The new clerisy cont'd

Picking up from yesterday's post let's talk about the way Ta Nehisi Coates talks about Rihanna.

Rihanna, you may remember, was so badly beaten by Chris Brown that she was hospitalized. Now she and he are playing bizarre games about it. You really want to read this thing for yourself [link fixed]. I'm serious, you need to have a grip on the moral character of Rihanna to appreciate the moral conclusions Coates draws from the situation.

Okay, if you've read it, read his take:

I don't know that Rihanna owes anyone anything. I think what bothers me is the willingness to  trivialize the behavior of men who like to put women in the hospital. Most of those women will not have the resources of a Rihanna.

There you have the new clerisy exceptionalism at its  purest.

Let's start with: "I don't know that Rihanna owes anyone anything." Seriously. He doesn't "know" if Rihanna, a public figure whom millions of people admire, has any moral responsibilities to anyone at all? He doesn't think she owes it to herself or to society or to God to be morally serious? I know lots of people who are completely unknown outside their family and workplace who manage to shoulder that responsibility. Why can't we expect the same of Rihanna?

Now, keep that in mind and read the next sentence again, "I think what bothers me is the willingness to trivialize the behaviour of men who like to put women in hospital." I don't know if you could pack more wishy washy moral weakness into one sentence than that. "I think what bothers me ..." Are you kidding me? We're talking about two people who have exploited violence against women for fun and profit and you only think you know what bothers you?

But it gets worse, he's already told us he doesn't know that Rihanna owes anyone anything. Okay, so who is he blaming in thus utterly passive sentence? Who is doing this trivializing? If it's Rihanna then the first sentence is nonsense. If what happened between them is not subject to any moral obligations to anything bigger than her current whims, then what is subject to? If, on the other hand, he isn't blaming Rihanna for this, then who is he blaming. Did this trivializing just happen or are there people with names that could and should be named who are doing it.

Finally, notice how stupid Coates, a man who is rarely stupid, is being about violence against women. Does he seriously imagine that this sort of violence happens because the men who do it "like to put women in hospital"? If it really were the case that only men (and women!) like that were responsible for domestic violence, then domestic violence would be a very rare thing. Domestic violence is a larger problem because a lot of men and women who can tell their partner they love them and care for them and mean it, and who can also swear they never would want to hurt them and mean that too, will, in moments of emotional turmoil (often fueled by alcohol or other drugs), turn around and demean, degrade, hit or savagely beat the person they love.

The thing that drives this wishy washyness in the new clerisy is a deep fear of any politically enforced morality. There is a desire to leave all moral questions in the "individual" realm except to the extent that they might cause social problems (and even then ...). Coates can't state a simple truth here that I am sure even he can plainly see and that is that Rihanna is a jerk. She is just a self-centered jerk with a lot of money and influence and the class of people who have the most influence over which entertainers get to have the sort of money and influence Rihanna has are terrified of moral judgment.