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What to do about Seahawks draft pick Frank Clark

The NFL team is being criticized for selecting the Michigan DE, despite his arrest after an altercation with a girlfriend.

SOME DAYS, I wake up and wonder what's for breakfast. Other days, I wake up and wonder whether there is any logical justification for the conflicting emotions I feel inside or if I am destined to spend the next 24 to 48 hours wandering the streets of South Philadelphia in an existential haze, searching for the restoration of internal consistency.

Yesterday was one of the latter days.

Yesterday, I read about Frank Clark, a defensive end whom the Seahawks drafted in the second round despite his November arrest following a hotel-room altercation with his girlfriend that resulted in his dismissal from the Michigan football team. Seattle's decision to draft the former Wolverines star ignited a multiplatform firestorm of criticism, and on a certain psychological level it was easy to nod along. Anger, discomfort, disgust - that is what we feel inside when we think about a man hitting a woman. An act like that does not deserve the power and the spotlight and the money that comes with life as an NFL player. I understand that argument.

But here is what I don't understand: If not this, then what for Frank Clark?

See, Clark's case already had been adjudicated by the time the Seahawks drafted him on Friday. After initially facing charges of domestic violence and assault, he pleaded down to a lesser charge of persistent disorderly conduct, which resulted in a fine and no jail time other than the two days he already had served. And while the thought of a 6-3, 271-pound athlete involving himself in any kind of physical altercation with his girlfriend troubles me, so too does the thought of mob rule.

The fact is, situations like this are the reason why policies exist, because policies eliminate the need for each of us to develop an internally consistent slide rule with which to measure morality, as well as the pesky and often dissonant need to grant equal consideration to both the accuser and the accused. One might argue that the only policies we need are the ones codified in our legal system. That for all of its flaws endemic to the American justice system, it is infinitely better resourced to determine the level of one's innocence or guilt and the appropriate punishment than an NFL football team, or a newspaper reporter, or Twitter. And if the scales of justice determine that an individual should be a free member of society, then who is anybody else to impose levels of membership upon that person?

If we tell Clark that playing in the NFL is a privilege, and he has forfeited his right to that privilege, are we giving up on him becoming a functional member of society? Maybe his time at Michigan equipped him to earn his keep away from the bright lights and big cities of The League. He spent the first decade of his life in a section of Los Angeles where they filmed the final scene in Training Day, a place they call the Jungle, where he and his two siblings and their mother lived with whoever would have them. This, according to a profile of Clark on MLive.com.

Maybe football is one of many options for Clark. But what if it isn't? Either we believe that a man who has been arrested for domestic violence still deserves a place in the work force or we believe that he doesn't. And if we believe that he does, but we believe that his place is somewhere other than the NFL, than aren't we effectively creating a spectrum of jobs that range from "most acceptable for men who have been arrested for domestic violence" to "least acceptable for men who have been arrested for domestic violence?" And if we are, and the jobs on the "most acceptable spectrum" are the ones for which there exists the least demand amongst the general population, how do we reconcile the fact that many of those jobs involve working for corporations that will make hundreds of millions of dollar in profits off a pool of labor that has no better options? Are the Seahawks any less honorable for making Frank Clark a rich man while making their money off him than McDonald's or Wal-Mart would be for making him a poor man while making their money off him?

And if you cannot differentiate the two business plans with some sort of value judgment, aren't you logically obligated to condemn McDonald's as fiercely as you condemn the Seahawks? And if you are, then aren't we left with the following conclusion: Either you believe that Clark doesn't actually deserve a place in the workforce, or you believe that he does and the Seahawks' decision to draft him is simply a convenient vehicle for the expression of your outrage?

This isn't an argument that Clark was worthy of a second-round pick. It's an argument that any argument that he wasn't worthy is incomplete and non-constructive if it doesn't specify what, exactly, he was worthy of, or how a team like the Seahawks should have proceeded. The only way this is a constructive discussion is if we get some clarity on how a team should proceed the next time, because there will be a next time, for a next team, and it could be your team. The numbers say that at some point somebody in the Eagles' draft room will face a similar decision, and it might be helpful for all of us to consider this kind of thing beforehand.

The easy opinion is that anybody who has ever been accused of touching a woman should not be on a draft board. It's an easy opinion because anybody who attempts to offer a countervailing viewpoint risks being labeled, at best, a contrarian, or, at worst, a victim-blaming, culture-enabling misogynist, such is the threat of the vicious tide of popular sentiment in the age of Twitter. That doesn't make it wrong, but it makes it worth questioning, because everything is.

So what's the answer? If it isn't acceptable for Frank Clark to be a second-round draft pick, then what, exactly, is it acceptable for him to be?