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The New England Patriots as Leading Indicator of Defining Deviancy Down

Can all of outside New England agree that the Patriots are bad actors, both on and off the field?

Mike Mulligan points to the on the field transgressions:

New England and its ever-resourceful coach, Bill Belichick, have risen to previously unmatched heights through hard work, total commitment, unerring adaptability and ingenious manipulation of the salary cap. But the Patriot Way also includes dirty tricks and questionable tactics, from gamesmanship on the field to video cameras on the sidelines.

Mulligan’s solution?

The Giants should cheat.

Turning to off the field malfeasances, Ann Killion notes:

Brady ramped up his celebrity status to a whole new level, when Moynahan announced she was pregnant with his baby while Brady was spotted in Paris nuzzling Brazilian underwear model Gisele Bundchen. Even Broadway Joe never pulled off a transcontinental, double-timing stunt like that.

Uber-celebrities have to have a dark side. They can’t be too goody-goody. With the child-out-of-wedlock, upgrade-to-supermodel, Brady showed his Brad Pitt edge. John Edward Thomas Moynahan was born in August, and given the demands of Brady’s job and his constant moments-with-Gisele sightings, he hasn’t exactly been doing a lot of baby bonding.

Not to mention, Coach Bill Belichick’s involvement in ”Vincent and Sharon Shenoca’s messy divorce proceeding.”

Yet, instead of exposing the Patriots to society’s disapprobation, the media holds them up as role models. Cheat on the game, cheat on your pregnant girlfriend, cheat on your wife, and get a pat on the back.

The Patriots’ continued favorable press calls to mind Patrick Moynihan’s famous 1993 essay, Defining Deviancy Down:

I proffer the thesis that, over the past generation, ... the amount of deviant behavior in American society has increased beyond the levels the community can “afford to recognize” and that, accordingly, we have been re-defining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the “normal” level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by any earlier standard.

Indeed, at least in so far as Tom Brady’s personal life is concerned, the uncritical acceptance of his conduct is an exemplar of one of the problems Moynihan specifically chose for emphasis; namely, the explosion in the rate at which children are born out of wedlock:

What is going on here is simply that a large increase in what once was seen as deviancy has provided opportunity to a wide spectrum of interest groups that benefit from re-defining the problem as essentially normal and doing little to reduce it.