If you really want to have your sensibilities twisted up in a knot, try listening to sports talk radio when the topic of discussion is some player’s malfeasance. The current version of that particular play has to do with Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger’s treatment of a 20 year old woman who was intoxicated at a bar.
I’ve now heard this conversation multiple times on various shows. The great interest, of course, is focused on whether the alleged bad behavior will affect the quarterback’s career. What will the NFL do? Will he be suspended? Will the Steelers perhaps lose a few games as a consequence?
The point that callers and some hosts keep returning to is this: Is there an NFL rule that has been broken? If there is not a specific rule against this behavior, then how can the commissioner do anything?
This is a mistake people often make. Contra Aquinas and Martin Luther King, Jr., many people are obsessed with what the law and official rules as the arbiters of right and wrong. No. Human laws and rules are merely instruments by which we attempt to give life to our understandings of right and wrong. They are not, themselves, ultimacies. Laws and rules can be wrong. They can be unjust. What if there were an NFL rule encouraging quarterbacks to take advantage of intoxicated women? Would that make Roethlisberger’s conduct righteous? Should he then receive an award for fulfilling the rule very well? Would the existence of such a rule cause us to endorse such behavior?
The question for us as fans is not whether Roethlisberger broke a rule or regulation. The question is whether he did something wrong. And if he did, he may have injured a young woman, himself, his team, and his league in the process. That might require some action by those who employ him to demonstrate their commitment to justice and correction. If they do otherwise, they send the message that they don’t care and that they find his qualities as a man, outside of leading a football team on the field, irrelevant. If that is what we believe, then we merely think of human beings as cogs in a machine designed to fulfill a function. As long as they fulfill that function, nothing else matters. Is that what we think about people? Are people just things we use?
To obsess about the rulebook is to leave aside the ability to engage in moral judgment. Moral judgment makes us human.
April 13th, 2010 | 11:24 am | #1
I’m concerned about this for a few reasons:
1. People disagree in good faith about what is right and wrong. If Ben Roethlisberger is suspended or fined on the grounds that he did something morally wrong, I think many people would find that just, but there would be disagreement.
But let’s look at a different hypothetical example where Judge Roger Goodell instead rules against us. While giving an interview, a very religious player is asked whether he thinks homosexuality is a sin, and he says he does. What an uproar! Millions of people of all sexual orientations support the team and the league- how can he be so small-minded and throw them under the bus? He should be suspended/fined/be-given-a-stern-talking-to!
Giving the NFL (or other employers) the ability to judge and sanction moral activities we agree are bad also gives them the ability to judge and sanction moral activities we think are ok.
2. This moral enforcement is arbitrarily limited to things that tarnish the reputation of the league. You can be a very mean person, cruel, unloving, but you won’t be targeted by the league if you do it in private. But if you do something equally as wrong in public, out come the torches and pitchforks. I don’t think that’s just.
3. The facts of all of the cases are hard to determine. Without any oversight, it is easier to make a mistake and falsely accuse and punish people who did nothing wrong. You cannot face your accusers or be tried by a dispassionate jury of your peers when you are in the Court of Public Opinion (or the Court of Bud Selig’s Opinion).
I think it’s perfectly coherent to say that (if true) what Ben Roethlisberger did was ethically wrong, but should not be punished by the NFL. He’ll explain it to a judge one day who makes decisions that are far more righteous than those made by Roger Goodell.
April 13th, 2010 | 12:11 pm | #2
The NFL does have a personal conduct policy. I agree that it’s a slippery slope to censoring religious and political speech, but it makes sense that personal conduct can have consequences related to one’s employment by the NFL.
April 15th, 2010 | 9:25 am | #3
The one aspect of this event that no one denies is that Ben was in the wrong bathroom. If I were his coach, I would make him wear a little pink skirt during practice until the other players got tired of making fun of him. Harsh? Maybe. But consider it a call to mindfulness. There are some places you should not go, which surely includes boys chasing women into the women’s room. And let’s hope that the greater call to mindfulness regarding sexual boundaries will also take place.
People care about celebrities more than they should, but the reason that they do is that these people belong to all of us. Maybe it would help us all if we thought through our next words, choices, and relationships with that in mind.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact