There are two things clear about the nature of those whose days are spent in the Academy: They have thin skins and refined sensibilities.  So much so that their expressions of outrage are often mistaken for love notes.  Which is why George Washington Law School’s Jonathan Turley, who sits in the prestigious Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law, shocked me with his embrace of violence. 

The scene was the US Open Tennis Championship.  If you’ve never had the pleasure, it’s a very refined event.  You can hear a pin drop during play, the crowd is that quiet and well-mannered.  There is an etiquette to tennis, and it’s long been observed by all, a remarkable thing when you consider that the crowds are quite large and increasingly diverse. 

Tennis has always struggled with the absence of crowd-pleasing violent outbursts as in hockey.

The still of the game was broken, however:

There’s no dispute that the man with a drinking problem (as evidenced by the front of his shirt) was obnoxious, offensive and completely inappropriate.  But then there’s the slap.

The fight reportedly started because the young man was swearing loudly and acting obnoxious in the stands before being confronted by a woman and her father. At one point the woman lightly slaps the man and other fans scream “throw the bum out.” If you watch this video, the man appears to continue to trash talk and eventually prompts the father (who appeared earlier to want to avoid the confrontation) to take after him. They went tumbling over two rows of seats.

Notably, you can barely make out what’s being said between the antagonists, but the sound of the slap rings clearly.  To call it a “light slap” leaves me to wonder about Turley.  That was a damn good slap, shocking as it happened and more so as the obnoxious man didn’t haul off on the woman in retaliation.

If this fight started over the young man’s swearing I have no sympathy for him. There is a segment of our society who were simply raised poorly and cannot watch a sporting event without being crude and obnoxious. I know people who no longer take their kids to Philly baseball games because the crowd is often too vulgar and inappropriate for kids. Stadiums have the ability to toss out and even ban spectators who lack manners or restraint. They are better off at home watching and swearing with their friends.

While the loud mouth’s conduct was, in itself, clearly wrong, since when does being obnoxious justify physical violence?  Sure, security would have done well to remove him far earlier, although at a New York Giants Football game, the nice folks in the nearby seats would have handled a mouth like his quickly and cleanly.  New York fans aren’t anything like Philadelphia Eagles fans, who tend to follow the dubious path of their favorite team into the gutter.  But I digress.

Regardless of how loud and offensive the fellow was, the woman doesn’t get to smack him for it, nor does the old man, who appears to kick something (perhaps his drink) as he moves into his space with his hands at the ready, get to add insult to injury.  Sure, the old man appears to make one brave but foolish decision in going after the drinker, but that fall down the two rows of seats is going to be awfully painful at his age.  Awfully painful.

The woman and her elderly companion would have done well to get stadium security and have them deal with the loud-mouth.  She was not, however, entitled to give him a smack, whether light or hard.  While the sounds of others in the area suggest that the crowd was uniformly in favor of the drinker getting the boot, and understandably so since he was annoying them as well while the woman and old man were merely doing the dirty work on behalf of the crowd, it offers no justification for violence and is merely self-serving. 

But what of Jon Turley? What would Shapiro think of you sitting in his chair applauding a violent response to mere words?  It may have been publicly interesting, but I don’t think that’s what Shapiro had in mind.  Granted, it reveals a certain machismo on the part of a nationally recognized legal scholar that took me by surprise, but advocating a violent reaction, at a tennis match, is hardly the sort of pedagogical product one would expect.  And why would anybody go see Philly’s baseball game?