Scandal

 

Human beings are attracted to scandal. Recently, the Roger Goodell handling of the Ray Rice assault in a Las Vegas casino has gotten plenty of buzz. I admit it, I am drawn to the scent of a scandal, of supposedly good people getting caught doing bad things. Psychologically, it’s a satisfying experience to see other people do wrong and put oneself ahead of them in the moral character scale, and it allows us some reassurance that other people aren’t perfect too.

The Ray Rice handling is straight out of a movie, though, all the elements of a high-class mystery are there:

1.)    A cover-up where the NFL initially stated one thing and then went to another

2.)    A powerful organization doing billions of dollars of business

3.)    The leader of said organization allegedly “covering up” for friends/ people he is close to

4.)    A grainy Las Vegas elevator tape showing the franchise player for a team striking his wife and then dragging her out of the elevator. Horrific as the contents of the video were, it soon got overshadowed by the circumstances surrounding the tape and the cover-up.

5.)    NFL denying the existence of the elevator, then the videotape suddenly emerging on TMZ, forcing the NFL to retract its comments and saying they never received the tape.

6.)    A mysterious woman in the NFL who apparently received the videotape and made a call indicating that what was on the tape was “bad.”

7.)    The leader of the NFL not stepping down amid calls for his head.

As with many conspiracies, the actual act creating the scandal, while bad, isn’t as interesting as the cover-up; the efforts people make to suppress the information, and the eventual pie-in-the-face moment when it gets revealed to the public and makes the cover-up look that much worse. There’s the inherent comedic/satisfaction value of “you tried to cover it up so that no one knows, but now it’s blown up in your face and everyone knows.” It’s really synonymous with the most embarrassing moment someone has, where everyone can’t help but laugh at someone’s misfortune. The embarrassing moment sticks in everyone’s mind because it is so far from the norm and also such a satisfactory experience, to see someone fall from grace. Consider Bill Clinton stating on national television that “he never had sexual relations with that woman” and then several months later appearing before national TV and admitting that he lied. Nothing attracts people more than “sweeping something under the rug,” It also sets the stage perfectly for conspiracy theories and speculation about a larger scheme. It’s tough to say what place the Roger Goodell- Ray Rice scandal will have in the history of scandals other than that it will probably rank below Watergate, the JFK assassination, and the Whitewater (almost forgot this nickname for the Bill Clinton- Lewinsky scandal), but it definitely has all the elements of a great political (really, it’s arguable that the NFL has more sway over viewers than politics) and won’t be forgotten soon.

 

On a completely different topic, I have a hard time knowing when to get a haircut. Are there hair consultants out there who can be trusted to give good advice? Hairdressers would seem to have a conflict of interest, while friends and family either 1.) don’t give great advice because my mom has a different standard when it comes to hair, and 2.) don’t give their honest opinion due to the “does this make me look fat?” effect: they don’t want to offend you.

It seems like there are different standards of hair in different societies. In Japan, for example, most people have long hair; they style it differently and I’m guessing trim it when they need to, but most men leave their hair long. In America, though, especially in professional companies, most men keep a pretty short cut. There’s also a difference depending on one’s ethnicity; as an Asian male my hair tends to curl when it gets longer, making it look tussled and unkempt. However, few things irk me more than when I decide to go get a haircut and someone later comments, “O I didn’t think you needed to get a haircut.” Or “I have longer hair than you and I didn’t go get a cut.” Other people, like LeBron James in the Nike commercials and Avon Barksdale in Season 1 of the Wire, get their hair cut despite barely having any hair.  I haven’t really gotten a universal answer on this and am still seeking.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan