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. 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 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.”

The Unfortunate History of Floyd Mayweather

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 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?

The Largest Payday in the History of Pay-Per-View Broadcasting

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.

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 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-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.