Can good deeds make up for a lapse in judgement?

[chlobo]

So I just read this article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/hard-hits/post/joe-paterno-fired-this-is-not-how-it-should-have-ended/2011/11/10/gIQAx6cv8M_blog.html

And the author clearly thinks Joe is getting the shaft. I do not because I don't believe it was a single lapse in judgement about this one incident. I believe that Joe knew his friend had a problem and allowed it to continue. Thus, that overshadows all his good deeds.

What do you think?

[wellyes]

I think Joe is getting an appropriate send-off given his crime. But I don't think it defines him as a person.

I feel similarly about Ted Kennedy.... I don't know if Ted killed that woman or not, but he was definitely a philandering drunk. It was appropriate that Chappaquiddick cast a pall over his career and ended his presidential ambitions. At the same time, his lifetime of service and commitment to social justice makes him one of the senators I admire most.

I don't know if good deeds make up for a lapse in judgement, but I think that a lifetime of good deeds is worth admiring.

And I also think we have all been on the knife's edge of terrible consequences.... many of us have been in a near-miss car accident at some point, for example. Many of us wondered about the home life of a sad-seeming child without acting.

I think what Joe did - the choice he made to be silent and not follow through - was terrible. But is he a bad person? I don't know.
I am a better person than him? I hope so. I don't know. Probably not really.

[chlobo]

I guess my problem with him is that it was an ongoing thing. It wasn't like a one time thing. He likely knew about an ongoing problem and chose to ignore it.

It would be if someone knew Ted Kennedy killed that woman intentionally and was likely going to kill again but didn't report it. To me, not the same as a one time thing that ended tragically.

[amldaley]

To answer the question in the title of your thread: Yes, I believe good deeds can make up for a lapse in judgement.

However, how many good deeds must one do in order to make up for a long series of egregious lapses in judgement?

In this case, the answer is, "not enough".

To suggest that his good deeds outweigh his decisions not to act and possibly his decisions to proactively participate in cover up is to suggest that the good of Penn State outweighs the lives of the victims. That's basically tantamount to human sacrifice. Here, we'll give you the precious lives of a few (and not we know, not so few) kids for the "greater good". Sorry, it doesn't work that way.

I could not attend classes in a building, study in a library, or cheer in a stadium if I knew the price for those facilities was even one single child being molested.