What the laughter tells us

Saturday night, Texas pulled off one of the great comebacks in recent college football memory. Monday, the story wasn't the comeback. It was a press conference.

Asked if he'd seen any of the AI-generated clips floating around after coach Steve Sarkisian brushed past ESPN's Holly Rowe for a postgame interview, Arch Manning brought up one specific edit himself: a fake video showing Sarkisian slapping Rowe. He laughed. He called it hilarious. The room laughed with him. (Video below) 

It didn't happen. It's AI. And I still can't get past how easily "a man hitting a woman" became the punchline nobody in that room felt the need to flinch at. That's the part I’m really struggling with. 

Manning has since apologized, and I believe people, especially 22-year-olds with a microphone in their face, deserve room to be embarrassed, to learn, to do better. But I keep coming back to that laugh anyway. Not because I think he's some uniquely bad person. I don't. I think he's a young man who did what a lot of men in that room have done their whole lives: heard a woman getting hit played for a joke, and went along with it. That's what makes this sad instead of just infuriating. It's not rare. It's familiar. It's the sound of a thousand locker rooms and living rooms and group chats where violence against a woman got a laugh instead of a silence.

And it makes me angry.  Angry that we're still here. Angry that a room full of grown men could hear "he's slapping her" and I hear a bunch of laughter.  Angry that it takes a viral backlash for anyone to name what should have been obvious in the room.  

Here's what I know: that moment wasn't really a test for Arch Manning. It was a test for every man in that room. And most of them failed it. 

So this is the invitation I want to put in front of men, including myself.  Next time we’re in a room and someone plays a woman getting hurt for a laugh- at a minimum, don't laugh. Let the silence be uncomfortable. Don't hand the room your permission.

And if you can find the courage for more than that, stand up and say it. Call out the behavior, and call in the man. Not to shame him, but to remind him, and everyone listening, that this isn't who we have to be. That's how the cycle breaks. Not with one apology after the internet piles on, but with one man in the room willing to be the reason the laugh doesn't happen in the first place.

Todd