Draymond Green and Sniveling Toddlers

The paradox is starting to break people.

I don’t believe this to be a controversial statement, but if Draymond Green were not a professional athlete he’d be in jail, and he’d belong in jail, because he routinely physically assaults people.

He was suspended for yesterday’s game against the Kings for stomping on Domantas Sabonis, this after viciously sucker punching his teammate Jordan Poole in the face earlier this season, presumably while in a jealous rage about Poole receiving a lucrative contract, and coming within centimeters or millimeters of sending the more svelte Poole to intensive care, at which point a felony assault charge would have been difficult to duck.

So, just because he missed with his punch, we, as basketball fans, as a society, have to continue enduring this dude who obviously has bad breath and all of his exhausting histrionics, which, if he were only two inches shorter, would culminate in him shooting someone at a yard sale or birthday party, and he’d then be put in the place with other people who routinely commit assault and we wouldn’t have to deal with it.

But, due to Green’s position as part of a great NBA team, not only is he not in jail, but he has the nerve to lecture others about what is wrong with society, and how others should conduct themselves, a lot of boilerplate absolutes, the following quote selected at random, from an op-ed he ‘co-wrote’:

“I’ll continue to push these issues and stand behind those willing to fight for us as Black people that are being oppressed in so many different situations.”

Green’s social awareness and his ability to convince much of the public that he’s a socially conscious man and not a violent ogre draws an interesting juxtaposition, one I’ve been obsessed with for quite some time, which I’m going to coin as the Sniveling Toddler Paradox.

The meaning should be self-explanatory, but if you’ve ever had a small child or looked after one or simply been out in public, you’ll routinely see them testing boundaries by throwing tantrums in an effort to get what they want (usually ice cream. Why is it always ice cream? I don’t know, I don’t have kids.)

Sometimes the parent stands their ground, but usually, after a few minutes of the kid screaming at the top of their lungs, they relent and give them what they want in order to pacify them, thereby rewarding bad behavior and setting a dangerous standard which will turn the kid into a monster.

See, if Draymond Green were not an aggressive antagonistic person prone to physical violence, he wouldn’t be an NBA Champion, he wouldn’t have a lot of money, and nobody would have to listen to him pretending he is a chill dude.

Society rewards the bad behavior.

There are countless examples of this, but a common incarnation that pisses me off is the reformed criminal.

Now, I certainly believe people can change, and I applaud anyone who makes an effort to improve themselves, but this post-Oprah thirty-year-run of former thugs and goons who turn over a new leaf and think they are entitled to public speaking gigs because they stopped committing crimes is becoming beyond tiresome.

Okay, so you used to be a drug addict and you laundered a bunch of money from the insurance company you worked for, and abandoned your wife and children, and then one time when you were on a psychotic bender you hired a hitman to kill your wife for insurance money, and then you went to prison and reformed yourself and you’re doing a Ted Talks.

Well then, I respect you, if you can change, and I can change, everybody can change, as Rocky once said, in Rocky IV.

But you know who I respect more than you: Someone who never did any of that. Like, my neighbor, Jim. He never hired a hitman to kill his wife. Maybe I’ll listen to his musings on morality before yours and consider him a much greater authority on the matter just by default, even if he’s not even on the topic.

Where’s his talk show appearance? Can I get his agent on the phone? Oh, he doesn’t have one.

Along those lines, I recently got pretty close to a publishing deal for a book but was told I didn’t have quite “enough of a platform.”

It occurred to me that someone like OJ Simpson or right-wing power-bottom twink Kyle Rittenhouse would not have that same issue. They have platforms. Because they have killed people. It would be much easier for them to secure a book deal than for someone who has not killed anyone.

So, as embodied by the Sniveling Toddler Paradox, society is actually encouraging me to kill someone and then turn my life around in order to secure a book deal, and I’m haunted by the fact that Draymond Green is going to get paid tens of millions of dollars to appear on TNT as soon as he retires because he is famous for punching people in the nuts.

He’s going to be wearing sweaters. It’s going to be infuriating. Being a douchebag pays, but the media conversation on a tangential topic has evolved in recent years.

A lot of people at the networks noticed that mass shooters and serial killers crave attention and notoriety and that this often times had some part in their motivation to go on serial killing and raping sprees, and so perhaps it would be in poor taste to give them excessive coverage or allow them self-indulgent interviews or otherwise glorify their reprehensible behavior, as part of the Sniveling Toddler Paradox.

Sounds reasonable. Now, let’s take it a step further.