While it doesn't have much to do with Obamacare, I'm nonetheless fascinated by the public reaction to a YouTube video that's gone viral, showing a woman dragging her leashed toddler through a Verizon store.

Many people are outraged, and they're calling for harsh punishment. The woman is charged with felony child cruelty and she faces up to 20 years in prison. Opinions vary, though, and even CNN's legal analyst is puzzled:

"I really need to know more facts in this case," Legal analyst Lisa Bloom told CNN, when asked if this is a felony. "It certainly looks awful in the video because it appears that the collar and the leash are around the child's neck. But the child isn't fighting. The child doesn't appear to be in any pain. And I can remember when my daughter was little what she thought was a good time was to clamp onto my ankle and I would drag around the living room and she thought that was better than Disneyland. I need to know if is there was some serious physical harm before I can decide if this is a felony or not."

While most people seem to be outraged at the woman, this report about the incident drew comments from conservative talk radio listeners, who seemed mostly on the side of the mom. Fascinatingly, when the police tracked her down, she claimed that the boy enjoyed it:

(WSB Radio) An Alabama woman is under arrest, charged with cruelty to children after being caught on video dragging her son on a leash.

37 year old Melissa Means was in a Verizon Wireless store in Rome when witnesses, and an employee, spotted her dragging the boy on the leash that was attached to his monkey backpack. The employee captured the episode on video.

When police tracked her down, Means dismissed the incident, saying the boy liked being "dragged around by his monkey."

Means, of Gaylsville, Alabama, told officers she suffers from lupus and pneumonia and had been having trouble with the boy. When he refused to walk she tried picking him up, but could not. That's when she started pulling him by the leash.

Rome Police Officer Keith Greene says the child had a bruise on the left side of his neck, caused by the backpack strap.

DFACS was contacted and conducted an investigation into the incident. The boy was eventually released to the custody of his grandmother.

Suppose for the sake of argument that he does enjoy it. What are the implications as to whether it's child abuse? How is that to be judged? By the external standards of others? Or by the parties involved? What if the kid enjoys acting like a pit bull puppy?

Should a child be allowed to consent to being dragged by his mom? Or are the implications of such a question too unpleasant to contemplate? When I was in school, I used to wrestle, and it could get pretty violent. I enjoyed it when I won, but not when I lost. But at all times, I consented to the violence. But because I was legally a child, I was probably not really allowed to consent in the legal sense, and what was happening was that others (the school authorities and my parents) basically consented on my behalf. I will never forget one occasion in which I was in a wrestling match against a military school, and I sensed that my obviously effeminate opponent was not consenting of his own free will (which I was), but he was being forced to wrestle by his brutal wrestling coach, who slapped him in the face after the pre-match pep talk. The boy appeared to me to be in a state of shock, as he was glassy-eyed and seemed to be fighting back tears. He offered zero resistance, and as I took him down, he went limp immediately and simply whined "Owwwwwww!" as I pinned him. Consent? Frankly, at the time I thought he was being abused (and I was a little shocked by my own role in the abuse), but who was I to judge the inner motivations of perfect strangers, simply because they were suddenly thrust in the arena with me? My job was to "win," but the situation seemed surreal.

As to to why an effeminate boy would be forced to wrestle even though he didn't want to, there was nothing unusual about a sissy being sent to military school in those days. They were sent there by concerned parents to be forced to "butch it up" (along with thuggish juvenile delinquents whose affluent parents had made deals with judges to avoid the state reformatory).

So, even though I had apparent context (because I was there and right in the middle of the situation), at the same time I lacked context, because I didn't fully understand the dynamics. I did not know my "opponent," or his story, or his background, and it was only later that I came to suspect that I had been an unwitting dupe in what must have been an unpleasant, if not traumatic, experience for him. (I realize others might see it differently, but I seriously, seriously doubt I helped "make a man out of him.")

The point is that context is everything in analyzing such situations, and sometimes we lack context even in situations in which we are direct participants.

Most people think that YouTube "caught" the child-dragging incident and that ends the inquiry. But I feel that I have no idea what might have really been going on. If the kid actually saw his being dragged by his mom as a game, well, it could still be argued that such a "sport" is inappropriate for child raising. But the fact that they've been caught and put on YouTube takes the game to a whole new level. The family is in the arena now, and the boy may well be taken away from his mother while she goes to prison.

What kind of game is that?