Update (01/22/12 at 10:50am): RIP, Joseph V. Paterno.

Earlier this week I felt compelled to write about Joe and Sue Paterno. Why have Joe and Sue Paterno so dominated the conversation about Penn State and the past, present, and future of the institution? Why do Penn Stater refer to themselves as “The Penn State Family,” and what should an outsider make of this?

These are the questions I sought to answer, or at least address. The following op-ed, published last night on StateCollege.com, is my deeply imperfect attempt to answer those questions, and to honor Joe and Sue Paterno, the patriarch and matriarch of the Penn State Family.

To speak about Joe and Sue Paterno and our feelings about how they were treated by John Surma and the Penn State trustees is neither to ignore the child-victims nor to obsess over optics. We’re repelled by the coarseness and hideousness of it all — about the crimes against the child-victims as much as our correspondingly disastrous response to it all. We’re speaking about Joe and Sue Paterno because, whether we met them personally or not, we love them.

We love them. A thousand times we love them. We can’t not think about them. We can’t not talk about them. We can’t not afford them dignity. We can’t not honor them.

Continue to StateCollege.com for the entire piece.