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    The Rorschach Of The New York Times

    By Michael Maiello on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 5:53pm | Politics

    In The Watchmen graphic novel, the vigilante hero Rorschach is inspired by news of the real-life murder of Kitty Genovese, which occurred in public, while the residents of outer Queens neighborhood Kew Gardens watched from their apartment windows.  Nobody went out to the street to help her or called the police.  Some say nobody heard her screams for help, some say it's an example of the bystander's syndrome -- we tend to walk past the unpleasant.  Driven by a total lack of faith in the compassion and morality of the mass of humanity, Rorschach's heroism goes to a dark place of torture and murder.  Basically, he'd fit right in if Dick Cheney were in charge of The Superfriends.

    I don't need to be the millionth person to recount the act of pederasty witnessed by an adult who did nothing to stop it or report it to the police.  David Brooks says, like Rorschach, that  this is an example of humanity losing its moral compass.  We have so internalized "whatever floats your boat," and "if it feels good, do it," that we can no longer even recognize  breached ethical or legal norms.  Not in the locker room, in the bed room or in the office.  Brooks describes us as basically stunted.  Which seems a broad generalization to make about one event, and very, very Rorschach.

    Where Brooks and I disagree, of course, is that I don't think there should be many rules about what consenting adults do in private.  He does.  He thinks permissiveness about adult sexuality leads to this.  It's the same slippery slope argument that Genghis demolishes in Blowing Smoke where same sex marriage leads inevitably to Centaur weddings.

    What happened in that Penn State locker room is clearly that a low ranked employee with little money and no power failed to act heroically to save some one even weaker than himself.  I am content to let him live with that and not to pile on the criticisms.  I am certainly content not to universalize his experience.

    When I walk to the train in a few minutes, I could witness a street crime.  I do not know what I would do about that.  Would I intervene?  Move on?  Find a cop? Nobody knows until they're in it.  I don't think it's healthy to fantasize too much about our own potential heroics.  If you can imagine the scenario, then the chances of it actually happening that way are quite unlikely in any event.  That's just probability.

    Are we a moral people?  I wonder how much the question can matter when we disagree so strongly on matters of morality.  If you find yourself in trouble, some people will rescue you.  Some will not.  It will be difficult to predict who are the heroes and who will fall short (or simply be unable for reasons you might not understand.)

    That's another problem with the Brooks analysis.  He judging an individual who he doesn't know.  He has no sense of his subject's mind.   Why did he fail to act?  We don't know.  So, it's probably a bad analogy to draw universal conclusions from.

    I think most of my fellow citizens are all right.  And I hope they have fun doing things that Mr. Brooks would tsk at.  My obsession with him, by the way, stems from the way he uses language, which is a pretty blatant attempt to make his biases and preferences sound like science.  There's some E.O. Wilson mixed with Joseph Campbell in his voice and it's extremely captivating.  I spend so much time on Brooks because I believe he is convincing people to believe something that it ultimately detrimental to both individual liberty and society.  You don't want a world of Rorschachs meting out justice behind closed doors.  Not all of the time, anyway.  That's where Brooks leads us.

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    How dare you! Extrapolating from odious crimes to the depraved state of American society is the foundation of the great science of punditry. What are the nation's most distinguished columnists supposed to write about? Snide tirades against bourgeois liberals are so last Thursday.

    PS Thanks for the h/t, but you've totally misrepresented my position. In modern America, no one opposes marriage between consenting adult centaurs of opposite sexes. It's the mixing of centaurs with Level 12 Elven Clerics wielding +7 Swords of Infinite Erection that threaten to destroy the institution of marriage.


    by Michael Wolraich on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 6:23pm

    Well, what I ment was, people old first marry their horses and then have centaur babies, who old also want to get married. But, elves. My God, man, what have we done?

    by Michael Maiello on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 7:04pm

    Columnists?

    I thought we were talking about Communists for chrissakes.

    Like Bachmann recently noted:

    We must go back to basics and do things the way Red China does these things!


    by Richard Day on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 9:06pm

    I don't think it's healthy to fantasize too much about our own potential heroics.  If you can imagine the scenario, then the chances of it actually happening that way are quite unlikely in any event.

    Although I agree that it's difficult to know what we would do in a situation we haven't experienced yet, I disagree that it's unhealthy to step through what we think we should/would do. I think such mental exercises are a good prophylactic against not knowing what to do if we do find ourselves in such a situation. The danger is merely in being too certain about what we would do. Additionally, I think there's a valid social role in us condemning such failures to act.


    by Verified Atheist on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 7:24pm

    The danger is merely in being too certain about what we would do.

    I think this an excellent point.  Artappraiser just posted a link to this video of Jon Ritchie, who grew up in PA and was recruited by Sandusky (he eventually went to Stanford before going onto the NFL) - among other things he gives his take on McQueary's inaction on the matter, which is less judgmental than most.

    Additionally, I think there's a valid social role in us condemning such failures to act.

    I probably spent a little too much time on comment threads on ESPN regarding this topic, but there were a lot of people who were having a very intense discussion on matters related to individual responsibilty and society, which one normally doesn't see on a site devoted to sports (thanks to moderators who would erase the inappropriate comments almost immediately). 

    Most people do not engage the issues like those represented by commentors on Dagblog.  A scandal and tragedy like this has provided an opportunity for people to reflect and engage on weighty matters they generally avoid.


    by Elusive Trope on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 7:50pm

    There is a difference between condemning a failure to act, and condemning the person who failed to act. I don't read Brooks for the reasons you've stated and more. That he would attempt to conflate the two is no surprise. That's what he does, and that is why I think your brilliant debunking of his methods is pretty dang heroic in its own way.

    Thanks, Destor.


    by bwakfat on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 9:19pm

    In The Watchmen graphic novel, the vigilante hero Rorschach is inspired by news of the real-life murder of Kitty Genovese, which occurred in public, while the residents of outer Queens neighborhood Kew Gardens watched from their apartment windows...

    Interesting to know that one of the genre of "graphic novels" I hear so much about but don't know personally, is still playing the "everything is black or white, good or evil" of the plain old vanilla comic books. (As opposed to say, addressing the complexities of the human condition presented in a lot of other kinds of fiction, low to high, since the Renaissance.) I thought they were popular because they were more sophisticated, like novels.

    Those interested in the complexities of real life might like to check up on more recent scholarship on the case of the supposed mythic Genovese murder "witnesses." What actually happened is more like a real Rorschach test, where everyone sees something different in those ink blots.


    by artappraiser on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 9:37pm

    Well, The Watchmen is more of a parody of super hero comics.  The Rorschach character is one on a continuum (the black and white absolutist) and definitely isn't the character that the story endorses.  But, mileage varies on these things.  Sometimes I think people use "graphic novel" because they don't like to say they're reading comics.

    The recent work on the Genovese incident is interesting.  The "bystanders callously let it happen" story might not have been true.  People do seem to see their biases in the story.


    by Michael Maiello on Tue, 11/15/2011 - 9:15am

    Brooks is taking the moral outrage everybody feels about the story to make a case against a morality based upon mutual consent. The move is odd in this particular instance because the criminal act was obviously not, by any stretch of the imagination, an act of mutual consent. The bait and switch Brooks employs is so upfront that it seems disingenuous to me. But as you say, it is hard to know what is happening in another person's mind.

    However that may be, I propose that developing a code of what comprises mutual consent has been a powerful source of good responses to awful behavior. For those who are willing to intervene in something that isn't their own business, what standard could be more clear than that?


    by moat on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 9:48pm

    BTW, the crawl below MNF on ESPN has McQueary claiming that he did stop what was happening that evening. USA Today has the same story:

    McQueary e-mailed the following about the 2002 incident when he was a graduate assistant at the school:

     
    "I did the right thing…you guys know me…"
     
    "... the truth is not out there fully... I didn't just turn and run... I made sure it stopped..."
     
    "... I had to make quick tough decisions…"

    by Donal on Mon, 11/14/2011 - 10:18pm

    Also that he reported it to the police. 

    Who did what with it...?


    by AmericanDreamer on Wed, 11/16/2011 - 3:15pm

    Yeah, this is a new wrinkle.  But not wholly unexpected, considering what people here have brought up about Kitty Genovese, which is that not only can these stories not be universalized, they aren't even necessarily factually accurate.


    by Michael Maiello on Wed, 11/16/2011 - 4:51pm

    A reminder that China just went through a big "bystander effect" cultural crisis, with the story of "little YeuYeu." Just in case someone tries to claim it's just American culture that fixates on individual tragic stories to get a grip on bigger questions. That's universal, in mho, and not just contemporary; there are many historical examples as well.

    This whole thing often comes up in the blogosphere this way: with the more wonkish complaining that "the media" is causing the heavy coverage of some tragic story that is not important in the scheme of things  (i.e., Anna Nichol Smith, etc.) Actually in most cases, I think "the media" is doing that because the public is responding that getting more info on the story is what they are interested in. (Josh Marshall addresses that whole thing in a different vain--pandering to interest in horse race politics--when he talks about not being interested in "eat your spinach" coverage of issues.) I think where the more wonkish err is in not seeing that what individual tragedy stories are popular are important in understanding their own culture. I do want "spinach" coverage to be supported and maintained, but I think that thinking that can be done to the exclusion of pop "personal interest" feeding frenzies is folly. I can mock the interest if I think it's excessive and silly and overblown, but I can't stop it, and I ignore it as culturally significant to the detriment of my own understanding.


    by artappraiser on Tue, 11/15/2011 - 10:58am

    FWIW, you're one of the best "spinach" servers I know.


    by Verified Atheist on Tue, 11/15/2011 - 11:08am

    Well thank you, I think.  Ironically, turns out I am not a big fan of spinach for myself, much preferring arugula and chard. But I do grow spinach for the spouse's use. cheeky


    by artappraiser on Wed, 11/16/2011 - 2:46pm

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