Dec. 16, 2009

To proceed with cautionary tale is pointless pursuit

By Ray Ratto | CBSSports.com Columnist

I rise today in support of Comrade Freeman's postulation viz. football players, infidelity and the death of Steve McNair. In fact, I wish to add to it with my own less scientific poll of high school athletes I know when asking about Tiger Woods.

There was one reaction -- well, two morphed into one. Laughter, followed by "Man, is he stupid."

It's futile to expect a lot of people to change their behavior because of Steve McNair's death. (Getty Images)

But as a cautionary tale, it is, like most cautionary tales, useless. We've covered this before, but we're going to cover it again.

Bad behavior does not change because someone saw someone else undone by the same behavior. Period. Lectures don't change it. Close calls don't change it. Often, even being caught doesn't change it. It changes only when the person behaving badly decides that there is a better way to live, and all the cajoling, pleading and inspiring words from perfect strangers are of no value.

Comrade Freeman's example of the player (and playa, as it turns out) who saw the light after McNair's murder and dismissed his four girlfriends is such an anomaly that it almost beggars the imagination. Good on the fellow for figuring it out, but he is among the lucky very few.

Most people in a position of wealth and power (this isn't just an athletic thing, as the voters of South Carolina can attest) just look at McNair and Woods, see the flaws in their situations now that we all have, and say, "Well, I'm smarter than that. I'll just be more careful."

And some actually are more careful and get away with it. Just as many aren't. I have no raw data on this, as there is none to be had on "Spouses With Multiple Affairs Who Were Never Detected," for the perfectly sensible reason that they were never detected.

The point is, in supporting Comrade Freeman, we wish to add only that the power of the cautionary tale is highly overrated. As Chris Rock said, more or less, a person's fidelity runs in inverse proportion to his options.

See, this is not an issue of faith in marriage, or of the power of sex, although those are included in the handbook. This is mostly about the intoxications of freedom of action: "I can, because I want to, and I want to because I can." Infidelity, after all, is not restricted to the rich and influential -- but it is more readily available.

This is also an issue of the way folks are wired in the early years, the psychological component outsiders can only guess at, although they guess with such certitude that you wonder why they all aren't working in office buildings rather than the third stool from the door at Al's Tiki Room at closing time.

And no cautionary tale works there, either.

This, ultimately, is more than just about the famously unfaithful, as much fun as that might be. It also speaks to one more thing that cautionary tales do not prevent, namely, our own societal need to stop at the scene of an automobile accident, walk up to one of the victims and say in a loud voice, "You shouldn't have done that." And then turning back to your car and telling the kids in the back seat, "Now don't you kids do that, either."

They know, already. And they still might get in a wreck later in life, too.

In short, the cautionary tale is told mostly for the benefit of the teller, a corollary of the primal "I told you so" instinct. Comrade Freeman's research on the effects of the McNair incident prove this yet again. People learn when they're ready to learn, not when others tell them to learn. But they'll be told anyway, and they'll nod and say yes, and then they'll do it again.

The Steve McNair story, then is not a cautionary tale even though it could serve as one, because behaviors are harder to change than a lecture has the power to affect.

And the Tiger Woods story, thus, is not a cautionary tale. It's just an enormous and bizarre train wreck in which more and more trains come up the track wanting to be part of the wreck. No story in modern memory has moved so far beyond its original boundaries so quickly -- this is almost like Watergate shown through time-lapse photography, only without the sticky burden-of-proof component.

So a salute, then, to Comrade Freeman, who has shown us yet again that behavior is changed mostly on the individual level, and through instruments far more exacting than the public scold, and the falseness of the cautionary tale.

Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.