The NFL Fumbles the Ball

[Sabine Grant]

A conclusion I certainly can draw from that incident is that both parties are in serious need of professional counseling. Whichever verbal argument between them triggered a threat of physical violence being responded to with actual physical violence and noted as disproportionate use of force, it certainly does not reflect the trait of a functional relationship where both parties are aware of what conflict resolution entails.

Conflict resolution NEVER entails the use of physical violence or force.

I certainly hope that this couple will actively seek professional counseling. I certainly hope that their children will not be raised in a home where they have to witness the 2 adults they love most resorting to physical force in the midst of a disagreement or argument.

 

[laughing dog]

I was thinking more along the lines of a criminal charge for assault and battery.

Being knocked unconscious and then being dragged along the floor, and then having that viewed by 1000s of people on the internet is insufficient accountability for this woman so you wish to add a criminal charge and trial to that?

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Show me where "assault and battery" requires the use of a baseball bat? Is that for females only?

is your argument that Janay Rice is equally strong as her husband?

No. But their relative differences in strength are orders of magnitude less than Tom Sawyer's silly analogy of cutting off somebody vs. blowing their house up.
Why are you and others so insistent that a woman hitting a man is not domestic violence or wrong in any way? Pure, unadulterated sexism!

Picture it.

Thanksgiving 1978, our family of four plus 23 guests.

My father got drunk, ran the family car in the ditch, came back to the house and proceeded to yell at my mother that he would do what he pleased when he pleased and that he was, and I quote, "a goddamned motherfucking he-man." My mother then then applied a right cross to my father's jaw cold-cocking him in the dining room.

He came to when my brother and I pour a picture of water on him.

my folks didn't argue. They fought. And they taught us to fight. And in a fight, i honestly believe you take your punches and you give as good as you get. And if you get your ass beat, regardless of gender, then you get your ass beat. That's the chance you take.

But they also taught us that there was a difference between a fight and a beating up. There is never any excuse, never any honor in a beating up.

What happened in the Atlantic City was a beating up.

You wanna hate on women, fine
You wanna build personal narrative to live in that makes every male a victim of the big bad femi-nazis all allied against you, i mean, men; whatever gets you through the night.

but what happened in that elevator and in the hall,

That was bullshit.

And people who feel the need to defend it, are full of bulllshit.

 

[doubtingt]

So the AP now is reporting that a cop sent the tape to the NFL in April, and they have an NFL exec on voicemail thanking the cop, admitting they watched it, and saying "yeah, its pretty bad".

People will be fired at NFL offices and one of them probably should be Roger Goodell. The NFL has hired an "independent" investigator who is a former head of the FBI. That is likely to mean that the NFL will do nothing for several weeks with a "its under investigation" excuse, hoping that the news cycles move on to something else to try and save Goodell's job.

Either Goodell directly lied about the tape, or someone below him decided to suppress it to give Goodell plausible deniability. Either way Goodell looks very bad, because his underlings would only do that if that was the cultural climate of expected actions he created. He made a very big deal about how ignorance of what underlings were doing "is no excuse" for those in charge when he severely punished the Saints a couple years ago.

What is odd is why Goodell would want to risk himself to protect Rice. He has been pretty harsh on players in general and gone out of his way in many punishments. The only thing I can think of is that the NFL knows that domestic violence is a widespread problem among its players, and the league is already trying to pretend that its not an inherently violent sport, so they have a large $ interest in suppressing this particular type of crime among its players. That is consistent with the fact that domestic violence seems to be something that the NFL has consistently given disproportionately light punishments for.

 

[barbos]

Oh, I have no doubt that NFL knows that domestic violence is widespread in the NFL.
They just thought general public knew that too, but apparently not, that's why I think they are surprised by all this reaction in the media.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

So the AP now is reporting that a cop sent the tape to the NFL in April, and they have an NFL exec on voicemail thanking the cop, admitting they watched it, and saying "yeah, its pretty bad".

People will be fired at NFL offices and one of them probably should be Roger Goodell. The NFL has hired an "independent" investigator who is a former head of the FBI. That is likely to mean that the NFL will do nothing for several weeks with a "its under investigation" excuse, hoping that the news cycles move on to something else to try and save Goodell's job.

Either Goodell directly lied about the tape, or someone below him decided to suppress it to give Goodell plausible deniability. Either way Goodell looks very bad, because his underlings would only do that if that was the cultural climate of expected actions he created. He made a very big deal about how ignorance of what underlings were doing "is no excuse" for those in charge when he severely punished the Saints a couple years ago.

What is odd is why Goodell would want to risk himself to protect Rice. He has been pretty harsh on players in general and gone out of his way in many punishments. The only thing I can think of is that the NFL knows that domestic violence is a widespread problem among its players, and the league is already trying to pretend that its not an inherently violent sport, so they have a large $ interest in suppressing this particular type of crime among its players. That is consistent with the fact that domestic violence seems to be something that the NFL has consistently given disproportionately light punishments for.

I agree 100% with you about Goodell. He needs to go.

But I'm not betting the farm that he will.

I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see him getting fired.

 

[doubtingt]

Reading about this Ray Rice story and watching the TMZ clip reminded me of the "knockout game" from last year. It was a topic on the old forum:

http://www.freeratio.org/thearchives/showthread.php?t=328947&highlight=knockout

What has me puzzled is the different reactions between the various posters then and now (many are the same people, myself included). In the discussion of the knockout game in the old forum, the attitude of many was along the lines of, "Um...nothing to see here...move along". Complaints about it being sensationalized/hyped by the media, or "old news" (6 months ago), or its from a right wing (Breitbart) website, etc. But it seems to me the circumstances of the person being knocked out in the knockout game were far more heinous than the Ray Rice incident. The knockout game victims were largely random and unknown to the hitter, or elderly and many of the "knockouts" were labeled as hate crimes (against Orthodox Jews, for example). Completely unprovoked. And the perpetrators did nothing to aid their victim afterward (at least Ray Rice didn't just walk away after he hit her). Some knockout victims ended up in the hospital and some even died. Janay Rice recovered quickly and went back to Ray afterwards and even married him! The race of the perpetrators were the same as well.

What's different about this situation? Is it solely about the fact that its famous people involved? Does it have to do with it being a domestic violence incident? If so, why is DV worse than a random act of violence? Is it because Janay is black and the knockout victims were white? The media has completely sensationalized this and there's not much complaint about that. I was trying to watch some afternoon TV yesterday during lunch and CBS broke in with a Special Report to talk about it! Just interested in hearing some thoughts from others.

You interest me young Beave.

So, you think hitting a stranger is more heinous than hitting someone you love?

Why are you ignoring the multiple factors other than being a "stranger" that thebeave listed which make the "knock-out" crimes more heinous? I've underlined 4 of them above. Yes, premeditated aggravated assault on a stranger with the explicit goal of causing brain trauma (which is what knocking someone out means) just for the fun of it is a more heinous and sociopathic act than a violent emotional interaction with someone you love, which almost inherently means have ongoing conflicts with and occassionally feel justified anger towards. The latter is still criminal and morally unacceptable violence, but it is arguably less "heinous", because it is a reactionary escalation relationship conflicts that everyone experiences versus going out of one's way to do serious harm to someone for no reason other than the pleasure of doing so. Some forms of chronic spousal abuse are as or even more heinous and amount to long term torture and terrorizing of another person, but there is no sincere "love" by the perp in those cases, so they don't really apply to "hitting someone you love".


Back to thebeaves legit question, no, there is no sensible or ethical basis to view the sociopaths who play "knock-out" as somehow less heinous or worthy of less punishment than Rice. It is likely a hypocrisy rooted in gender bias and other ideologies. However, there is a reason to give more attention to DV in general than to "knock-out" as a social problem, and that is quite simply that DV is thousands of times more common and the #1 violent threat faced by 50% of the population.

 

[doubtingt]

Oh, I have no doubt that NFL knows that domestic violence is widespread in the NFL.
They just thought general public knew that too, but apparently not, that's why I think they are surprised by all this reaction in the media.

As soon as the video was released, they acted quite quickly. They also clearly tried to suppress the video.. So, these facts suggest they were not surprised by the public response ( and it isn't just the "media", but all decent people who think Rice is a dangerous criminal that should be in prison, and that the NFL is grossly unethical for trying to cover up his crimes so they could continue to profit off him and other criminals like him).
As stupid as it makes them look, it appears that the NFL knew the public would react this way but were foolishly hoping the full video would never be released.

 

[barbos]

Oh, I have no doubt that NFL knows that domestic violence is widespread in the NFL.
They just thought general public knew that too, but apparently not, that's why I think they are surprised by all this reaction in the media.

As soon as the video was released, they acted quite quickly. They also clearly tried to suppress the video.. So, these facts suggest they were not surprised by the public response ( and it isn't just the "media", but all decent people who think Rice is a dangerous criminal that should be in prison, and that the NFL is grossly unethical for trying to cover up his crimes so they could continue to profit off him and other criminals like him).
As stupid as it makes them look, it appears that the NFL knew the public would react this way but were foolishly hoping the full video would never be released.

Ethical-shmetical, they are psychopaths and their MO is really simple - if public is OK with something then we are OK too, and if public is not OK with something and will cause us loss of profit as a result then we need to do what public wants to prevent that loss of profit, keyword is "profit".

 

[doubtingt]

As soon as the video was released, they acted quite quickly. They also clearly tried to suppress the video.. So, these facts suggest they were not surprised by the public response ( and it isn't just the "media", but all decent people who think Rice is a dangerous criminal that should be in prison, and that the NFL is grossly unethical for trying to cover up his crimes so they could continue to profit off him and other criminals like him).
As stupid as it makes them look, it appears that the NFL knew the public would react this way but were foolishly hoping the full video would never be released.

Ethical-shmetical, they are psychopaths and their MO is really simple - if public is OK with something then we are OK too, and if public is not OK with something and will cause us loss of profit as a result then we need to do what public wants to prevent that loss of profit, keyword is "profit".

Sure, but that only supports my point. They tried to make the public more "OK with it" by suppressing the full video, which they would not have done if they actually believed that the public would not react as they did to the video.

 

[barbos]

On the grand scheme of things this is really nothing compared to Pakistani rape scandal in Great Britain.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

You interest me young Beave.

So, you think hitting a stranger is more heinous than hitting someone you love?

Why are you ignoring the multiple factors other than being a "stranger" that thebeave listed which make the "knock-out" crimes more heinous? I've underlined 4 of them above. Yes, premeditated aggravated assault on a stranger with the explicit goal of causing brain trauma (which is what knocking someone out means) just for the fun of it is a more heinous and sociopathic act than a violent emotional interaction with someone you love, which almost inherently means have ongoing conflicts with and occassionally feel justified anger towards. The latter is still criminal and morally unacceptable violence, but it is arguably less "heinous", because it is a reactionary escalation relationship conflicts that everyone experiences versus going out of one's way to do serious harm to someone for no reason other than the pleasure of doing so. Some forms of chronic spousal abuse are as or even more heinous and amount to long term torture and terrorizing of another person, but there is no sincere "love" by the perp in those cases, so they don't really apply to "hitting someone you love".


Back to thebeaves legit question, no, there is no sensible or ethical basis to view the sociopaths who play "knock-out" as somehow less heinous or worthy of less punishment than Rice. It is likely a hypocrisy rooted in gender bias and other ideologies. However, there is a reason to give more attention to DV in general than to "knock-out" as a social problem, and that is quite simply that DV is thousands of times more common and the #1 violent threat faced by 50% of the population.

soiciopaths are supposed to do sociopathic things. That's how we know they are sociopaths.

The man who loves you, marries you, fathers your children and promises you he will love honor and cherish you, is not supposed to hurt. That is beyond sociopathy. That is betrayal.

Now we can argue differences of kind and degree and the definition of heinous and it will not matter because of who we are and what we have seen and how we have been hurt, we will value what is truly heinous differently.

Wanna beat this dead horse or move on?

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

So the AP now is reporting that a cop sent the tape to the NFL in April, and they have an NFL exec on voicemail thanking the cop, admitting they watched it, and saying "yeah, its pretty bad".

For now, an unnamed person claiming to be a law enforcement official played a recording of a voicemail he claims is from someone at the NFL's HQ, indicating that the person who left the voicemail viewed the video, which the person claiming to be an LEO admits he was not authorized to release. The AP story also did not specify that the person on the voicemail was the executive who allegedly received the video, nor does it identify the person who allegedly received it; they're just saying it was from "an NFL office number".

Right, that's solid reporting.

 

[RavenSky]

I was thinking more along the lines of a criminal charge for assault and battery.

Being knocked unconscious and then being dragged along the floor, and then having that viewed by 1000s of people on the internet is insufficient accountability for this woman so you wish to add a criminal charge and trial to that?

A criminal charge for an "attack" and an "assault and battery" that never happened, no less.

 

[RavenSky]

On the grand scheme of things this is really nothing compared to Pakistani rape scandal in Great Britain.

In the grand scheme of things, this was really nothing compared to shit other players have done and received little or no punishment for, too. (which is not to suggest that Ray Rice doesn't deserve to be fired from the Ravens and suspended from the NFL indefinitely... just that fellow players have done far worse)

 

[Derec]

My mother then then applied a right cross to my father's jaw cold-cocking him in the dining room.

He came to when my brother and I pour a picture of water on him.

So a woman knocking a man unconscious - Ok.
A man knocking a woman unconscious - crime of the fucking century if we go by the news coverage.

And you have the chutzpah to claim there is no female privilege here.

 

[Derec]

So, for example, if some 130 pound guy had spit on Ray Rice and bum rushed him in an elevator and gotten dropped we would go with our "a big person never hits a little person" principle (if that's our principle) instead of saying "that idiot deserved it".

It shouldn't be an either or. Both should be held accountable for assault. And I reserve to call a weaker person who attacks a much stronger one an idiot.

 

[Derec]

"she was a typical case..." referring to my close friend whom I am rather certain you have never met in person. You have NO insights whatsoever as to whether my friend caused her husband's anger.

My bad. I thought we were still talking about Mrs. Rice.

I have been noting that when you are challenged to present a rationally centered and documented justification for some of your claims, it is followed by *sounds of crickets*. Such as my asking you to present clinical data invalidating Stockholm syndrome and BWS as you defined them as "sexist psychobabble"when applied to DV victims.

It is psychobabble as applied here because nobody here is a psychologist that has examined her. It is also not applicable because we know that she attacked him so when she admits portion of the blame it is because she is partially responsible and not because of any psychological syndromes.
A lot of DV situations are mutually abusive. To only blame the man and treat all women in these situations as blameless is sexist on its face. To further suggest that even when a woman admits portion of the blame that it can't be so but that she must be only saying it because she is suffering from a syndrome is pure maternalism.

The reality and one I experienced (and one you did NOT) is that my close friend was a typical case of a victim affected by BWS. Part of the symptoms being a self blaming process on the part of the victim.

It may be the case in her case that she is blameless. But even if that's true in her case where do you get that that is "typical"?

Meanwhile, you have persistently dismissed and ignored the mentioned factors in this thread of :

-use of disproportionate defensive force.

-vast disparity between both parties' anatomies. Which was brought up earlier by Athena and brought up to YOUR attention in one of my posts.

I have not ignored it. I have agreed with it from the beginning and thus see no reason to engage further with it.
That he is responsible for knocking her unconscious is beyond dispute. Agreeing with it and leaving it at that is not "ignoring" it.
The controversial part, and therefore the one we continue to debate, is whether the woman has any portion of the blame if she spits on her intimate partner and hits him. Many on the feminist left say no, I say yes.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

My mother then then applied a right cross to my father's jaw cold-cocking him in the dining room.

He came to when my brother and I pour a picture of water on him.

So a woman knocking a man unconscious - Ok.
A man knocking a woman unconscious - crime of the fucking century if we go by the news coverage.

And you have the chutzpah to claim there is no female privilege here.

You think a privilege to have your husband cuss you like a dog in the street in you own home with a house full of guests? You think it a privilege to then strike your drunken husband in front of those same guests, guests who yell out for you to duck because they can see him about to hit you?

Yeah, that's a real privilege, Derec.

My father was 6ft even, 280lb
My mother was 6ft 2in, 312lb

both were trained LEO.

And they fought each other, because my father drank and when he did, he changed. And when he changed, my mother had to protect herself, her family, and even my father from himself.



Yeah Derec, privilege all around.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

BTW

Here's the part of the quote Derec doesnt want to touch

my folks didn't argue. They fought. And they taught us to fight. And in a fight, i honestly believe you take your punches and you give as good as you get. And if you get your ass beat, regardless of gender, then you get your ass beat. That's the chance you take.

But they also taught us that there was a difference between a fight and a beating up. There is never any excuse, never any honor in a beating up.

What happened in the Atlantic City was a beating up.

You wanna hate on women, fine
You wanna build personal narrative to live in that makes every male a victim of the big bad femi-nazis all allied against you, i mean, men; whatever gets you through the night.

but what happened in that elevator and in the hall,

That was bullshit.

And people who feel the need to defend it, are full of bullshit.