It’s hard to be objective in the case of a loved one.

There’s no doubt that Joe Paterno was loved by many during his time at Penn State University. He personified magnanimity. He was a father not to five, but to thousands over more than half a century spent on the Nittany Lions’ sideline.

Most of us operate under the delusion that our parents can do no wrong. Jay Paterno, Joe’s oldest son, was simply adhering to this psychological principle this past week while making appearances on several prominent television and radio programs to promote the agenda of a 238-page report commissioned by the Paterno family. The report, titled “Critique of the Freeh Report: the Rush to Injustice Regarding Joe Paterno,” vigorously disclaims the veracity of the Freeh Report findings with specific regard to the culpability of Paterno.

Released this past Sunday, the report was compiled by a team under the direction of former United States Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and purports that the Freeh Report, now six months removed from release, was “factually wrong, speculative, and fundamentally flawed.”

One of the main criticisms of the investigation conducted by Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI, is that the report failed to interview the main parties in question; namely Joe Paterno, former athletic director Tim Curley and former Penn State Vice President Gary Schultz.

This is not to say that Freeh was not interested in conducting such interviews.

As a matter of fact, it was Paterno who refused to speak with investigators while the report was being conducted. The general argument throughout Thornburgh’s report seems to lack a solid buttress of logic and reality. For instance, the report alludes to Pennsylvania law several times in an attempt to justify Paterno’s actions as satisfactory according to a strictly interpreted jurisprudence as defined by the state of Pennsylvania.

So there it is.

Joe Paterno complied with the law, albeit in minimal fashion. Satisfied? Ready to resurrect his statue outside Beaver Stadium?

If you’re wondering how any of this exonerates JoePa in the least, you’re not alone. It doesn’t. The Paterno family seems to be grasping at straws in an effort that Freeh has dismissed as purely self-serving. Joe Paterno may have followed protocol in 2001 after being informed by assistant coach Mike McQueary of Sandusky’s behavior, but he’s still not off the hook, and his legacy will be forever tarnished by his failure to do more.

The problem is that most men with integrity and a functioning moral compass would not have stopped where Joe Paterno stopped. Few adults with the power and virtue of Joe Paterno would have acted so marginally in preventing a child molester from continuing to infect the public for nearly a decade longer. In the words of Edmund Burke, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Clearly Joe Paterno was a good man. He was a philanthropist. He was a teacher, and a patriarch. His legacy should still be embraced for all of the good that he accomplished in his life, as well as for the immeasurable impact that he had on the PSU community.

Having said that, there is no undoing JoePa’s lack of action. The jury has been out on this one for quite some time now.

Jay Paterno was asked in an interview televised on ESPN on Monday when the time would come to move on. He responded, “The time to move on is when we know the truth.”

Unfortunately for Jay Paterno, that time has come and gone.