|
CMcKinneySecondEssay 12 - 23 Aug 2015 - Main.CMcKinney
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="OldPapers" |
|---|
| | | -- By CMcKinney - 23 May 2015 | |
<
< | Mid-May: Unconsciously Seeking Repose{{ | >
> | Mid-May: Unconsciously Seeking Repose
Notes
:
| | | | |
<
< | Fighting Repose. | >
> | In the wake of Ray Rice firestorm, the American public mind condemned domestic violence and its perpetrators wholesale. The vitriol was palpable. It was uniformly manifested by the brand equity indexes, public approval polls, and social media case studies published that September. The NFL egregiously violated its audiences’ conscious social and political beliefs. | | | | |
<
< | Then
We spent a lot of time thinking about repose in this course. But as I scrawled out an essay on pay-per-view boxing in Mid-May, I hardly realized I had taken shelter under logical form.
I wrote a paper addressing a simple question: Had the American public mind reacted inconsistently to Ray Rice and Floyd Mayweather? There were only two possible answers: yes or no, rational or irrational.
This was the wrong question to begin with. Not only because there was more important question to be answered about the phenomenon. “If you believe there are only two options, then you have posed the wrong question.” There was a larger issue. I turned away from one of the most important question posed in this course: “What is the state of your practice?”
Now
It has been 92 days since I finished my first year at Columbia Law School. With this reprieve has come ample opportunity for reflective meditation. With this prolonged temporal and physical removal, my insecurities have lessened. Now, for the first time in months, I set rediscover the answer to that question.
Why I came to law school
I came to law school to become a criminal defense attorney. That is what I have wanted ever since I spent a summer adding record citations and making other menial contributions to a habeas petition in 2012. http://abcnews.go.com/US/texas-mother-freed-spending-years-prison-foster-sons/story?id=26186920. And, immeasurably less importantly, it kindled an interest in criminal justice in me, which drew me to various roles with criminal defenders in the years after. With time, I formed a still hazy, but indeed clarified image of what I hoped to become.
Fall
By December 2014, I had nearly lost sight of the reason I came to law school. I made it to mid-September before I was exhausted with fear. I was self-assuredly duller than my classmates, so I strained and titrated my way toward an obsessive memorization of law, legal theory, and my professors’ views of law and legal theory. Chemical dependence and mental ruin were a small price to pay for continued cover - My intellectual inferiority went largely unnoticed. Thoughts of the future I had mortgaged away to make tuition payments hardly helped the situation. And, that fall, my vision became trained upon a publicized escape route: a law firm job, secured by way of EIP.
Spring
Last fall, I stopped thinking about my own identity, purpose, and how my winning the birth lottery and moderate capabilities might allow me to improve someone else’s existence. I divorced what I had hoped to gain in law school from what I believed I had to become, what Columbia expected me to become. And then I took this course.
I realized that there was no exclusive route forward because of this class. Our discussions vigorously reminded me of that truth, and Joshua Horowitz personified it. He taught me that we can build the exact type of practice that we would want to call our own. Joshua did just that by combining a precise set of skills, a sense of humility, and an appetite for networking.
Now
As my first year at law school has grown into a memory, my anxieties and insecurities have dissipated. I have no grounds to complain. I was benefitted by the lottery of birth. Whatever unhappiness I felt was the product of decisions that I made. No one forced me to be here.
I finished my first year at Columbia Law School thirteen weeks ago. I have frequently meditated on the kind of lawyer I want to become ever since. I have always returned to the same conclusion. I came to law school because I wanted to defend people who caught a bad break. I plan to build a practice that sustains itself by defending individuals accused of white-collar crimes, and then uses those resources to advocate for those who cannot pay a legal bill. These individuals are owed advocacy regardless of mens rea, actual innocence, or proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
I am a strong believer that we get the world we deserve. People try to draw a line between criminals and civilians, between culpable and innocent mental states. But everybody is guilty. Some just catch a bad break. And as for the state of my practice? I know exactly what I want, and now I must clarify exactly how I am going to do it. But I have a couple ideas. Construction may have stalled briefly, but I have two years to seek practical experience and engage bright peers with a similar vision. I will press forward. }}
In the wake of Ray Rice firestorm, the American public mind condemned domestic violence and its perpetrators wholesale. The vitriol was palpable. It was uniformly evidenced by the brand equity indexes, public approval polls, and social media case studies published that September. The NFL egregiously violated its audiences’ conscious social and political beliefs. But then, something peculiar happened. I am not referring to the $180 million signed, sealed, and delivered to Floyd Mayweather nine months later – although that is relevant. This peculiar thing happened much sooner - Nine days after the American public mind excoriated Ray Rice. Nine days after countless individuals paraded their outrage and advertised their morality by way of tweets and statuses, the NFL’s ratings boomed. Two million new viewers tuned in, sat through advertisements, and spurred league revenue. | >
> | But then, something peculiar happened. I am not referring to the $180 million signed, sealed, and delivered to Floyd Mayweather nine months later – although that is relevant. This peculiar thing happened much sooner - Nine days after the American public mind excoriated Ray Rice. Nine days after countless individuals paraded their outrage and advertised their morality by way of tweets and statuses, the NFL’s ratings boomed. Two million new viewers tuned in, sat through advertisements, and spurred league revenue. | | | This paradox rattled me. And I sought to assuage the discomfort by punching out an essay about pay-per-view boxing in mid-May. With stinging rhetoric, I attempted to illustrate a clear example of the fact that consumption patterns are not well correlated with peoples’ conscious goals and political beliefs. But as I typed away, with vision blurred by animus and insecurity, I missed the point. Not only because many of the people who called for the NFL’s punishing Rice never bought a boxing pay-per-view or sat through an NFL broadcast. More fundamentally, I missed the point because this phenomenon should be analyzed far beyond a “rational” or “irrational” classification. There is a more important question. | | | Biological Influences, Archaic Response Tendencies, and Adaptive Impulses | |
<
< | Scientific evidence indicates that humans are biologically predisposed toward violence. Violent stimuli trigger dopamine secretion and engage the same reward pathways associated with the satisfaction of food, sex, and drug cravings. This biological predisposition seems consistent with evolutionary theory.
Notes
:
| >
> | Scientific evidence indicates that humans are biologically predisposed toward violence. Violent stimuli trigger dopamine secretion and engage the same reward pathways associated with the satisfaction of food, sex, and drug cravings. This biological predisposition seems consistent with evolutionary theory.
Notes
:
| | | Early humans persisted by continually screening their environment for danger. Over millennia, this heightened concern for potential violence proved adaptive. The trait endured in the brain’s older structures, especially the limbic system. And this biological influence elicits a continued interest in observing violence.
Intra-psychological Impulses and Historical Influences
Notes
:
| |
<
< | Prominent intra-psychological influences explain why blood sport viewers are primarily male and further reveal the athletic rituals’ appeal. Cultural guides, downloaded during early childhood, instruct American males to suppress emotion and excitement. Violent sports occasion an opportunity for males to shout, jeer, and cringe in a hyper-masculine context, free from the social pressure to suppress emotion and excitement. The expression of these routinely contained emotions offers viewers a reprieve from the aversive, subjective cost of suppressing behavioral impulses. Historical developments have made these opportunities increasingly rare.
Notes
:
:
| >
> | Prominent intra-psychological influences further these athletic rituals’ appeal, and these same influences explain why blood sport viewers are primarily male. ‘Cultural guides-downloaded during early childhood-instruct American males to suppress emotion and excitement. Violent sports occasion an opportunity for males to shout, jeer, and cringe in a hyper-masculine context, free from the social pressure to suppress emotion and excitement. The expression of these routinely contained emotions offers viewers a reprieve from the aversive, subjective cost of suppressing behavioral impulses. Historical developments have made these opportunities increasingly rare.
Notes
:
| | | | |
<
< | For centuries, extravagant participation was both socially accepted and typical at operas, dramas, and symphonies. Audiences cheered, jeered, and threw objects. At the turn of the nineteenth century, however, the highly participatory audience was sacralized. Silence was expected, and outward emotional expression was repressed. Operant learning and contextual priming now instruct males to suppress emotion. And the social gatherings occasioned by violent sporting events afford a unique opportunity to express emotion in a generally prohibited fashion.
Notes
:
| >
> | For centuries, extravagant participation was both socially accepted and typical amongst crowds attending operas, dramas, and symphonies. Audiences cheered, jeered, and threw objects. At the turn of the nineteenth century, however, the highly participatory audience was sacralized. Silence was expected, and outward emotional expression was repressed. Operant learning and contextual priming now instruct males to suppress emotion. And the social gatherings occasioned by violent sporting events afford a unique opportunity to express emotion in a generally prohibited fashion. | | | Social-psychological Tendencies | |
<
< | The appeal of violent sport is increased by a social psychological impulse to establish a masculine identity. Beyond the opportunity for male bonding, watching boxing matches affords males the opportunity to prove to their peers that they are unperturbed and self-assured as they watch hostile athletic rituals, prone to cause bodily injury and devastation. They might outwardly express emotion while watching, but they are present and engaged.
Notes
:
| >
> | The appeal of violent sport is increased by a social psychological impulse to establish a masculine identity. Beyond the opportunity for male bonding, these events afford males the chance to prove to their peers that they are unperturbed and self-assured as they watch hostile athletic rituals, prone to cause bodily injury and devastation. They might outwardly express emotion while watching, but they are present and engaged. | | | Anthropological Influences | |
<
< | At an anthropological level, violence shares an intimate connection with Christianity. One need not look further than the Act of the Apostles for a prime example, with its tale of Ananias and Sapphira, the couple struck dead by God after they embezzled income from a property sale. The Old Testament features many accounts of battles, killings, and damnation. Perhaps many NFL viewers and boxing fans have unconsciously linked spirituality with images of war, carnage, and malediction. | >
> | At an anthropological level, violence shares an intimate connection with Christianity. One need not look further than the Act of the Apostles for a prime example, with its tale of Ananias and Sapphira, the couple struck dead by God after they embezzled income from a property sale. The scriptures of every widespread western religionare laced with accounts of battles, killings, and damnation. Perhaps blood sport viewers have unconsciously linked spirituality with images of war, carnage, and malediction. | | | A New View: Ray Rice, Floyd Mayweather, and the Rational Actor | |
<
< | During an era marked by a lexicon vehemently opposed to domestic violence, why did millions of Americans indirectly compensate a league that harbored domestic abusers and directly remunerate Floyd Mayweather? Answers lie at biological, intra-psychological, social-psychological, anthropological, and historical levels. But this is about something more than blood lust. | >
> | During an era marked by a lexicon vehemently opposed to domestic violence, why did millions of Americans indirectly compensate a league that harbored domestic abusers? And why did they directly remunerate Floyd Mayweather? Answers lie at biological, intra-psychological, social-psychological, anthropological, and historical levels. But this is about something more than plain blood lust. | | | | |
<
< | There is a certain confusion among people who like to watch violent sports, and it is a confusion occasioned by a belief that the rituals’ participants indicate their passionate commitment by willingly taking the greatest of risks for sport. Participants are unperturbed and self-assured in the face of aggression – which is precisely what these viewers seek to become. Like Freud’s playwright, participants in violent sports afford viewers a certain schienwelt – Fans identify with them, take center stage, and satiate their unconscious impulses. And, in 2015, the American public mind’s conscious social and political beliefs-proclaimed through all forms of signs, symbols, ceremonies-were no match for a deeply rooted predisposition toward violent sport. Rational, conscious choice? It had little to do with it. | >
> | There is a certain confusion among people who like to watch violent sports, and it is a confusion provoked by a belief that the rituals’ participants indicate their passionate commitment by willingly taking the greatest of risks for sport. These combatants are unfazed and c0nfident in the face of aggression – which is precisely what these viewers seek to become. Like Freud’s playwright, participants in violent sports afford their viewers a certain schienwelt – Fans identify with them, take center stage, and satiate their unconscious impulses. And, in 2015, the American public mind’s conscious social and political beliefs-proclaimed through all forms of signs, symbols, ceremonies-were no match for a deeply rooted predisposition toward violent sport. Rational, conscious choice? It had little to do with it. | | |
| META FILEATTACHMENT | attachment="Paper_3_.docx" attr="h" comment="" date="1439571536" name="Paper_3_.docx" path="Paper 3 .docx" size="20784" stream="Paper 3 .docx" user="Main.CMcKinney" version="1" |
|---|
|
|
|
CMcKinneySecondEssay 11 - 14 Aug 2015 - Main.CMcKinney
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="OldPapers" |
|---|
| | | As my first year at law school has grown into a memory, my anxieties and insecurities have dissipated. I have no grounds to complain. I was benefitted by the lottery of birth. Whatever unhappiness I felt was the product of decisions that I made. No one forced me to be here. | |
<
< | I finished my first year at Columbia Law School thirteen weeks ago. I have frequently meditated on the kind of lawyer I want to become ever since. I have always returned to the same conclusion. I came to law school because I wanted to defend people who caught a bad break. I plan to build a practice that sustains itself by defending individuals accused of white-collar crimes, and then uses those resources to advocate for those who cannot pay a legal bill. These individuals are owed advocacy regardless of mens rea, actual innocence, or proof beyond a reasonable doubt. | >
> | I finished my first year at Columbia Law School thirteen weeks ago. I have frequently meditated on the kind of lawyer I want to become ever since. I have always returned to the same conclusion. I came to law school because I wanted to defend people who caught a bad break. I plan to build a practice that sustains itself by defending individuals accused of white-collar crimes, and then uses those resources to advocate for those who cannot pay a legal bill. These individuals are owed advocacy regardless of mens rea, actual innocence, or proof beyond a reasonable doubt. | | | I am a strong believer that we get the world we deserve. People try to draw a line between criminals and civilians, between culpable and innocent mental states. But everybody is guilty. Some just catch a bad break. And as for the state of my practice? I know exactly what I want, and now I must clarify exactly how I am going to do it. But I have a couple ideas. Construction may have stalled briefly, but I have two years to seek practical experience and engage bright peers with a similar vision. I will press forward. }} | |
<
< | In the wake of Ray Rice firestorm, the American public mind condemned domestic violence and its perpetrators wholesale. The vitriol was palpable. It was uniformly evidenced by the brand equity indexes, public approval polls, and social media case studies published that September. The NFL egregiously violated its audiences’ conscious social and political beliefs. But then, something peculiar happened. I am not referring to the $180 million signed, sealed, and delivered to Floyd Mayweather nine months later – although that is relevant. This peculiar thing happened much sooner. Nine days after the American public mind excoriated Ray Rice. Nine days after countless individuals paraded their outrage and advertised their morality by way of tweets and statuses, the NFL’s ratings boomed. Two million new viewers tuned in, sat through advertisements, and spurred league revenue. | >
> | In the wake of Ray Rice firestorm, the American public mind condemned domestic violence and its perpetrators wholesale. The vitriol was palpable. It was uniformly evidenced by the brand equity indexes, public approval polls, and social media case studies published that September. The NFL egregiously violated its audiences’ conscious social and political beliefs. But then, something peculiar happened. I am not referring to the $180 million signed, sealed, and delivered to Floyd Mayweather nine months later – although that is relevant. This peculiar thing happened much sooner - Nine days after the American public mind excoriated Ray Rice. Nine days after countless individuals paraded their outrage and advertised their morality by way of tweets and statuses, the NFL’s ratings boomed. Two million new viewers tuned in, sat through advertisements, and spurred league revenue. | | | This paradox rattled me. And I sought to assuage the discomfort by punching out an essay about pay-per-view boxing in mid-May. With stinging rhetoric, I attempted to illustrate a clear example of the fact that consumption patterns are not well correlated with peoples’ conscious goals and political beliefs. But as I typed away, with vision blurred by animus and insecurity, I missed the point. Not only because many of the people who called for the NFL’s punishing Rice never bought a boxing pay-per-view or sat through an NFL broadcast. More fundamentally, I missed the point because this phenomenon should be analyzed far beyond a “rational” or “irrational” classification. There is a more important question. | | | Biological Influences, Archaic Response Tendencies, and Adaptive Impulses | |
<
< | Scientific evidence indicates that humans are biologically predisposed toward violence. Violent stimuli trigger dopamine secretion and engage the same reward pathways associated with the satisfaction of food, sex, and drug cravings. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2648522/ This biological predisposition seems consistent with evolutionary theory. | >
> | Scientific evidence indicates that humans are biologically predisposed toward violence. Violent stimuli trigger dopamine secretion and engage the same reward pathways associated with the satisfaction of food, sex, and drug cravings. This biological predisposition seems consistent with evolutionary theory. | | | Early humans persisted by continually screening their environment for danger. Over millennia, this heightened concern for potential violence proved adaptive. The trait endured in the brain’s older structures, especially the limbic system. And this biological influence elicits a continued interest in observing violence.
Intra-psychological Impulses and Historical Influences | |
<
< | Prominent intra-psychological influences explain why blood sport viewers are primarily male and further reveal the athletic rituals’ appeal. Cultural guides, downloaded during early childhood, instruct American males to suppress emotion and excitement. Violent sports occasion an opportunity for males to shout, jeer, and cringe in a hyper-masculine context, free from the social pressure to suppress emotion and excitement. The expression of these routinely contained emotions offers viewers a reprieve from the aversive, subjective cost of suppressing behavioral impulses. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440575/#R37. Historical developments have made these opportunities increasingly rare. | >
> | Prominent intra-psychological influences explain why blood sport viewers are primarily male and further reveal the athletic rituals’ appeal. Cultural guides, downloaded during early childhood, instruct American males to suppress emotion and excitement. Violent sports occasion an opportunity for males to shout, jeer, and cringe in a hyper-masculine context, free from the social pressure to suppress emotion and excitement. The expression of these routinely contained emotions offers viewers a reprieve from the aversive, subjective cost of suppressing behavioral impulses. Historical developments have made these opportunities increasingly rare. | | | For centuries, extravagant participation was both socially accepted and typical at operas, dramas, and symphonies. Audiences cheered, jeered, and threw objects. At the turn of the nineteenth century, however, the highly participatory audience was sacralized. Silence was expected, and outward emotional expression was repressed. Operant learning and contextual priming now instruct males to suppress emotion. And the social gatherings occasioned by violent sporting events afford a unique opportunity to express emotion in a generally prohibited fashion. |
|
|
CMcKinneySecondEssay 10 - 14 Aug 2015 - Main.CMcKinney
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="OldPapers" |
|---|
| | | -- By CMcKinney - 23 May 2015 | |
<
< | Comparable Histories, but Disparate Reactions | >
> | Mid-May: Unconsciously Seeking Repose{{ | | | | |
<
< | Ray Rice, An Atlantic City Casino Elevator, and a Grainy Surveillance Tape | >
> | Fighting Repose. | | | | |
<
< | On September 8, 2014, TMZ published footage of then-NFL running back Ray Rice burying a left haymaker into his fiancée’s jaw. Janay Palmer was unconscious before her head careened off the Atlantic City Casino’s elevator tiles. Rice was indicted for third-degree assault in March, and the NFL issued a suspension for one-eighth of the upcoming season in July. | >
> | Then | | | | |
<
< | Everything changed on September 8. The footage sparked a firestorm that consumed the attention of the country’s leading media outlets and the public alike. The New York Times’ Editorial Board labeled the affair “disgraceful.” The media demanded a revised, just punishment for Rice. This plea was bolstered by the general public, who broadcast matching sentiments across social media. The NFL wasted little time with parliamentary procedure. On the same day the video was released, Rice’s contract was terminated and the NFL turned the two-game suspension into an indefinite ban. Yet, as Rice’s self-induced ruination accelerated in the days after the footage was released, some voiced support. | >
> | We spent a lot of time thinking about repose in this course. But as I scrawled out an essay on pay-per-view boxing in Mid-May, I hardly realized I had taken shelter under logical form.
I wrote a paper addressing a simple question: Had the American public mind reacted inconsistently to Ray Rice and Floyd Mayweather? There were only two possible answers: yes or no, rational or irrational. | | | | |
<
< | Floyd Mayweather was perhaps the most noteworthy of Rice’s defenders. Mayweather is best known for the $420 million he has earned fighting inside of a boxing ring. On September 10, he told the Associated Press that the NFL had “overreacted:” “I think there's a lot worse things that go on in other people's households . . . it’s just not caught on video.” | >
> | This was the wrong question to begin with. Not only because there was more important question to be answered about the phenomenon. “If you believe there are only two options, then you have posed the wrong question.” There was a larger issue. I turned away from one of the most important question posed in this course: “What is the state of your practice?” | | | | |
<
< | The Unfortunate History of Floyd Mayweather | >
> | Now | | | | |
<
< | Between 2002 and 2011, Mayweather faced seven sets of criminal charges related to domestic violence. The most notorious of these seven episodes came in 2010, when Mayweather ruthlessly attacked the mother of three of his children and kept mistress, Josie Harris. The police, Harris, and the children all corroborated the details that follow - No specific point has ever been contradicted. | >
> | It has been 92 days since I finished my first year at Columbia Law School. With this reprieve has come ample opportunity for reflective meditation. With this prolonged temporal and physical removal, my insecurities have lessened. Now, for the first time in months, I set rediscover the answer to that question. | | | | |
<
< | Although Mayweather took up with another woman, he maintained a home for Harris and his children. It was that home which Mayweather entered at 5 a.m. one Sunday morning, parsed through Harris’s cell phone, and discovered texts from another man. Enraged, Mayweather launched a brutal assault upon Harris. He wrestled her to the floor and repeatedly struck the back of her head - This is known as “rabbit punching,” and it is both extremely dangerous and virtually certain to leave no facial bruising. The children were startled awake by their mother’s cries and raced into the living room, where they watched their father continue his attack unabated. Eventually, the eldest child eluded Mayweather’s entourage, fled the home, and dialed 911 from a neighbor’s kitchen. Mayweather pled guilty to domestic assault that December and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Outside of court, Mayweather has denied any fault in the incident to this day: When questioned, he will retort, “show me the bruises on her face.” | >
> | Why I came to law school | | | | |
<
< | 440 Million Orders. The Rational Who? | >
> | I came to law school to become a criminal defense attorney. That is what I have wanted ever since I spent a summer adding record citations and making other menial contributions to a habeas petition in 2012. http://abcnews.go.com/US/texas-mother-freed-spending-years-prison-foster-sons/story?id=26186920. And, immeasurably less importantly, it kindled an interest in criminal justice in me, which drew me to various roles with criminal defenders in the years after. With time, I formed a still hazy, but indeed clarified image of what I hoped to become. | | | | |
<
< | The Largest Payday in the History of Pay-Per-View Broadcasting | >
> | Fall | | | | |
<
< | Four years after Mayweather was imprisoned for assaulting Harris, he squared off against Manny Pacquiao in the “Fight of the Century.” In the months leading up to the bout, the wolf was stripped of his tattered sheep’s clothing. Spurred on by a public that had for months held itself out as staunch opponents of domestic abusers, the media hammered Mayweather’s past. More than 20,000 articles documenting his history of domestic violence hit the web in the month leading up to the fight. But Mayweather proceeded unfazed. | >
> | By December 2014, I had nearly lost sight of the reason I came to law school. I made it to mid-September before I was exhausted with fear. I was self-assuredly duller than my classmates, so I strained and titrated my way toward an obsessive memorization of law, legal theory, and my professors’ views of law and legal theory. Chemical dependence and mental ruin were a small price to pay for continued cover - My intellectual inferiority went largely unnoticed. Thoughts of the future I had mortgaged away to make tuition payments hardly helped the situation. And, that fall, my vision became trained upon a publicized escape route: a law firm job, secured by way of EIP. | | | | |
<
< | When questioned about Harris at a pre-fight press conference, he challenged, “show me the bruises on her face.” This attracted further scrutiny, but, as always, Mayweather persisted. This should come as no surprise– he stood to make a lot of money. For the Pacquiao bout, Mayweather contracted for 42% of all Pay-Per-View revenues. The fact that Mayweather would receive this slice of the pie was published by every relevant news outlet prior to the fight. | >
> | Spring
Last fall, I stopped thinking about my own identity, purpose, and how my winning the birth lottery and moderate capabilities might allow me to improve someone else’s existence. I divorced what I had hoped to gain in law school from what I believed I had to become, what Columbia expected me to become. And then I took this course. | | | | |
<
< | Yet, even after Mayweather was exposed, even after the fact that he was expected to make nine figures from Pay-Per-View sales became a matter of common knowledge, something inexplicable happened. Americans purchased more than 4.4 million Pay-Per-Views, which priced in at $99.50 each. Mayweather took home $180,000,000. One hundred and eighty million dollars in one night. A boundless mass – surely populated by many of the same individuals who demanded retribution for Rice in September - paid $180 million to Mayweather. That is a joke. | >
> | I realized that there was no exclusive route forward because of this class. Our discussions vigorously reminded me of that truth, and Joshua Horowitz personified it. He taught me that we can build the exact type of practice that we would want to call our own. Joshua did just that by combining a precise set of skills, a sense of humility, and an appetite for networking. | | | | |
<
< | Hedonistic Impulse and Status Anxiety: What Even Weber and Hedstrom cannot rationalize. | >
> | Now | | | | |
<
< | There is a certain self-satisfaction attendant to taking-up with the angry mob, proclaiming outrage, and advertising your morality by way of tweets or statuses. And it is not so hard when someone else – someone like Roger Goodell – is the bad guy, the one condoning domestic violence. But things sure do get a bit tougher when a boycott of Saturday night’s trendy happening is required. What is one to do? Be one of those people not at that gathering? Why not just chip-in for the pay-per-view, forget about how much you said you hate domestic violence, and become one of the people who witnessed that thing. Personal values and trumpeted ideals bow to hedonistic impulse and status anxiety. Rational actors, where art thou? | >
> | As my first year at law school has grown into a memory, my anxieties and insecurities have dissipated. I have no grounds to complain. I was benefitted by the lottery of birth. Whatever unhappiness I felt was the product of decisions that I made. No one forced me to be here. | | | | |
<
< | A Touch of Moderation | >
> | I finished my first year at Columbia Law School thirteen weeks ago. I have frequently meditated on the kind of lawyer I want to become ever since. I have always returned to the same conclusion. I came to law school because I wanted to defend people who caught a bad break. I plan to build a practice that sustains itself by defending individuals accused of white-collar crimes, and then uses those resources to advocate for those who cannot pay a legal bill. These individuals are owed advocacy regardless of mens rea, actual innocence, or proof beyond a reasonable doubt. | | | | |
<
< | I am no rational actor. I make an effort to ‘vote with my dollars,’ but there is no doubt I have contributed money to things and people I despise. But there is no rational actor. There is no identifiable value system-based rationality lying at the bottom of the human psyche. No one can fully, truly explain why we do what we do. Obviously, some of our decisions reflect personal experiences. I am the product of a home that was first marred by domestic violence, and then single parent. I am more sensitive to the issue than most. Nonetheless, innumerable Americans executed a full 180-degree turn from social media activists in September to social gathering connoisseurs in May. That cannot be denied, and it should matter. | >
> | I am a strong believer that we get the world we deserve. People try to draw a line between criminals and civilians, between culpable and innocent mental states. But everybody is guilty. Some just catch a bad break. And as for the state of my practice? I know exactly what I want, and now I must clarify exactly how I am going to do it. But I have a couple ideas. Construction may have stalled briefly, but I have two years to seek practical experience and engage bright peers with a similar vision. I will press forward. }} | | | | |
>
> | In the wake of Ray Rice firestorm, the American public mind condemned domestic violence and its perpetrators wholesale. The vitriol was palpable. It was uniformly evidenced by the brand equity indexes, public approval polls, and social media case studies published that September. The NFL egregiously violated its audiences’ conscious social and political beliefs. But then, something peculiar happened. I am not referring to the $180 million signed, sealed, and delivered to Floyd Mayweather nine months later – although that is relevant. This peculiar thing happened much sooner. Nine days after the American public mind excoriated Ray Rice. Nine days after countless individuals paraded their outrage and advertised their morality by way of tweets and statuses, the NFL’s ratings boomed. Two million new viewers tuned in, sat through advertisements, and spurred league revenue. | | | | |
<
< |
The strength of the draft is the forcefulness and clarity of the rhetoric. The argument, however, could use basic clarification. The point we are most clearly receiving is that some people who paid money to watch Floyd Mayweather fight another boxer probably (and, to your mind, inconsistently) demanded that another well-remunerated thug be punished for hand-to-head violence against his fiancee. But the reader is aware that many more of the people who called for or approved the NFL's punishing Rice never bought a ticket to any boxing match, or would. So it isn't clear whether you are offering an example of the general fact that consumption patters are not well-correlated with peoples' conscious social and political beliefs, commenting on a particular form of confusion among people who like to watch fistfights (without discussing the unconscious motivations of boxing fans), or something else.
| >
> | This paradox rattled me. And I sought to assuage the discomfort by punching out an essay about pay-per-view boxing in mid-May. With stinging rhetoric, I attempted to illustrate a clear example of the fact that consumption patterns are not well correlated with peoples’ conscious goals and political beliefs. But as I typed away, with vision blurred by animus and insecurity, I missed the point. Not only because many of the people who called for the NFL’s punishing Rice never bought a boxing pay-per-view or sat through an NFL broadcast. More fundamentally, I missed the point because this phenomenon should be analyzed far beyond a “rational” or “irrational” classification. There is a more important question. | | |
\ No newline at end of file | |
>
> | The Real Question
Why were 4 million Americans willing to pay $99.50 to watch a fistfight on television? Why did 21 million Americans watch the first game of the 2014 NFL Season? And why did they do each shortly after the American public mind unequivocally denounced watching domestic-abusers engage in athletic rituals? The answer lies in unconscious motivations driven by biological, intra-psychological, social-psychological, anthropological, and historical influences. Even if they do not realize it, countless Americans are unconsciously captivated by blood sport.
The Unconscious Motivations of Blood Sport Viewers
Understanding the Audience
Any discussion of unconscious motivations must be preceded by an identification of the target group. National consumer studies show that the vast majority of individuals who watch football on TV and purchase pay-per-view boxing matches are males, aged 35 to 49. They are predominately white, and they are predominantly Christian. Overwhelmingly, these men watch in a group setting, surrounded by other males. And their initial attraction to blood sport probably inheres at birth.
Biological Influences, Archaic Response Tendencies, and Adaptive Impulses
Scientific evidence indicates that humans are biologically predisposed toward violence. Violent stimuli trigger dopamine secretion and engage the same reward pathways associated with the satisfaction of food, sex, and drug cravings. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2648522/ This biological predisposition seems consistent with evolutionary theory.
Early humans persisted by continually screening their environment for danger. Over millennia, this heightened concern for potential violence proved adaptive. The trait endured in the brain’s older structures, especially the limbic system. And this biological influence elicits a continued interest in observing violence.
Intra-psychological Impulses and Historical Influences
Prominent intra-psychological influences explain why blood sport viewers are primarily male and further reveal the athletic rituals’ appeal. Cultural guides, downloaded during early childhood, instruct American males to suppress emotion and excitement. Violent sports occasion an opportunity for males to shout, jeer, and cringe in a hyper-masculine context, free from the social pressure to suppress emotion and excitement. The expression of these routinely contained emotions offers viewers a reprieve from the aversive, subjective cost of suppressing behavioral impulses. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440575/#R37. Historical developments have made these opportunities increasingly rare.
For centuries, extravagant participation was both socially accepted and typical at operas, dramas, and symphonies. Audiences cheered, jeered, and threw objects. At the turn of the nineteenth century, however, the highly participatory audience was sacralized. Silence was expected, and outward emotional expression was repressed. Operant learning and contextual priming now instruct males to suppress emotion. And the social gatherings occasioned by violent sporting events afford a unique opportunity to express emotion in a generally prohibited fashion.
Social-psychological Tendencies
The appeal of violent sport is increased by a social psychological impulse to establish a masculine identity. Beyond the opportunity for male bonding, watching boxing matches affords males the opportunity to prove to their peers that they are unperturbed and self-assured as they watch hostile athletic rituals, prone to cause bodily injury and devastation. They might outwardly express emotion while watching, but they are present and engaged.
Anthropological Influences
At an anthropological level, violence shares an intimate connection with Christianity. One need not look further than the Act of the Apostles for a prime example, with its tale of Ananias and Sapphira, the couple struck dead by God after they embezzled income from a property sale. The Old Testament features many accounts of battles, killings, and damnation. Perhaps many NFL viewers and boxing fans have unconsciously linked spirituality with images of war, carnage, and malediction.
A New View: Ray Rice, Floyd Mayweather, and the Rational Actor
During an era marked by a lexicon vehemently opposed to domestic violence, why did millions of Americans indirectly compensate a league that harbored domestic abusers and directly remunerate Floyd Mayweather? Answers lie at biological, intra-psychological, social-psychological, anthropological, and historical levels. But this is about something more than blood lust.
There is a certain confusion among people who like to watch violent sports, and it is a confusion occasioned by a belief that the rituals’ participants indicate their passionate commitment by willingly taking the greatest of risks for sport. Participants are unperturbed and self-assured in the face of aggression – which is precisely what these viewers seek to become. Like Freud’s playwright, participants in violent sports afford viewers a certain schienwelt – Fans identify with them, take center stage, and satiate their unconscious impulses. And, in 2015, the American public mind’s conscious social and political beliefs-proclaimed through all forms of signs, symbols, ceremonies-were no match for a deeply rooted predisposition toward violent sport. Rational, conscious choice? It had little to do with it.
| META FILEATTACHMENT | attachment="Paper_3_.docx" attr="h" comment="" date="1439571536" name="Paper_3_.docx" path="Paper 3 .docx" size="20784" stream="Paper 3 .docx" user="Main.CMcKinney" version="1" |
|---|
|
|
|
CMcKinneySecondEssay 6 - 16 Jun 2015 - Main.EbenMoglen
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="McKinney, Connor Second Essay " |
|---|
| | | A Touch of Moderation
I am no rational actor. I make an effort to ‘vote with my dollars,’ but there is no doubt I have contributed money to things and people I despise. But there is no rational actor. There is no identifiable value system-based rationality lying at the bottom of the human psyche. No one can fully, truly explain why we do what we do. Obviously, some of our decisions reflect personal experiences. I am the product of a home that was first marred by domestic violence, and then single parent. I am more sensitive to the issue than most. Nonetheless, innumerable Americans executed a full 180-degree turn from social media activists in September to social gathering connoisseurs in May. That cannot be denied, and it should matter. | |
>
> |
The strength of the draft is the forcefulness and clarity of the rhetoric. The argument, however, could use basic clarification. The point we are most clearly receiving is that some people who paid money to watch Floyd Mayweather fight another boxer probably (and, to your mind, inconsistently) demanded that another well-remunerated thug be punished for hand-to-head violence against his fiancee. But the reader is aware that many more of the people who called for or approved the NFL's punishing Rice never bought a ticket to any boxing match, or would. So it isn't clear whether you are offering an example of the general fact that consumption patters are not well-correlated with peoples' conscious social and political beliefs, commenting on a particular form of confusion among people who like to watch fistfights (without discussing the unconscious motivations of boxing fans), or something else.
| | | \ No newline at end of file |
|
|
CMcKinneySecondEssay 5 - 15 Jun 2015 - Main.CMcKinney
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="McKinney, Connor Second Essay " |
|---|
| | | On September 8, 2014, TMZ published footage of then-NFL running back Ray Rice burying a left haymaker into his fiancée’s jaw. Janay Palmer was unconscious before her head careened off the Atlantic City Casino’s elevator tiles. Rice was indicted for third-degree assault in March, and the NFL issued a suspension for one-eighth of the upcoming season in July. | |
<
< | Everything changed on September 8. The footage sparked a firestorm that consumed the attention of the country’s leading media outlets and the public alike. The New York Times’ Editorial Board labeled the affair “disgraceful.” The media demanded a revised, just punishment for Rice. This plea was bolstered by the general public, who broadcast matching sentiments across social media. The NFL wasted little time with parliamentary procedure. On the same day the video was released, Rice’s contract was terminated and the NFL turned the two-game suspension into an indefinite ban. Yet, as Rice’s self-induced destruction accelerated in the days after the footage was released, some voiced support. | >
> | Everything changed on September 8. The footage sparked a firestorm that consumed the attention of the country’s leading media outlets and the public alike. The New York Times’ Editorial Board labeled the affair “disgraceful.” The media demanded a revised, just punishment for Rice. This plea was bolstered by the general public, who broadcast matching sentiments across social media. The NFL wasted little time with parliamentary procedure. On the same day the video was released, Rice’s contract was terminated and the NFL turned the two-game suspension into an indefinite ban. Yet, as Rice’s self-induced ruination accelerated in the days after the footage was released, some voiced support. | | | Floyd Mayweather was perhaps the most noteworthy of Rice’s defenders. Mayweather is best known for the $420 million he has earned fighting inside of a boxing ring. On September 10, he told the Associated Press that the NFL had “overreacted:” “I think there's a lot worse things that go on in other people's households . . . it’s just not caught on video.” | | | Four years after Mayweather was imprisoned for assaulting Harris, he squared off against Manny Pacquiao in the “Fight of the Century.” In the months leading up to the bout, the wolf was stripped of his tattered sheep’s clothing. Spurred on by a public that had for months held itself out as staunch opponents of domestic abusers, the media hammered Mayweather’s past. More than 20,000 articles documenting his history of domestic violence hit the web in the month leading up to the fight. But Mayweather proceeded unfazed. | |
<
< | When questioned about Harris at a pre-fight press conference, he challenged, “show me the bruises on her face.” This attracted further scrutiny, but, as always, Mayweather persisted. This should come as no surprise– he stood to make a lot of money. For the Pacquiao bout, Mayweather contracted for 42% of all pay-per-view revenues. The fact that Mayweather would receive this slice of the pie was published by every relevant news outlet prior to the fight. | >
> | When questioned about Harris at a pre-fight press conference, he challenged, “show me the bruises on her face.” This attracted further scrutiny, but, as always, Mayweather persisted. This should come as no surprise– he stood to make a lot of money. For the Pacquiao bout, Mayweather contracted for 42% of all Pay-Per-View revenues. The fact that Mayweather would receive this slice of the pie was published by every relevant news outlet prior to the fight. | | | | |
<
< | Yet, even after Mayweather was exposed, even after the fact that he was expected to make nine figures from pay-per-view sales became a matter of common knowledge, something inexplicable happened. Americans purchased more than 4.4 million pay-per-views, which priced in at $99.50 each. Mayweather took home $180,000,000. One hundred and eighty million dollars in one night. A boundless mass – surely populated by many of the same individuals who demanded retribution for Rice in September - paid $180 million to Mayweather. That is a joke. | >
> | Yet, even after Mayweather was exposed, even after the fact that he was expected to make nine figures from Pay-Per-View sales became a matter of common knowledge, something inexplicable happened. Americans purchased more than 4.4 million Pay-Per-Views, which priced in at $99.50 each. Mayweather took home $180,000,000. One hundred and eighty million dollars in one night. A boundless mass – surely populated by many of the same individuals who demanded retribution for Rice in September - paid $180 million to Mayweather. That is a joke. | | | Hedonistic Impulse and Status Anxiety: What Even Weber and Hedstrom cannot rationalize. | |
<
< | There is a certain self-satisfaction attendant to taking-up with the angry mob, proclaiming outrage, and advertising your morality by way of tweets or statuses. And it is not so hard when someone else – someone like Roger Goodell – is the bad guy, the one condoning domestic violence. But things sure do get a bit tougher when a boycott of Saturday night’s trendy happening is required. What is one to do? Be one of those people who is not at that gathering? Why not just chip-in for the pay-per-view, forget about how much you said you hate domestic violence, and become one of the people who witnessed that thing. Personal values and trumpeted ideals bow to hedonistic impulse and status anxiety. Rational actors, where art thou? | >
> | There is a certain self-satisfaction attendant to taking-up with the angry mob, proclaiming outrage, and advertising your morality by way of tweets or statuses. And it is not so hard when someone else – someone like Roger Goodell – is the bad guy, the one condoning domestic violence. But things sure do get a bit tougher when a boycott of Saturday night’s trendy happening is required. What is one to do? Be one of those people not at that gathering? Why not just chip-in for the pay-per-view, forget about how much you said you hate domestic violence, and become one of the people who witnessed that thing. Personal values and trumpeted ideals bow to hedonistic impulse and status anxiety. Rational actors, where art thou? | | | A Touch of Moderation | |
<
< | I am no rational actor. I make an effort to ‘vote with my dollars,’ but there is no doubt I have contributed money to things and people I despise. But there is no rational actor. There is no identifiable value system lying at the bottom of the human psyche. No one can fully, truly explain why we do what we do. Obviously, some of our decisions reflect personal experiences. I am the product of a home that was first marred by domestic violence, and then single parent. I am more sensitive to the issue than most. Nonetheless, innumerable Americans executed a full 180-degree turn from social media activists in September to social gathering connoisseurs in May. That cannot be denied, and it should matter. | >
> | I am no rational actor. I make an effort to ‘vote with my dollars,’ but there is no doubt I have contributed money to things and people I despise. But there is no rational actor. There is no identifiable value system-based rationality lying at the bottom of the human psyche. No one can fully, truly explain why we do what we do. Obviously, some of our decisions reflect personal experiences. I am the product of a home that was first marred by domestic violence, and then single parent. I am more sensitive to the issue than most. Nonetheless, innumerable Americans executed a full 180-degree turn from social media activists in September to social gathering connoisseurs in May. That cannot be denied, and it should matter. |
|
|
CMcKinneySecondEssay 4 - 10 Jun 2015 - Main.CMcKinney
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="McKinney, Connor Second Essay " |
|---|
| | | Ray Rice, An Atlantic City Casino Elevator, and a Grainy Surveillance Tape | |
<
< | In September 2014, TMZ published footage of then-NFL running back Ray Rice burying a left haymaker into his fiancée’s jaw. Janay Palmer was unconscious before her head careened off the Atlantic City Casino’s elevator tiles. Rice was indicted for third-degree assault in March, and the NFL issued a suspension for one-eighth of the upcoming season in July. | >
> | On September 8, 2014, TMZ published footage of then-NFL running back Ray Rice burying a left haymaker into his fiancée’s jaw. Janay Palmer was unconscious before her head careened off the Atlantic City Casino’s elevator tiles. Rice was indicted for third-degree assault in March, and the NFL issued a suspension for one-eighth of the upcoming season in July. | | | | |
<
< | Everything changed on September 8. The footage sparked a firestorm that consumed the attention of the country’s leading media outlets and the public alike. The New York Times’ Editorial Board labeled the affair “disgraceful.” The media demanded a revised, just punishment for Rice. This demand was bolstered by the general public, who broadcast matching sentiments across social media. The NFL wasted little time with parliamentary procedure. On the same day the video was released, Rice’s contract was terminated and the NFL turned the two-game suspension into an indefinite ban. Yet, as Rice’s self-induced destruction accelerated in the days after the footage was released, some voiced support. | >
> | Everything changed on September 8. The footage sparked a firestorm that consumed the attention of the country’s leading media outlets and the public alike. The New York Times’ Editorial Board labeled the affair “disgraceful.” The media demanded a revised, just punishment for Rice. This plea was bolstered by the general public, who broadcast matching sentiments across social media. The NFL wasted little time with parliamentary procedure. On the same day the video was released, Rice’s contract was terminated and the NFL turned the two-game suspension into an indefinite ban. Yet, as Rice’s self-induced destruction accelerated in the days after the footage was released, some voiced support. | | | Floyd Mayweather was perhaps the most noteworthy of Rice’s defenders. Mayweather is best known for the $420 million he has earned fighting inside of a boxing ring. On September 10, he told the Associated Press that the NFL had “overreacted:” “I think there's a lot worse things that go on in other people's households . . . it’s just not caught on video.” | | | Between 2002 and 2011, Mayweather faced seven sets of criminal charges related to domestic violence. The most notorious of these seven episodes came in 2010, when Mayweather ruthlessly attacked the mother of three of his children and kept mistress, Josie Harris. The police, Harris, and the children all corroborated the details that follow - No specific point has ever been contradicted. | |
<
< | Although Mayweather took up with another woman, he maintained a home for Harris and his children. It was that home which Mayweather entered at 5 a.m. one Sunday morning, parsed through Harris’s cell phone, and discovered texts from another man. Enraged, Mayweather launched a brutal assault upon Harris. He wrestled her to the floor and repeatedly struck the back of her head - This is known as “rabbit punching,” and it is both extremely dangerous and certain to leave no facial bruising. The children were startled awake by their mother’s cries and raced into the living room, where they watched their father continue the assault unabated. The eldest child eventually eluded Mayweather’s entourage, fled the home, and dialed 911 from a neighbor’s kitchen. Mayweather pled guilty to domestic assault that December and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Outside of court, Mayweather has denied any fault in the incident to this day: When questioned, he will retort, “show me the bruises on her face.” | >
> | Although Mayweather took up with another woman, he maintained a home for Harris and his children. It was that home which Mayweather entered at 5 a.m. one Sunday morning, parsed through Harris’s cell phone, and discovered texts from another man. Enraged, Mayweather launched a brutal assault upon Harris. He wrestled her to the floor and repeatedly struck the back of her head - This is known as “rabbit punching,” and it is both extremely dangerous and virtually certain to leave no facial bruising. The children were startled awake by their mother’s cries and raced into the living room, where they watched their father continue his attack unabated. Eventually, the eldest child eluded Mayweather’s entourage, fled the home, and dialed 911 from a neighbor’s kitchen. Mayweather pled guilty to domestic assault that December and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Outside of court, Mayweather has denied any fault in the incident to this day: When questioned, he will retort, “show me the bruises on her face.” | | | 440 Million Orders. The Rational Who? | | | When questioned about Harris at a pre-fight press conference, he challenged, “show me the bruises on her face.” This attracted further scrutiny, but, as always, Mayweather persisted. This should come as no surprise– he stood to make a lot of money. For the Pacquiao bout, Mayweather contracted for 42% of all pay-per-view revenues. The fact that Mayweather would receive this slice of the pie was published by every relevant news outlet prior to the fight. | |
<
< | Even after Mayweather was exposed, even after the fact that he was expected to make nine figures from pay-per-view sales became a matter of common knowledge, something inexplicable happened. Americans purchased more than 4.4 million pay-per-views, which priced in at $99.50 each. Mayweather took home $180,000,000. One hundred and eighty million dollars in one night. A boundless mass – surely populated by many of the same individuals who demanded retribution for Rice in September - paid $180 million to Mayweather. That is a joke. | >
> | Yet, even after Mayweather was exposed, even after the fact that he was expected to make nine figures from pay-per-view sales became a matter of common knowledge, something inexplicable happened. Americans purchased more than 4.4 million pay-per-views, which priced in at $99.50 each. Mayweather took home $180,000,000. One hundred and eighty million dollars in one night. A boundless mass – surely populated by many of the same individuals who demanded retribution for Rice in September - paid $180 million to Mayweather. That is a joke. | | | Hedonistic Impulse and Status Anxiety: What Even Weber and Hedstrom cannot rationalize. | |
<
< | A certain self-satisfaction is attendant to taking-up with the angry mob, professing outrage, and advertising your morality by way of tweets or statuses. And it’s not so hard when someone else – someone like Roger Goodell – is the bad guy, the one condoning domestic violence. But things sure do get a bit tougher when a boycott of Saturday night’s trendy happening is required. What is one to do? Be one of those people who is not at that gathering? Why not just chip-in for the pay-per-view, forget about how much you said you hate domestic violence, and become one of the people who witnessed that thing. Personal values and stated ideals are trumped by hedonistic impulse and status anxiety. Rational actors, where art thou? | >
> | There is a certain self-satisfaction attendant to taking-up with the angry mob, proclaiming outrage, and advertising your morality by way of tweets or statuses. And it is not so hard when someone else – someone like Roger Goodell – is the bad guy, the one condoning domestic violence. But things sure do get a bit tougher when a boycott of Saturday night’s trendy happening is required. What is one to do? Be one of those people who is not at that gathering? Why not just chip-in for the pay-per-view, forget about how much you said you hate domestic violence, and become one of the people who witnessed that thing. Personal values and trumpeted ideals bow to hedonistic impulse and status anxiety. Rational actors, where art thou? | | | | |
<
< | A Touch of Moderation - Perhaps Due and Perhaps Unnecessary | >
> | A Touch of Moderation | | | | |
<
< | I am no rational actor. Although I make an effort to ‘vote with my dollars,’ there is no doubt I have contributed money to things or people I despise. But there is no rational actor. There is no identifiable value system lying at the bottom of the human psyche. No one can fully explain why we do what we do. Obviously, some of our decisions reflect personal experiences. I am the product of a home that was first marred by violence, and next single parent. I am more sensitive to the issues discussed above than most. Nonetheless, I watched countless acquaintances execute a full 180-degree turn from social media activists in September to social gathering connoisseurs in May. And that should matter. | >
> | I am no rational actor. I make an effort to ‘vote with my dollars,’ but there is no doubt I have contributed money to things and people I despise. But there is no rational actor. There is no identifiable value system lying at the bottom of the human psyche. No one can fully, truly explain why we do what we do. Obviously, some of our decisions reflect personal experiences. I am the product of a home that was first marred by domestic violence, and then single parent. I am more sensitive to the issue than most. Nonetheless, innumerable Americans executed a full 180-degree turn from social media activists in September to social gathering connoisseurs in May. That cannot be denied, and it should matter. |
|
|
CMcKinneySecondEssay 3 - 02 Jun 2015 - Main.CMcKinney
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="McKinney, Connor Second Essay " |
|---|
| |
<
< | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | Rational Actors, Where Art Thou? Ray Rice, Floyd Mayweather, and $180 million. | | | Ray Rice, An Atlantic City Casino Elevator, and a Grainy Surveillance Tape | |
<
< | On September 8, 2014, TMZ published footage of then-NFL running back Ray Rice burying a left haymaker into his fiancée’s jaw aboard an Atlantic City casino elevator. The incident occurred in the early morning hours of February 15, while Rice and Janay Palmer were returning to their room after a night on the town. Palmer was unconscious before her head landed on the tiles. | >
> | In September 2014, TMZ published footage of then-NFL running back Ray Rice burying a left haymaker into his fiancée’s jaw. Janay Palmer was unconscious before her head careened off the Atlantic City Casino’s elevator tiles. Rice was indicted for third-degree assault in March, and the NFL issued a suspension for one-eighth of the upcoming season in July. | | | | |
<
< | Rice was indicted for third-degree assault in March, and the NFL issued a suspension for one-eighth of the upcoming season in July. Everything changed on September 8. The footage sparked a firestorm that consumed the attention of the country’s leading media outlets and the public alike. While futilely attempting to explain Rice’s initially light punishment, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell denied any prior knowledge of the video’s contents. The New York Times’ editorial board labeled the affair “disgraceful.” Bill Simmons called Goodell “a fucking liar” and likened the commissioner’s demeanor while addressing the press to that of Enron CEO Ken Lay in the wake of the 2001 scandal. | >
> | Everything changed on September 8. The footage sparked a firestorm that consumed the attention of the country’s leading media outlets and the public alike. The New York Times’ Editorial Board labeled the affair “disgraceful.” The media demanded a revised, just punishment for Rice. This demand was bolstered by the general public, who broadcast matching sentiments across social media. The NFL wasted little time with parliamentary procedure. On the same day the video was released, Rice’s contract was terminated and the NFL turned the two-game suspension into an indefinite ban. Yet, as Rice’s self-induced destruction accelerated in the days after the footage was released, some voiced support. | | | | |
<
< | The media demanded a revised, just punishment for Rice. This demand was bolstered by the general public, who broadcast matching sentiments across social media. The NFL wasted little time with parliamentary procedure. On the same day the video was released, Rice’s contract was terminated and the NFL turned a two-game suspension into an indefinite ban. Yet, as Rice’s self-destruction accelerated in the days after the footage was released, some voiced support. | >
> | Floyd Mayweather was perhaps the most noteworthy of Rice’s defenders. Mayweather is best known for the $420 million he has earned fighting inside of a boxing ring. On September 10, he told the Associated Press that the NFL had “overreacted:” “I think there's a lot worse things that go on in other people's households . . . it’s just not caught on video.” | | | The Unfortunate History of Floyd Mayweather | |
<
< | Floyd “Money” Mayweather was perhaps the most noteworthy of Rice’s defenders. Mayweather is best known for the $420 million he has earned fighting inside of a boxing ring. On September 10, Mayweather told the Associated Press that the NFL had “overreacted:” “I think there's a lot worse things that go on in other people's households . . . it’s just not caught on video.” That is probably true, but perhaps “Money” should have danced with the one that brung him. | >
> | Between 2002 and 2011, Mayweather faced seven sets of criminal charges related to domestic violence. The most notorious of these seven episodes came in 2010, when Mayweather ruthlessly attacked the mother of three of his children and kept mistress, Josie Harris. The police, Harris, and the children all corroborated the details that follow - No specific point has ever been contradicted. | | | | |
<
< | Between 2002 and 2011, Mayweather faced seven sets of criminal charges related to domestic violence. The most notorious of these seven episodes came in September 2010, when Mayweather ruthlessly attacked the mother of three of his children and kept mistress, Josie Harris. The police, Harris, and the children all corroborated the details that follow - No specific point has ever been contradicted. | >
> | Although Mayweather took up with another woman, he maintained a home for Harris and his children. It was that home which Mayweather entered at 5 a.m. one Sunday morning, parsed through Harris’s cell phone, and discovered texts from another man. Enraged, Mayweather launched a brutal assault upon Harris. He wrestled her to the floor and repeatedly struck the back of her head - This is known as “rabbit punching,” and it is both extremely dangerous and certain to leave no facial bruising. The children were startled awake by their mother’s cries and raced into the living room, where they watched their father continue the assault unabated. The eldest child eventually eluded Mayweather’s entourage, fled the home, and dialed 911 from a neighbor’s kitchen. Mayweather pled guilty to domestic assault that December and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Outside of court, Mayweather has denied any fault in the incident to this day: When questioned, he will retort, “show me the bruises on her face.” | | | | |
<
< | Although Mayweather took up with another woman, he maintained a home for Harris and his children. It was that home which Mayweather entered at 5 a.m. one Sunday morning, parsed through Harris’s cell phone, and discovered texts from another man. Enraged, Mayweather launched a brutal assault upon Harris. He wrestled her to the floor and repeatedly struck the back of her head - This is known as “rabbit punching,” and is both extremely dangerous and certain to leave no facial bruising. The children were startled awake by their mother’s cries and raced into the living room. With his children looking on, Mayweather continued unabated. The eldest child eventually eluded Mayweather’s entourage, fled the home, and dialed 911 from a neighbor’s kitchen. Mayweather pled guilty to domestic assault that December. He was sentenced to only 90 days in jail. Outside of court, Mayweather denied any fault in the incident. To this day, when questioned, he will retort, “show me the bruises on her face.” Sure thing, Floyd – And what if there was a camera in that townhome? | | | 440 Million Orders. The Rational Who?
The Largest Payday in the History of Pay-Per-View Broadcasting | |
<
< | Four years after Mayweather was imprisoned for assaulting Harris, and nine months after he came to Rice’s defense, “Money” squared off against Manny Pacquiao in the “Fight of the Century.” In the months leading up to the bout, the wolf was stripped of his tattered sheep’s clothing. Spurred on by a public that had for months held itself out as against domestic abusers, the media hammered Mayweather: His past was exposed and his behavior was excoriated. More than 20,000 articles documenting Mayweather’s history of domestic violence hit the web in the month leading up to the fight. | >
> | Four years after Mayweather was imprisoned for assaulting Harris, he squared off against Manny Pacquiao in the “Fight of the Century.” In the months leading up to the bout, the wolf was stripped of his tattered sheep’s clothing. Spurred on by a public that had for months held itself out as staunch opponents of domestic abusers, the media hammered Mayweather’s past. More than 20,000 articles documenting his history of domestic violence hit the web in the month leading up to the fight. But Mayweather proceeded unfazed. | | | | |
<
< | But Mayweather proceeded unfazed. When questioned about Harris at a pre-fight press conference, he challenged, “show me the bruises on her face.” After two female reporters persisted in exposing and castigating Mayweather’s history, he had their press credentials were revoked. This attracted further scrutiny, but, as always, Mayweather persisted. This should come as no surprise– he stood to make a lot of money. For the Pacquiao bout, Mayweather contracted for 42% of all pay-per-view revenues. The fact that Mayweather would receive this slice of the pie was easily accessible information: every relevant news outlet published the figure. | >
> | When questioned about Harris at a pre-fight press conference, he challenged, “show me the bruises on her face.” This attracted further scrutiny, but, as always, Mayweather persisted. This should come as no surprise– he stood to make a lot of money. For the Pacquiao bout, Mayweather contracted for 42% of all pay-per-view revenues. The fact that Mayweather would receive this slice of the pie was published by every relevant news outlet prior to the fight. | | | | |
>
> | Even after Mayweather was exposed, even after the fact that he was expected to make nine figures from pay-per-view sales became a matter of common knowledge, something inexplicable happened. Americans purchased more than 4.4 million pay-per-views, which priced in at $99.50 each. Mayweather took home $180,000,000. One hundred and eighty million dollars in one night. A boundless mass – surely populated by many of the same individuals who demanded retribution for Rice in September - paid $180 million to Mayweather. That is a joke. | | | Hedonistic Impulse and Status Anxiety: What Even Weber and Hedstrom cannot rationalize. | |
<
< | Even after Mayweather was exposed, even after the fact that he was expected to make nine figures from pay-per-view sales became a matter of common knowledge, something inexplicable happened. Americans purchased more than 4.4 million pay-per-view packages, which priced in at $99.50 each. Mayweather took home $180,000,000. One hundred and eighty million dollars in one night. A boundless mass – surely populated by many of the same individuals who demanded retribution for Rice in September - paid $180 million to Mayweather. That is a joke. And it inescapably evinces a lapse of rational choice theory. | >
> | A certain self-satisfaction is attendant to taking-up with the angry mob, professing outrage, and advertising your morality by way of tweets or statuses. And it’s not so hard when someone else – someone like Roger Goodell – is the bad guy, the one condoning domestic violence. But things sure do get a bit tougher when a boycott of Saturday night’s trendy happening is required. What is one to do? Be one of those people who is not at that gathering? Why not just chip-in for the pay-per-view, forget about how much you said you hate domestic violence, and become one of the people who witnessed that thing. Personal values and stated ideals are trumped by hedonistic impulse and status anxiety. Rational actors, where art thou? | | | | |
<
< | If Weber’s and Hedstrom’s theory holds true, then most people are rational actors: They utilize available information, take account of alternatives, and select the option most consistent with their values. Great. So, what happened here? I have spent a lot of time thinking about that question. I have found no satisfying answer. Here are three non-starters. First, Immediacy of contribution? No. Mayweather received a defined percentage of every purchase; people who watch football on TV pass money along to players like Rice only through six other changing-of-the-hands. Second, prospect of rehabilitation? Negative. Rice was a first-time offender; Mayweather has been charged seven-times. Third, remorse? Another non-starter. Rice repeatedly apologized; Mayweather continues with his preposterous denial to this day. | >
> | A Touch of Moderation - Perhaps Due and Perhaps Unnecessary | | | | |
<
< | The truth is as somber as it is clear. A certain self-satisfaction is attendant to taking-up with the angry mob, professing outrage, and advertising your morality by way of tweets or statuses. And it’s not so hard when someone else – someone like Roger Goodell – is the bad guy, the one condoning domestic violence. But things sure do get a bit tougher when a boycott of Saturday night’s trendy happening is required. What is one to do? Be one of those people who is not at that gathering? Why not just chip-in for the pay-per-view, forget about how much you said you hate domestic violence, and become one of the people who witnessed that thing. Personal values and stated ideals are trumped by hedonistic impulse and status anxiety. Rational actors, where art thou? | | | \ No newline at end of file | |
>
> | I am no rational actor. Although I make an effort to ‘vote with my dollars,’ there is no doubt I have contributed money to things or people I despise. But there is no rational actor. There is no identifiable value system lying at the bottom of the human psyche. No one can fully explain why we do what we do. Obviously, some of our decisions reflect personal experiences. I am the product of a home that was first marred by violence, and next single parent. I am more sensitive to the issues discussed above than most. Nonetheless, I watched countless acquaintances execute a full 180-degree turn from social media activists in September to social gathering connoisseurs in May. And that should matter. |
|
|
CMcKinneySecondEssay 2 - 24 May 2015 - Main.CMcKinney
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="McKinney, Connor Second Essay " |
|---|
It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | Rice was indicted for third-degree assault in March, and the NFL issued a suspension for one-eighth of the upcoming season in July. Everything changed on September 8. The footage sparked a firestorm that consumed the attention of the country’s leading media outlets and the public alike. While futilely attempting to explain Rice’s initially light punishment, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell denied any prior knowledge of the video’s contents. The New York Times’ editorial board labeled the affair “disgraceful.” Bill Simmons called Goodell “a fucking liar” and likened the commissioner’s demeanor while addressing the press to that of Enron CEO Ken Lay in the wake of the 2001 scandal. | |
<
< | The media demanded a revised, just punishment for Rice. This demand was bolstered by the general public, who broadcast matching sentiments across social media. The NFL wasted little time with parliamentary procedure. On the same day the video was released, Rice’s contract was terminated and the NFL turned a two-game suspension into an indefinite ban. Yet, as Rice’s self-immolation accelerated in the days after the footage was released, some voiced support. | >
> | The media demanded a revised, just punishment for Rice. This demand was bolstered by the general public, who broadcast matching sentiments across social media. The NFL wasted little time with parliamentary procedure. On the same day the video was released, Rice’s contract was terminated and the NFL turned a two-game suspension into an indefinite ban. Yet, as Rice’s self-destruction accelerated in the days after the footage was released, some voiced support. | | | The Unfortunate History of Floyd Mayweather |
|
|
CMcKinneySecondEssay 1 - 23 May 2015 - Main.CMcKinney
|
|
>
> |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="McKinney, Connor Second Essay " |
|---|
It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
Rational Actors, Where Art Thou? Ray Rice, Floyd Mayweather, and $180 million.
-- By CMcKinney - 23 May 2015
Comparable Histories, but Disparate Reactions
Ray Rice, An Atlantic City Casino Elevator, and a Grainy Surveillance Tape
On September 8, 2014, TMZ published footage of then-NFL running back Ray Rice burying a left haymaker into his fiancée’s jaw aboard an Atlantic City casino elevator. The incident occurred in the early morning hours of February 15, while Rice and Janay Palmer were returning to their room after a night on the town. Palmer was unconscious before her head landed on the tiles.
Rice was indicted for third-degree assault in March, and the NFL issued a suspension for one-eighth of the upcoming season in July. Everything changed on September 8. The footage sparked a firestorm that consumed the attention of the country’s leading media outlets and the public alike. While futilely attempting to explain Rice’s initially light punishment, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell denied any prior knowledge of the video’s contents. The New York Times’ editorial board labeled the affair “disgraceful.” Bill Simmons called Goodell “a fucking liar” and likened the commissioner’s demeanor while addressing the press to that of Enron CEO Ken Lay in the wake of the 2001 scandal.
The media demanded a revised, just punishment for Rice. This demand was bolstered by the general public, who broadcast matching sentiments across social media. The NFL wasted little time with parliamentary procedure. On the same day the video was released, Rice’s contract was terminated and the NFL turned a two-game suspension into an indefinite ban. Yet, as Rice’s self-immolation accelerated in the days after the footage was released, some voiced support.
The Unfortunate History of Floyd Mayweather
Floyd “Money” Mayweather was perhaps the most noteworthy of Rice’s defenders. Mayweather is best known for the $420 million he has earned fighting inside of a boxing ring. On September 10, Mayweather told the Associated Press that the NFL had “overreacted:” “I think there's a lot worse things that go on in other people's households . . . it’s just not caught on video.” That is probably true, but perhaps “Money” should have danced with the one that brung him.
Between 2002 and 2011, Mayweather faced seven sets of criminal charges related to domestic violence. The most notorious of these seven episodes came in September 2010, when Mayweather ruthlessly attacked the mother of three of his children and kept mistress, Josie Harris. The police, Harris, and the children all corroborated the details that follow - No specific point has ever been contradicted.
Although Mayweather took up with another woman, he maintained a home for Harris and his children. It was that home which Mayweather entered at 5 a.m. one Sunday morning, parsed through Harris’s cell phone, and discovered texts from another man. Enraged, Mayweather launched a brutal assault upon Harris. He wrestled her to the floor and repeatedly struck the back of her head - This is known as “rabbit punching,” and is both extremely dangerous and certain to leave no facial bruising. The children were startled awake by their mother’s cries and raced into the living room. With his children looking on, Mayweather continued unabated. The eldest child eventually eluded Mayweather’s entourage, fled the home, and dialed 911 from a neighbor’s kitchen. Mayweather pled guilty to domestic assault that December. He was sentenced to only 90 days in jail. Outside of court, Mayweather denied any fault in the incident. To this day, when questioned, he will retort, “show me the bruises on her face.” Sure thing, Floyd – And what if there was a camera in that townhome?
440 Million Orders. The Rational Who?
The Largest Payday in the History of Pay-Per-View Broadcasting
Four years after Mayweather was imprisoned for assaulting Harris, and nine months after he came to Rice’s defense, “Money” squared off against Manny Pacquiao in the “Fight of the Century.” In the months leading up to the bout, the wolf was stripped of his tattered sheep’s clothing. Spurred on by a public that had for months held itself out as against domestic abusers, the media hammered Mayweather: His past was exposed and his behavior was excoriated. More than 20,000 articles documenting Mayweather’s history of domestic violence hit the web in the month leading up to the fight.
But Mayweather proceeded unfazed. When questioned about Harris at a pre-fight press conference, he challenged, “show me the bruises on her face.” After two female reporters persisted in exposing and castigating Mayweather’s history, he had their press credentials were revoked. This attracted further scrutiny, but, as always, Mayweather persisted. This should come as no surprise– he stood to make a lot of money. For the Pacquiao bout, Mayweather contracted for 42% of all pay-per-view revenues. The fact that Mayweather would receive this slice of the pie was easily accessible information: every relevant news outlet published the figure.
Hedonistic Impulse and Status Anxiety: What Even Weber and Hedstrom cannot rationalize.
Even after Mayweather was exposed, even after the fact that he was expected to make nine figures from pay-per-view sales became a matter of common knowledge, something inexplicable happened. Americans purchased more than 4.4 million pay-per-view packages, which priced in at $99.50 each. Mayweather took home $180,000,000. One hundred and eighty million dollars in one night. A boundless mass – surely populated by many of the same individuals who demanded retribution for Rice in September - paid $180 million to Mayweather. That is a joke. And it inescapably evinces a lapse of rational choice theory.
If Weber’s and Hedstrom’s theory holds true, then most people are rational actors: They utilize available information, take account of alternatives, and select the option most consistent with their values. Great. So, what happened here? I have spent a lot of time thinking about that question. I have found no satisfying answer. Here are three non-starters. First, Immediacy of contribution? No. Mayweather received a defined percentage of every purchase; people who watch football on TV pass money along to players like Rice only through six other changing-of-the-hands. Second, prospect of rehabilitation? Negative. Rice was a first-time offender; Mayweather has been charged seven-times. Third, remorse? Another non-starter. Rice repeatedly apologized; Mayweather continues with his preposterous denial to this day.
The truth is as somber as it is clear. A certain self-satisfaction is attendant to taking-up with the angry mob, professing outrage, and advertising your morality by way of tweets or statuses. And it’s not so hard when someone else – someone like Roger Goodell – is the bad guy, the one condoning domestic violence. But things sure do get a bit tougher when a boycott of Saturday night’s trendy happening is required. What is one to do? Be one of those people who is not at that gathering? Why not just chip-in for the pay-per-view, forget about how much you said you hate domestic violence, and become one of the people who witnessed that thing. Personal values and stated ideals are trumped by hedonistic impulse and status anxiety. Rational actors, where art thou? |
|
|