Deshaun Watson got a 6-game suspension. This could change, as the NFL is an entertainment business and will act in a way which maximises their audience. Goodell might add something to it for appearances sake.
Yet they have constraints to work under, and this gets lost in most of the discussion. There are contractual agreements in place between the players union and the owner, and previous policies already in place. Ignore all discussions of "well Player A got a year's suspension for gambling/felony assault/deflating footballs" as if those are supposed to be somehow compared to the many civil suits for varying degrees of sexual assault and harassment. Apples and oranges. And yet...
Something similar happens with colleges and accusations, or workplace discipline. At least two separate things are happening. There is a prediscussed and prearranged ranking of how bad one thing is versus another with regards to the institution itself. The NFL clearly does not hate gambling. In fact, it clearly likes it, as it has rescued what was deteriorating loyalty and interest of fans. But players or coaches gambling hurts the product at a deep level, so even the appearance of tolerating that must be consequated heavily.
Hospitals don't have much opinion one way or the other about people having sex, outside of the medical effects. But they can't have their own employees engaging in sexual behavior with patients, both for good clinical reasons, but also for reasons of appearance. They have to refrain from behaviors that seem to reduce the safety and good functioning of society in general, and so questions about power differential or sliding scales of consent become quite real. In those instances, appealing to the actual facts of the case and damage done are seldom the point. For the 21 y/o man to protest "Yes, Your Honor, I did buy that bottle of wine for that 19 y/o girl with the express purpose of having sex with her. However, as she is my wife I think the state's interest in preventing this is considerably lessened" makes all the sense in the world. Yet sometimes such common sense is overruled in highly public or contested cases. Someone might want to make an issue about consensual sex and substances and be choosing this case expressly to challenge whether marriage makes any difference - that is, which value is going to trump the other in law?
I wrote Apples and oranges. And yet... and now you see what the "and yet" was about. There is a real damage to society in play. Then there is the appearance of damage to society that the institution is supposed to care about which is vague and unpredictable. It might be only a matter of appearances, with no actual damage to society not already addressed in the laws against speeding or stealing or defrauding others. They are certainly less real, and perhaps have little reality at all.
But those appearances have a reality for the institution, which has to appear to care about the right things.
2 comments:
He already missed a whole season waiting to see how the allegations turned out. Was that punishment enough?
Aristotle in the Rhetoric makes the point that many times we are asked to try to talk about things that are ultimately incommensurate, and yet that honor (and honor alone) provides a way of doing it. For when we talk about what is worthy of honor, we end up comparing incommensurate things in a way in which we can talk about which one is more or less valuable after all. Is it better to be meek or courageous? Moderate or magnificent? As we talk through these things, we end up coming to decisions about them, and it turns out there is a hierarchy of value after all -- even between apples and oranges.
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