To be fair, in Japan, public figures of all stripes are (typically) held to very high standards of conduct.
I recently read an article (thought it was here on BB, but can’t seem to find it) about a police officer in Japan who got upset while playing an arcade machine and punched the device, damaging it. He immediately apologized and paid for the damages on the spot, and shortly thereafter “resigned” - which he was almost certainly pressured into doing “willingly” so they wouldn’t have to fire him.
Saving face is still quite important in everyday Japanese life, even among ordinary people, so when it gets taken to the level of public entities who symbolize entire organizations or institutions, there is huge pressure to not reflect badly on others and to “atone” for misdeeds.
That’s not to say that corruption doesn’t still exist and that money and influence can let you get away with a hell of a lot that ordinary people would lose their jobs and social standing over, but it certainly means that you see a lot more apologizing and punishing for things we in the West might view as somewhat trivial or unimportant.
In the context of the pop idol meeting with her boyfriend you mention, one thing that is still hugely important in Japan is marriage before sex - at least ostensibly. Premarital sex is the open secret everyone knows about and that countless people indulge in, but it’s still considered to be slightly tabboo - particularly compared to the West. So when a pop star has a relationship, they are expected to hide it - and the paparazzi are expected to reveal it.
…unless the couple announce they’re getting married, in which case everyone goes from being judgemental prudes to celebrating the couple’s happiness and good fortune. Japan is weird.
Remember, this is the culture that developed sonic devices for use in public bathrooms to detect and cover up the sound of splashing water in a toilet to protect the sensibilities of embarassed tinkle-takers, while simultaneously carrying on an ancient tradition of strangers bathing together in public bath houses with absolutely no discomfort or shame. It might not make sense to us what things they choose to be embarassed by and which they aren’t, but the same is certainly true in reverse as well.
Sure. But she’s just a more extreme example of what happened to Amy Grant… I seem to recall Christina Agulera getting the slut treatment as well. Why can’t we hypocrites just let our entertainers entertain?
You know who would be a good role model for the kids? Public school teachers…
I was never spanked or hit by my parents, but my generation was kind of on the cusp of this in Southern Ontario, back when there was a real debate about it (now it’s pretty much decided). I think this is actually a tough situation.
But the instinct to parent the same way you were parented is very strong. I don’t think that cycle can be broken by putting parents in prison.
It’s very easy for us to say that someone should know better, especially when they have a huge paycheck. It’s tough, acquittal because people just don’t care if you hit your kids is terrible. Throwing parents in prison because they don’t have parenting skills is often pretty terrible. I have to think that trying to put people in prison for parenting the best way they know is part of what created the culture that venerates barbaric holdovers.
* Necessary caveat: Based on the descriptions of the pictures (I didn’t look at them) it sounds like this guy beat the hell out of his kid and I would hope that is taken at least as seriously as beating the hell out of a random adult you don’t know
What?!? I thought public school teachers were money-grubbing demons who were out to hold our kids futures hostage. Well, except my kid’s teacher, she’s wonderful.
Simple answer? “Because culture.” Religion is typically the origination point.
In the West, we’ve got many centuries of Christianity inspired baggage that plagues our sensibilities about sex and the fact that everyone has it. In Japan, it’s a bit more convoluted, but all three major religious factors - Shintoism, Buddhism, and Christianity - contributed in their own ways.
This despite the fact that most Japanese aren’t really devoutly religious. For them, it’s become more a national and cultural identity than any sort of real spiritual belief. (Which isn’t to say there aren’t highly spiritual and devout Buddhists and Shintoism and Christians in Japan - merely that the average person isn’t terribly religious.)
Why does sex scandalize us? Because we’re collectively repressed and confused, and our repression and confusion stems from countless sources within the makeup of our society. Traditions of patriarchy, religious moralism, and all the rest perpetuate themselves. It’s the same pretty much everywhere - with a few exceptions here and there, in far flung cultures where patriarchy or religious moralism never really were that influential to begin with.
my experiences with spankings growing up are the reason i don’t approve of it. not because it was constant or even unusually harsh for the time i grew up, but because two of the three serious beatings with a belt were for things i hadn’t done. i decided that if my parents, who were loving and educated, could get it wrong 2 times out of three then it really wasn’t the useful disciplinary tool everyone thought it was.
i’ll be surprised if he goes to prison over this because too many people here in texas still believe in parents’ rights to beat their kids with a stick or a belt. it’s possible the current media attention to the case might change that dynamic but it’s just as likely to make corporal punishment supporters dig in their heels and defend it more stridently.
They’re like a modern day Victorian England. They’re super sexually repressed.
On the surface, everyone decries sex as evil and foul and dirty and blech, while secretly they’re all monstrously horny and desperate. They have basic biological urges which are at direct odds with their cultural stigmas and taboos, so they try to repress those urges, and it just results in them bottling it all up until it explodes.
This is why Japan has so many weird problems with sex crimes - they literally have police task forces devoted entirely to counteracting “chikan” crimes: people molesting strangers on trains and subways and whatnot. It’s such a huge problem that they’ve even had effeminate male officers dress in drag to act as bait and arrest the perpetrators in the act.
We have our own problems with exactly this same issue of repression - it’s just that ours exists on a far less severe scale, as our taboos have been steadily weakening and eroding over the decades.
Professional sports aren’t about “justice”; they’re about selling a product to the viewing public. If your consumers are unhappy, responding to them isn’t mob justice, but the market at work. We don’t require due process when teams decide to keep unpopular players/coaches/management, and we don’t require due process when teams cut, trade, or fire players/coaches/management for performance or personality issues. When teams invoke due process in situations like these, they are really hiding behind the legal system and using it as an excuse not to act.
If Adrian Peterson was making too much money, they would cut him. If he sucked, they would cut him. If he was a locker-room cancer, they would cut him. If he broke team rules (like being late for team meetings), they might sit him out. He wouldn’t get due process of the law for any of these legally-unproven failings. Heck, you can get year-long suspensions for drug offenses that haven’t been proven in a court of law, and which haven’t even resulted in criminal charges. Where are the due process concerns there? In those cases, NFL policy and the appeals process under the collective bargaining agreement are sufficient.
Heck, think about how ridiculous this would be if it applied to all businesses. Just say a company knows one of their employees beats his wife regularly, even if he has never been convicted. Should they be unable to fire this individual? Now compare this to the NFL, where appeal to the public is exactly what their product is, and tell me why it would be improper for them to discipline someone for acts widely seen by their customers as reprehensible.
Except what is amoral in some parts of the world (including my part) is perfectly legal in other parts. To whit; Texas law states “Parent… is justified to use non-deadly force against a child under 18 when and to degree the actor reasonably believes necessary to discipline, or safeguard or promote child’s welfare.”
Professional athletes’ value to their employers is based largely on their public image, so most have “morals clauses” written into their contracts. NFL players are paid very handsomely for signing such contracts, but that means they have to accept the terms that go along with them.
I’m glad they are specific. I’m not quite sure how actually killing your child would pass the “reasonably believes necessary to discipline” part, but who knows.
I guess this is the part of the picture I didn’t have squarely in my head. Like I said above, I don’t think firing people because they committed domestic abuse is actually helping to solve the problem. On the other hand, if, for example, Ray Rice did sign a contract with morals clause, then it puts the league in a position of either penalizing him or implicitly saying, “Yeah, we don’t think that’s really so bad.” If you have a morals clause then you better be ready to use it.
He is accused of beating his four-year-old son with a tree branch, causing severe welts and bleeding on the child’s back, legs, and buttocks, as well as kicking the boy in the scrotum…
So, beat your kid in such a manner that you then turn yourself in for child abuse, and then get released ~1AM, and you’re still able to smile for the mug shot? Odd, at best.
Add that to his experience of losing a child last year due to child abuse by a third party, and I don’t even know what he was thinking.
This assumes the point of morals clauses is to help reduce morality violations. But that’s not the job of the NFL, nor is that what they’re really trying to do with those clauses. Instead, the NFL is simply attempting to ensure that they continue to appeal to as many members of the viewing public as possible, and to have a way to penalize players who behave in ways that violate community morality. Public perception of the NFL is the NFL’s product, and they are simply protecting their product.
If it was simply about solving the problem, the NFL could point to statistics that show NFL players have lower arrest rates than adult men in the general public.
That was my point. I don’t think they are trying to solve anything, they are trying to protect their business by limiting their association with things like domestic abuse. What I was saying about morals clauses is that they are a bit of a two way street. If the league has the authority to punish or fire players who behave in immoral ways, then if they don’t they can be accused of condoning it. My initial thought on the matter was to wonder if the NFL should really be getting involved in the issue, but with the morals clauses they basically have to or criticisms that they are on the side of the abusers are going to stick.
I think that’s a very interesting comparison. I imagine there is a lot more to it - a lot more things to control for, but the comparison to average men might show that whatever factors you account for they probably just aren’t that far off. Just yesterday Salon had an article about a study showing that 1 in 5 men report having abused an intimate partner. The NFL may have a very public problem, but with up to 53 players on the roster of a team (and team members being mostly young men with the occasional less-young man) we should expect about 10 domestic abusers per team if all other things were equal.
Based on those numbers, I’m not really sure there is a good reason to think that the NFL is a particular breeding ground for domestic abuse, and it may be considerably lower than the general population (though obviously for every Ray Rice there are many players who hit their partners without doing so on camera).
Right—at the end of the day a player’s monetary value isn’t just based on how good they are at playing the game, it’s based on how effective they are at getting fans to shell out money for game tickets/pay-per-view/official merchandise.
I think that income is also a big factor (further complicated by the fact that although they have the money to protect themselves better than most, many were raised in decidedly modest conditions) that the deadspin piece doesn’t control for, as well as the specific age bracket that NFL players occupy. Five thirty eight has an interesting piece on this as well.
