Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/10/watch-harvey-weinstein-slappe.html
…
2 Likes
Aw, little underwhelmed. Barely call that a slap…
4 Likes
The video, obtained and released by TMZ, was taken by the customer’s friend.
Willingly recording assault eh? Good job rando. Weistein is a turd but i would not advocate going up to people we dislike and get physical with them regardless if its a slap or whatever.
26 Likes
Won’t click that video. This is one of this ethical dilemmas.
9 Likes
The BBS is so weird sometimes.
On one hand you have your alleged absolutism pacifists who espouse the POV that all violence is always wrong and only lowers you to the other person’s level, no matter what.
On another you have people who say that the violent reactions that bad behavior sometimes elicits were not severe enough, like in the thread about the guy who grabbed an exposed boob and got ‘clobbered.’
16 Likes
21 Likes
Or spitting on evangelists.
1 Like
It matters less how hard he was slapped, but that he was slapped at all.
5 Likes
I was wondering at first if that was some kind of new LA greeting. Even if in Az. (my bad)
3 Likes
I have always felt administering discipline should be up to the offended, like the woman who was grabbed by the boob (I mean the guy).
If anything, Weinstein’s accusers should get a shot at his testicles. Not so sure about anyone else.
9 Likes
That’s what makes it so humiliating.
4 Likes
Public shaming would’ve ben enough.
1 Like
I feel the same; in that particular instance, the woman who was accosted felt that dousing the perp with her drink and giving him a few light punches was sufficient, and that’s her prerogative.
11 Likes
I’m surprised that monster goes to restaurants at all, let alone anywhere else in public. Surely few people are more deserving of, um, “special treatment” of their food by restaurant staff.
10 Likes
Aside from a combination of those replies being from different people; or the same person failing to maintain internal consistency; I suspect there is the ‘upholding the categorical imperative sucks’ factor at work:
The world is just full of situations going un or under-addressed that just a little once-off would fix so satisfyingly. However, even if Kant isn’t your thing; it’s often pretty clear that your proposed once-off would go bad rather quickly if people indulged in it repeatedly and it became a rule, or at least a strong possibility, rather than a once-off.
This intuition, not always clearly stated, seems to guide some of the difference in attitude (not in the sense that the different cases are actually more or less categorical imperative compliant; they all aren’t; and it’s not clear that that standard admits of matters of degree): a video of a random stranger potentially incurring some legal risk to fairly lightly assault Weinstein ranks low on the ‘danger of becoming a rule rather than a pleasing exception’ scale: it’s being done against the official rules, potentially at some risk, by a random person who can’t make a particularly strong claim of acting in the name or interests of any broader group(or, importantly, in our names unless we feel like affirming them after the fact); and at least so far it’s the first case we’ve heard of; rather than just another day in “Weinstein effectively under vigilante house arrest”.
The greater the danger of becoming a rule the more it tends to make people nervous(unless they quite directly think that a given reprisal is a fine consequence and ought to happen universally; obviously people who think that are pleased): if this were a routine occurrence, or known to be the work of an organized group, or was being imposed judicially by a state agent that would move things much further in the direction of "do we really want face slapping to be policy rather than a slightly guilty pleasure?’ and the closer to universality an outcome gets the stronger the scrutiny.
There are so many things were the way we would like to act(or the spectacle we would like to have enacted for our viewing pleasure) is deeply tempting; but not in the ‘want it to become a universal law’ sense. If the situation in question has enough suggestions that it is atypical; the temptation is stronger to act, or approve, because we think that it might actually be just this once. If the reverse is true; and the situation looks ready to make some precedent, one focuses much more on all the cases where it will go badly rather than the one where it might be really pleasing.
This isn’t to suggest that BBS is a nest of Kantians(indeed, I strongly doubt it); but I think it is a factor that changes our willingness to approve certain…special…measures, or not, as a function of how atypical or how common the case seems to be that he helpfully elucidated by demanding that we treat even the most apparently special of cases as though we were imposing the results across the board.
10 Likes
Um, maybe you’re over thinking these little slaps, just a bit?
13 Likes
“his sober coach”.
Had to Google that. How do we know that that is who this guy is? Did he say “oh, I’m his AA buddy” off camera, or was there a statement released?
3 Likes
Positively Proustian. Quality bean-plating there, ol’ chap.
4 Likes
What would you advocate / do?
