Hey guys, I'm back from my annual trip to Scotland for the Unicorn Stud Farm Convention. Some of the workshops can be a little tedious and most of the other farmers just simply won't shut the hell up about their farms but what can I say, it goes with the life!
I didn't miss anything, did I?
Oh.
Boy this whole 'Ray Rice domestic abuse cover-up by the NFL' really blows the pants off the Dolphins' bullying scandal last year, doesn't it? Sorry, I just had to quickly reiterate that there are far worse things in the world.
For those of you that need the bullet points here they are: Ray Rice and his then fiance, Janay Palmer, went to a casino and got drunk, they got into a verbal and spittle argument, and then Ray punched Janay in the face twice, knocking her out and sending her flying into a handrail inside one of the casino's elevators. Then Ray kinda dragged her around outside the elevator, not really knowing where to put her, and looking really annoyed by it at the same time. Ray got arrested, indicted, married Janay a day later, and received a two-game suspension from Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL.
The two-game ban sparked outrage from anybody who gives a damn about the repercussions of domestic abuse and, hey, who knew, it turned out to be a lot of people. Goodell came out and said he got it wrong and promptly offered harsher penalties to future offenders (including six games for a first offender and a lifetime ban for a second offender).
Then everybody held hands and sang kumbaya and put flowers in guns and shit like that until a ruthless media outlet known mostly for obtaining photographs of people wearing sweatpants and picking their noses went ahead and released a video of what happened inside the elevator that fateful night.
Now everybody loses their minds. While I agree it's different to say, "Oh that guy hit a woman" and then you show me a video of a guy throwing hay-makers on a woman half his size and knocks her flying across an elevator, clear out of her shoes, and into a handrail then that tends to bring a little more emotion into it. It especially brings more emotion into it when Ray Rice said he "had no choice but to hit her" invoking ideas of if she carried a chainsaw in her purse or was in fact capable of turning into a werewolf. Thankfully the elevator video cleared it up that she wasn't wielding any sort of maiming weapon or that she possessed any sort of lycanthropic powers. But the first video, of outside the elevator, that existed from day one of this whole mess. We saw him dragging her around like a sack of stuff that he really didn't give two shits about.
Wasn't that enough?
Wasn't it enough after he told you that he hit his fiancee inside that elevator? He was honest about it, knew he shouldn't have done it and was remorseful, and then pledged himself to her to try to spend the rest of his life to make it up to her?
There was your moment, commissioner. You should have punished him right then and there and made him the shining example of your stance against domestic violence. Suspend him for a year, fine him an exorbitant amount of money, make him take special counseling and give him the warning that if his name even pops up in a police blotter about spousal abuse that he'll never see a down in the NFL again. It was that simple.
Roger Goodell and Co. didn't do that, however, because Roger Goodell is all about 'protecting the shield of the NFL' and it's statements like that, they make me just kinda sit back and stare off into no particular distance and say, "Holy shit, they're all in on it."
They're all in on it.
Goodell saw both videos. So did the rest of the NFL executives. He passed down a judgment that he thought was fair and let it be so! But he didn't bank on the casino going bankrupt and out of business. Now those security tapes are up for the highest bidder and that was TMZ. Let's pause for a minute so I can remind all of you that the NFL is worth about 100 times more than TMZ and didn't even bother to cover-up their own cover-up because what's the worse that could happen to the mighty NFL?!
Now's a good time as any to also remind you what I think is the best word that describes the NFL: archaic.
The massive cover-up was already underway. Goodell said not he, nor any member of his staff saw the inside-the-elevator tape, then added the caveat "to his knowledge." The Ravens released on Twitter a disgusting tweet about how Janay regretted the role she played in the incident that night. I agree with that simply that if I play the role of face to someone else's fist I'm probably going to regret it in the morning too.
After the inside-the-elevator tape went public the cover-up indoctrine was pushed aside for the shortest witch-hunt in history. Ray Rice was released by the Ravens and banned by Goodell and the NFL for an indefinite amount of time--all because of something we already knew he did! We didn't learn anything new on Monday morning when that tape went public but because it went public and John Q. Public could see that video now, and the horrific nature of it, now we really have a problem.
People like to be told something but they don't like to see it. That's all right. It's human nature. You would rather be told your dog died than be shown a video of your dog dying. It makes sense because most humans are compassionate individuals. Roger Goodell is compassionate towards a logo. He has to protect the shield!
Sorry ladies, you're just the means to an end where men get to play football and make money for Goodell's league. I saw a woman today being interviewed on the news for wearing a Ray Rice jersey to the Pittsburgh-Baltimore game taking place tonight and she said she was wearing the jersey because she was a supporter of Ray Rice. Now she could have been totally off of what I'm about to say but I'd like to think that what she meant by that was that Ray Rice was the scapegoat of a lot of archaic dinosaurs that still don't get it.
Do I think two games was enough? Of course not, don't be ridiculous. I already touched on that. I think he should have gone to jail, I really do. But he didn't and that didn't really shock me because I'm 29 years old and I'm not fucking naive. Roger Goodell never intended for that second video to come out and when it did he knew he was screwed. But you don't get to the top without a few sacrifices! Ray Rice is 27 and a dumb ass. What he did was heinous and absolutely atrocious but should that define his life? Should it end it? I don't think so.
I'm not defending Ray Rice, I'm just a guy who finds the whole institution is a lot more corrupt and evil that we were lead to believe. My parting words are to the commissioner himself: Sometimes to protect the shield you have to fall on the sword, you son of a bitch.
No comments:
Post a Comment