WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT SOCIAL MEDIA WOULD HAVE THIS CIVIL IMPACT?

WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT SOCIAL MEDIA WOULD HAVE THIS CIVIL IMPACT?

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© September 17, 2014

My international readers have not found my current missives on “The World in Disorder” of particular significance, and rightly so, as the subject matter has dealt primarily with parochial issues relative to the United States, where it might be somewhat difficult to see themselves in that focus.

That is not true with regard to the avalanche of domestic abuse and child abuse cases that have surface, and continue to surface in the National Football League, America’s obsessive pastime and societal addiction.  Such an addiction is not distinct to the United States, alone.  

In this country, football season can no sooner be over and fans have to review the games on television, discuss them endlessly on radio, or create and play fantasy football video games at the high school, college, and professional level until finally being recused by another NFL season.

There are 2,000 professional football players in the NFL, and most of them are millionaires from their salaries alone, and those of star or superstar quality receive revenue far beyond such salaries in endorsements for radio and television, appearances and selling their memorabilia. 

Only a handful of these players in this violent physical sport get into trouble with the law, or at least as far as the common fan or the general public knows.

That has all changed with the social media. 

Now, everyone has a camera and instant recorder to not only record untoward behavior, but to instantly disseminate it worldwide. 

Everyone is a journalist without the pedigree or credentials, while the public has an insatiable appetite for gore, mayhem, misconduct and inappropriate behavior that those so engaged in recording are only too willing to share.

My moral code was set a very long time ago, as if it had concrete legs.  It has not been a flag for me as my readers know only too well.  Nor am I in the business of championing those people with their smart phones without conscience or concern for invading other people’s privacy looking for dirt.  I have always taken comfort in the biblical refrain, he who be without sin cast the first stone.

But I have to confess that social media has registered some well deserve kudos for inadvertently if accidentally raising our consciousness level.

This has currently raised our civility by social media’s attention to domestic abuse and child abuse of football players in the NFL. 

Today, while eating my lunch, I heard a former NFL coach talk about morality on television, a subject that I thought had been put so far to rest that it was no longer relevant to societal discussion. 

Civility has been so absence from the normal discourse of the day that I, on occasion, have witnessed what I would call the barbaric. 

This coach, however, was saying, “The NFL is all about winning games and making money and has rejected the relevance of morality, that is, until social media stepped in and threatened the NFL’s bottom line.”  How so?

What the coach was referring to is that a beer company with a $1.2 billion advertising contract with the NFL, along with a soup company, and several others were threatening to withdraw their advertising dollars if something wasn’t done about these domestic and child abuse cases.  Wow!

Like our society in general, the NFL is a reactive body, and this got the NFL’s attention.

Now, the rhetoric, which has always been moral and civil, has to put its actions where its mouth is.  This is a new experience and social media has made the NFL take note.  Society in general and the individual in particular should take note.

How we play our games determines how we conduct ourselves in society, and not the other way around. 

With all the excesses of social media, with all the damage it has done, and can do to personal privacy, it has a role, a moral role, when the movers and shakers of society misstep, and behave with impunity.  This seems to be such a case.

This former NFL coach said, “Morality is bigger than winning or making money, bigger than any game.”  We shall see if he is right, if the NFL does develop a policy regarding moral in turpitude that has concrete legs and is not a flag blowing in the wind.  Stay tuned!

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