The Ray Rice Elevator Video

Forget it, he's rolling.

 

From the original story posted Feb. 19:

There really was NOTHING NEW on the second video that had not been acknowledged previously.

 

Bowie Kuhn was a worse commissioner than Vincent.

 

I agree completely. I'm not trying to argue that the video release justified a longer penalty when one wasn't merited before the video release.

I'm arguing that the justification for a longer penalty than usual, period, whenever it was levied, was that Rice knocked her unconscious. And that's a different animal than garden variety pushing, shoving, and even slapping or punching around.

 

Bill Simmons should resign.

 

From the sounds of things Greg Hardy's actions would have made
the actions of the CIA Muslim interrogators seem mild.

To me his actions seem on par with Rice's TKO.

No way that Hardy should be playing. He's now the poster child of
Goodell's inconsistencies when it comes to discipline.

 

The domestic violence issue is a fascinating one to me now, especially the mentality of it. I've seen a lot of assigning of textbook domestic abuse elements to Rice, Palmer-Rice, and their relationship in general. Not just here, either. My friend's wife is a public interest lawyer serving exclusively domestic violence victims. Her Facebook threads on this have been interesting reading, with Ray Rice as the stand-in for EveryAbuser. Sample from when Janay Rice put out her rant this week: "I suspect that he wrote that, then stood over her and forced her to post it."

My possibly politically incorrect read:

I wonder how often two people who have been part of each other's lives this long, and have this volatile of a relationship, no longer even think of what Rice did as abuse or assault of a vulnerable person, but rather an altercation between equals. This is the menality, of course, that used to lead to the police approach of, "It's a family issue, not a police issue."

It's an anger issue, perhaps, as much as it is a textbook abuser-victim dynamic.

I don't know that I'm making sense. Basically, I don't know that Janay Palmer-Rice and Ray Rice are the equivalent of the trailer trash couple where the man comes home drunk and beats on his wife and kids. I think they probably get into fights, and sometimes those fights get physical, because sometimes fights get physical. (Of course, this is no excuse. At all. The end result is the same.)

 

Two people who aren't very intelligent, one of whom might have problems managing alcohol and the other managing anger.

 

I don't know that they aren't intelligent, but the rest of that sentence nicely seems to sum up the dynamic emerging.

 

Janay has that Aretha Frankin look going from The Blues Brothers.

 

Her public statements have been sad with a whiff of stupidity.
"This is our life." Yes, and that's part of the problem here.