Stipulated: for police to arrest proud South Carolina mother Shannon Cooper for loudly cheering during her daughter’s high school graduation over the weekend was excessive, unreasonable, and stupid. The graduation crowd had been asked to hold their cheering until all students’ names had been called, and warned relatives of the graduates that they would be removed from the facility if they disobeyed the rule. As some parents inevitably do at every graduation, Cooper ignored the reasonable request, but this time, the defiant parent paid a steep price. Police charged her with disorderly conduct and placed her in a detention center.
Let me also make this clear, however: Cooper behaved like a selfish jerk. She is being showered with sympathy now, cast as Innocent Parent Abused For Being Proud of Her Baby, but that’s not who she is. She is the theater audience member who ignores the request to turn off her cell phone, and disrupts the actors and the audience when it rings, and the movie audience member who chats loudly during the show. She is the pet owner who doesn’t clean up after her Great Dane at the dog park. She is the able-bodied shopper who parks in a handicapped parking space to run into the store “for just a minute.” She is the person who breaks into line, who brings 30 items to the “15 items only” checkout station, who takes more than her share of free food at events. She is, in short, the kind of person who doesn’t believe reasonable rules apply to her, and who constantly challenges the rest of us to “make a big deal” out of relatively minor demonstrations of contempt for everyone she comes into contact with.
It’s very difficult to cope with people like Cooper, who inflict themselves on all of us every day. They are habitually unethical, because fairness, consideration, respect for others and simple good manners don’t matter to them. They know that they are violating reasonable rules, policies and requests, and that if everyone behaved as they did, systems would break down and life would be hell. They just don’t care. As the school administrator was admonishing parents not to cheer, what was Cooper thinking? She was thinking, “I’m going to cheer my baby anyway. How are they going to stop me?”
In some ways she is like many of the Occupy Protesters, who knew they were pushing the limits of non-violent protest, violating noise ordinances, not getting proper permits, becoming a public nuisance. They also knew that the force required to stop them, whatever it was, would seem excessive to many, and would garner sympathy. They therefore assumed that they could get away with behaving badly, and for the most part, they were right. When force was attempted, sure enough, a sympathetic media made them out to be the victims, just as Cooper is being portrayed as a victim now.
This is the Jerk’s Advantage. It is amazing what inconsiderate conduct someone can get away with as long as they are shameless and brazen, taking advantage of most decent people’s reluctance to confront them. Over-reaction and excessive punishment, as in this case, only causes a backlash. Watch: many schools will start allowing cheering again, making ceremonies even more unbearable, turning the recitation of names into a contest of who has the most enthusiastic cheering section, making the kids with subdued relatives, or no cheering section at all, feel publicly humiliated.
Obviously, throwing Cooper in jail was unreasonable and wrong. Let us not, however, lose sight of who the unethical party was here. It was Shannon Cooper. She knew the rules, and they were reasonable rules, and she disobeyed them anyway, because she wanted to, and because she assumed she would get away with it. She was the jerk.
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Facts: NY Daily News
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ethics Alarms 
One of the reasons I hated going to WATCH and Helen Hayes was the go for broke cheering the minute somones name was called.
Ah, yes, I was actually thinking about the theater awards events. That was a problem in WATCH’s predecessor too, the Center Stage Awards.
Living in NC, we have the same rules here. My oldest son graduated from high school last year (so it is fresh in my mind) and there is a method to the madness of no cheering. It is hot here this time of year, and often ceremonies are held outside, in mid-morning so as to beat the heat of the afternoon. We went thinking that we would sit for hours while the graduates filed across the stage–I think there were about 300 kids. We were wrong–they have the ceremony down to a science. There is no time to cheer. If one person cheers, the next 2 names would not be heard. We were out of there in under 50 minutes.
Of course, this mother does not believe the rules apply to her, but God forbid if someone else cheered and covered her baby’s name.
It’s a good rule. And if people are considerate and ethical, having to enforce it should be necessary.
The media commentary on this case, and the stardom being bestowed on the mother, is infuriating.
I can’t believe the commentary on the article covering this. So many out there can’t discriminate between a graduation ceremony where they have been asked to hold their applause and ….baseball games, etc. Idiocracy
I agree with the analysis here. I can’t tell you the number of times I have gone to events, especially graduations, where there seems to be a contest for who can make the most noise; air horns have been used in some cases, even for indoor graduations.
YES YES YES. The air horns and vuvuzelas and cheering and whooping at graduations is too loud, and it does affect others’ enjoyment of the occasion, and YES she is a jerk of the highest caliber. I have no sympathy for Momma here and imagine she has behaved poorly at more than just the one event. I wish the news piece had quoted one of the parents who were glad she was escorted out; I’m sure there were many.
I will have you know that at my niece’s High School graduation, they had a similar rule to hold all cheering until the end.
We cheered right after her name was called anyway.
And we did nothing unethical at all.
–Dwayne
No but you were rude and obnoxious but then I’m sure people like you, who cant consider the child coming after your niece, don’t really care about that because you are obviously proud of your behavior.
. . . and . . . you DID take note of my last name, right?
–Dwayne
Jesus I’m oblivious. Lol my apologies.
No problem! I was just hoping maybe Jack would be the one to take the bait. True story, though.
–Dwayne
Hopefully she was not in the same class as Mark Zuckerberg, Zhang Ziyi or Pascal Zuberbuhler.
Wait a second. This mother is suggesting that she was arrested and jailed for merely cheering at her daughter’s graduation. But is that really what happened? From the article, it’s seems that officials directed parents to hold applause until the end of the ceremony and warned parents that they would be escorted from the premises if this directive was not followed. Could it be that this mother was just being escorted from the facility as a consequence of her exuberant celebration? No arrest. Just escorted out. Am I off base to think that perhaps it was this mother’s behavior WHILE she was being escorted out of the facility which actually caused her to be arrested? I wonder if the mother is telling the events as they actually occurred. Is she twisting the truth just a bit to get more sympathy? If so, that would make her an even bigger “jerk”.
Portraying this woman as a victim is far from being the worst thing the media has done to lower standards of proper public behavior. I would say well over half the role models presented to young people today are loud, obnoxious and stupid.
See:Rationalizations list above left. “It’s not the worst thing” is my least favorite rationalization ever.
I didn’t intend it as a rationalization, I’m probably more offended than most when I see people behaving badly in public.
While I agree with most of your article, the paragraph about the Occupy Movement demonstrated the biggest weakness of your blog. Despite your valiant attempts, not every subject can be shoehorned into a comment on the right/left divide.
Please re-read your comment without the paragraph and see how much stronger your argument seems.
The truth hurts.
The Occupy Wall Street Movement violated the basic principles of fair and civil protesting in dozens of ways, and did so 1) because they decided they were entitled to, unlike all the law-abiding protesters in the recent past and 2) they assumed that it would be too much trouble and too contentious for authorities to stop them. I see little difference between their attitude of self-righteous entitlement and that of the cheering mom…except she was a short term nuisance.
I would have exactly the same response to a right-wing protest that behaved similarly, or a protest by puppeteers or jello-makers. There is nothing political about it at all. The fact that I find the position of OWS incoherent and useless is separate from my conclusion that the method of protest is unethical. Combined, they are of course worse still, like a drug dealer who also smells bad. But this reference had nothing to do with politics.
The truth doesn’t hurt as much as a misdirected zinger.
My intent was not to defend OWS. I don’t know enough about the movement to either condemn or justify their actions. My point was simply that some simple editing would improve the post.
This is your blog. You pay for the server and the bandwidth. As your guest, I would never tell you that a subject is off-limits. However, I do have a obligation to provide feedback that would improve (IMHO) the blog.
Point taken.
I agree with Morrison. The article reads much better without the Occupy copy. Maybe a separate post for your thoughts on Occupy would be fitting.
That’s your privilege, but I can’t help it if a legitimate comparison nicks a pet movement. The Occupy gangs have exactly emulated the conduct discussed,,,intentionally violating rules and norms because they assume they can get away with it, and that nobody will have the guts to stop them.
Your opinions and commentary are cherished, but don’t tell me what to write about, please.
A lot of things emulate the conduct discussed — some more so than others. However, the Occupy movement is broad and wide reaching. For example in my home town (Calgary) the protesters didn’t act in the same way as the Occupy protesters in other cities. In addition, you seem to be giving the protesters a lot of credit for making tactical decisions about how they were operating and how they were going to play the system. I’m not sure they ever had that level of organization. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t.
Regardless of the merits of the comparison, I agreed with Morrison; I thought the post would have been stronger without it. That’s just one reader’s opinion, or in this case two. Nor am I telling you what to write about Jack. You can write whatever you want; that is your privilege.
I hold the Occupy movement responsible for the conduct of those its efforts attract. The lack of organization is a choice, not an excuse, and the group is accountable, just as Pandora was accountable.
The Jerk’s Advantage is often triggered by the same conceit that is seen constantly on Facebook and Twitter: the idea that everyone cares about what you are doing and is simply an audience for your fascinating life. Its the intersection of the user-generated nature of the Internet and the worship of celebrity, reality-TV culture. These people are the stars of their own lives, so why shouldn’t they cheer? Young men typically act it out by being what marketers call “Mooks”; basically, a guy who will surf on the roof of your car just to show you what a badass fun guy he is. Young women become “woo girls”; which involves more noise and showing a lot more skin.
Can there ever be an exception? Can family be allowed to cheer if there has been significant obstacles and hurdles their child has had to overcome to graduate? I’m a theater audience member who turns off my cell phone, I don’t chat loudly during the show. I clean up after my pet at the dog park. I never park in a handicapped parking space, break into lines, honor the “15 items only” checkout station, and take only one item of free food at events. I even replace my divots on the golf course.
HOWEVER, my son is scheduled to graduate from college this winter, and it has taken him 12 years to do so. During this time, he deployed twice to Iraq with his Army National Guard unit, suffers PTSD and other service related illnesses, had to learn to focus his attention and gain the maturity to see his goal being realized (my wife and I still have our fingers crossed that nothing else comes along to stop him from graduating.)
It has been a long, hard struggle; and the emotion of finally being able to see him walk across the stage — I want to yell, shout and scream, but now I’m a jerk?!?
Well, let’s look at the calculation. If the college asks all parents specifically not to cheer—and they all do—your unilateral decision that your situation justifies an exception is no more than a rationalization, and a judgment you have no right to make: my son’s graduation is more cheerworthy than..
-the first child in the family to get a college degree
-a child with severe learning disabilities
-a child who squeaked by with the lowest GPA imaginable
-a child who almost quit many times
The graduation isn’t only yours and about your son; it’s about every graduate there. It is also the college’s event on its grounds, and you have been asked not to cheer.
If you do anyway, yes…you’re a jerk.
tpubgu: a suggestion
Ask the college if they will move your son’s name to the end of the procession–seriously. They may not be willing, but it’s also unlikely that there are multiple people making this request.
You have no idea how cool it is to have (well, at least the illusion of) everyone cheering for your son at the end.
–Dwayne
Thanks, Jack and Dwayne. You’ve convinced me and I will raise Dwayne’s suggestion with my son. Now comes the hard part of convincing his mom …