I Guess Jameis Winston Gets the Grandfather Clause, Too

what a difference three years makes

Last year I wrote a piece pointing out that our arts & culture media has a very, shall we say, selective set of standards when it comes to the consequences of accusations of sexual misconduct. We are told that there are important rules of public morality that we have to bring to bear on our artistic tastes - we are not allowed to “separate the art from the artist,” or so says TikTok - and yet those rules shift constantly depending on who the moral guardians like and don’t. On one hand, you have someone like Woody Allen, who has been the subject of one disputed sexual assault allegation based on the memories of a 7-year-old from 33 years ago - very serious allegations, to be taken very seriously, obviously. It took a long time, but Allen’s career was eventually ended by this accusation, with Amazon burning hundreds of millions of dollars to get out of a deal with him. He’s now persona non grata and does not get invited to industry events or receive industry awards. And you’re perfectly within your rights to agree with that outcome. I’m not out to dictate your moral framework to you.

But as I pointed out, Mike Tyson has been convicted of raping a teenager, accused of raping a different teenager, and has openly admitted to serial and horrific violence against women. (He said that the best punch he ever threw was against his ex-fiancé Robin Givens in his memoir.) And yet the media treats him as this lovable old uncle figure, a rascally goofball who we all love. His fight with gimmick boxer Jake Paul provoked a ton of appreciation for the ol’codger! But, again, he has a long history of allegedly hitting and sexually assaulting women. And it provoked me to ask, like… what are the rules, here? Why would the accusation against Allen render him a pariah while Tyson’s long history of domestic and sexual violence is so easily ignored? People got mad at me for asking, but nobody had a remotely compelling answer. I don’t think there is one. I don’t think there’s any coherent way to insist that Woody Allen should be cast out forever for his alleged crime while cheerfully enjoying Mike Tyson’s second career as a beloved kitschy figure. That hasn’t stopped a lot of people from doing just that, though.

So now consider this recent NFL controversy regarding (former) Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker. Up until recently, he was regarded by most as the greatest kicker in NFL history, Mr. Automatic, with a special talent for drilling difficult 50+ yard field goals. But last season was easily Tucker’s worst, leaving him as an average kicker at best and probably worse than that. Much more seriously, Tucker has recently been accused of sexual misconduct by no fewer than 16 massage therapists in the greater Baltimore area, which no doubt played a role in the team’s decision this week to cut him. Many have pointed out that, had Tucker played up to his standards last season, he very well may have survived the scandal. But another controversy has bubbled up thanks to the statement the Ravens put out announcing Tucker’s release, which many in the football media regarded as too reverential towards Tucker. Commentators like ESPN analyst Mina Kimes and Miami-based sports personality Dan Le Batard complained that it was inappropriate for a player accused of such awful deeds to be treated with such dignity, with Kimes specifically complaining about the tone of the statement. Read the room! Not cool guys!

OK, but…

If you’re unaware, Jameis Winston is a quarterback, now signed with the New York Giants, who has become something of a meme as a player. He was the first overall draft pick for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2015 and as such was expected to save the franchise, but his Bucs career was widely considered a disappointment and he was replaced by NFL legend Tom Brady in 2020. He particularly had a problem with turnovers, which have been seen as part of his “gunslinger” style that produces spectacular plays and spectacular mistakes. He notoriously produced a 30/30 season for Tampa Bay - that is, 30 touchdown passes and 30 interceptions, a remarkable combination of success and failure. He’s also just sort of weird, with a famous pregame speech involving him “eating a W” for his teammates in a strange display that went viral. Since his tenure with the Bucs he’s become a consummate journeyman, bouncing from one team to another, too talented to remain unsigned but too volatile of a player to rest your fortunes on. In other words, he’s consistent entertainment, a real kook!

Unfortunately….

While playing college ball at Florida State University, Winston was accused of a particularly ugly sexual assault against another student. Compounding matters, the Tallahassee police appear to have undertaken a coverup to protect the local school’s star quarterback, including sitting on DNA evidence that would implicate Winston for months. The local authorities declined to press charges and the school failed to find Winston guilty of violating the school’s personal conduct police. Winston’s accuser sued him and he countersued for defamation; the suits were settled out of court. The accuser later sued Florida State under Title IX for failing to protect her and her rights and was awarded a settlement of $950,000. Winston, for his part, apparently learned little, as in 2018 he was suspended three games by the league following an accusation that he had groped an Uber driver in a sexual manner. There are of course other incidents and rumors you can investigate. This all seems like sufficient basis for Winston to be (at least) referred to with a serious tone by NFL media.

OK, so - is Kimes’s attitude towards Tucker and how he should be treated consistent with how she talks about Winston? It’s really hard to say that it has been. Kimes has criticized Winston’s history in the past, but in recent years she’s also repeatedly treated him and his NFL existence as a kind of lighthearted joke. Look for yourself. The tweet above involves him in a reference to the HBO comedy The Righteous Gemstones and speaks directly to the way NFL Twitter treats Winston as a constant source of light chuckles. In fact you can find Kimes using Winston as a source of yuck yucks all over her Twitter feed, to the point that it’s referred to as a running bit:

OK, so, like… you were talking about tone, right? This isn’t the tone that you want people to use with Tucker, right? You’d prefer for Tucker to be treated with the judgment and seriousness that befits the allegations against him. But if you want that, then why do you treat Winston as some sort of comic prop? If you want to talk about due process and basic fairness and how Winston was never actually charged, then I’m onboard, totally. But Tucker hasn’t been found guilty of anything, right? What are the rules here? Yes, the allegations are different and Winston was accused more than a decade ago. But to say that implies some sort of clear and stable rules about how this all operates, and I can find none in this particular kind of public grandstanding. Woody Allen still gets condemned despite the age of the accusations and the lack of conviction, after all, just like Ben Roethlisberger is still judged despite never being convicted. To repeat myself, consistency is the heart of morality, and without consistency, people have every right to dismiss your moral claims. A Ravens fan who excuses what Tucker did because of their tribal loyalty is certainly engaged in moral failure. But that person would have every right to look at the way Kimes regards Winston - at her tone - and ask why exactly her rules about sexual assault are so malleable.

None of this is about grinding a personal axe; I like Mina Kimes and Dan Le Batard quite a bit. In fact, it’s precisely because I value their integrity that I find this all kind of baffling. They - and some people at the Ringer and from Sports Illustrated and sundry other prominent places in the NFL media - have taken up roost as the guardians of NFL moral propriety but seem to bring far more in the way of righteous heat than they do moral light. And honestly I think this is just one more site of petty hypocrisy and inconsistency in our present era, where social justice politics have inspired seemingly everyone to take on the mantle of self-righteous gasbag moral arbiter. This isn’t even partisan, really, as in the 21st century the main practitioners of public moralizing have switched from conservatives to liberals. Once again, I end up thinking that this tendency to mistake judgment for politics is bad for the judged, yes, but also for the judges, as it puts them into an impossible position. The truth is that everyone who engages in these kinds of moral theatrics eventually is proven to be a hypocrite; human beings simply don’t have the capacity for total ethical consistency, but that’s what’s required when you spend all your time judging other people. Perhaps every religion and major ethical system in human history has had a prohibition against self-righteousness for a reason. In any event, Kimes is popular and the people who matter in NFL media want to both judge Tucker and make jokes about Winston, so it’s unlikely any conversation about this will take place. But that’s its own little kind of hypocrisy, isn’t it?

Someone I knew in grad school was big on the endless-judgment school of progressive politics, relentlessly found people in the public eye lacking and excoriated them online, delighted in telling you that your favorites were problematic, that the show you like was guilty of white supremacy. You know the type. She was also a huge David Bowie fan. I pointed out that Bowie had been accused of having sex with a 14-year-old when he was an adult. She got mad at me - that’s usually how this goes - and dissembled and prevaricated and practiced avoidance to try and square that little circle. (You know that type of thing, too.) As I told her at the time, though, I didn’t need to engage in any of that as a big David Bowie fan myself. Bowie is not my rabbi and I am not his prosecutor, I don’t turn to his music for moral instruction, and so I don’t need to come up with some convoluted logic to exonerate him. All I need to do is enjoy the tunes.