary’s allegations.

On cable, all the trash talk has been aimed at McQweary. The indicted officials are rarely mentioned. Reason? They have videotape of McQweary at football games; this makes excellent B-roll. And the fact that McQweary witnessed a crime lets the pundits posture and yell about the various things they would have done in his place.

By all accounts, McQweary did “have discussions with...the official at the university in charge of police.” You won’t hear that on cable TV, where they like to scream and pose but don’t read especially well.