Viewer's digest: the gang witnesses a fat guy getting robbed, doesn't do anything about it (except for make fun of him), and then gets arrested for violating the Good Samaritan Law. "It's new," the cop explains. The arrest sets up the famous final episode of the series, when Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine are all put on trial for their 9 seasons of exhibiting poor examples of basic human decency. As it happens, the Good Samaritan Law, which does exist in the US in various forms, is not new, nor does it require that bystanders intervene to assist people in peril. That would make criminals out of a lot of people. It also makes no logical sense. Good Samaritan laws actually provide protection for people who do choose to help out -- the classic example is if you give someone the Heimlich Maneuver, you aren't liable if you inadvertently break his ribs. (Reader's Note: you would, however, be liable for calling it the Heimlich Maneuver. Apparently, years back, Mr. Heimlich -- yes, there's a Mr. Heimlich...did you think that maneuver just happened? -- got persnickety when CPR training manuals used his name without compensating him. So now we're supposed to just call it "chest compressions." Public service announcement over). Anyway, one should assume that the Seinfeld writers were aware of this when they wrote the scene.
All of this is by way of introducing another video. Before I post the link, I should caution all readers that it's somewhat graphic. Basically, it's a video of a dude eating another dude. Like, almost literally. So just consider yourself warned, and keep in mind that while the video is pretty outrageous and worth a watch, it isn't totally necessary for the rest of the post.
Yummy
So, yeah, it's gross. When I first saw it, I immediately thought the assailant was on Bath Salts. In fact, it's just a sixty year old dude getting made a 28 year old dude over a seat on the Guangzhou Metro. After getting over the initial shock, one might notice the second most disturbing part of the video: that everyone is just standing there and staring (or, in at least one case, filming). Nobody seems at all interested in intervening to save the poor guy from getting, well, eaten. And while you would think that if this were to happen on a crowded New York City subway train, after the initial diffusion of responsibility wore out, someone would eventually help out. It wouldn't take much (unless of course the attacker was on Bath Salts after all, in which case he'd have superhuman strength) for a few people to wrestle a sixty year old away from his prey. And yet, nobody did.
As it turns out, there's an explanation for all this. And it's not particularly comforting. In 2006, a man in Nanjing stopped to help an injured woman on the street. She asked him to take her to the hospital, which he did. Upon their arrival, she accused the man of pushing her down, thereby causing her injuries. The dispute somehow made it to court where, even more absurdly, a Nanjing judge ruled that common sense dictates that only someone who was guilty would have brought the woman to the hospital. The man was ordered to pay the woman's medical costs.
The Nanjing Judge case, as it has come to be known here, has quite a profound legacy. The judge's decision has left in its wake a citizenry that is hesitant to help each other out. In 2009, an old man fell down while getting off a bus, again in Nanjing, and wasn't helped back up again until bystanders received his firm assurances that he would take responsibility if anything happened. In other words, Nanjing Judge has created a sort of backwards Good Samaritan law here. Not only do you not have to help a fat guy getting robbed, but you could in theory be found guilty as an accomplice to the robbery if you do. Had Jerry and his friends been on that Guangzhou subway, as you can see from that video, they wouldn't have been the only ones standing, watching, and filming.
****
In other news, I played badminton for the first time in my life yesterday. It's a national obsession here, played perhaps even more widely than ping pong. My Chinese colleagues play during lunch every Friday, and they invited me to join them yesterday. It is a very peculiar sport. It requires a lot of dexterity and quick reflexes, and really is nothing like tennis or ping pong, as you might assume. It also has the distinction of making anyone who plays it, regardless of how good they are, look like a complete idiot. But it was fun, and I'll probably head back out for another round of humiliation next week.
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