The Ray Rice Elevator Video

Yeah. There's no excuse.

Forget even the man/woman dynamic for a moment if you wish. Ray is just too much bigger and stronger than her. If someone clocked a child like that, no one would ask what the child did to deserve it.

A true "Gentle Giant" doesn't pop someone in the face like that because he doesn't want to hurt them.

Jay-Z took a lot more shit from his sister-in-law and never hit her. That's the way to handle it.

 

"Calendars were heroically arranged" is such a great line.

 

If you're going to Sal's, do not make a left turn across Mamaroneck Avenue into the diagonal parking. It's a guaranteed ticked every time.

 

Shocking that someone with an economics background would trust his own intuition when evidence is so readily available.

 

He doesn't have an "economics background." He got an economics degree because that was the easiest way out of school.

 

Last night's Daily Show was the first time I had seen Goodell in the CBS interview. Good god, he looked and sounded horrible. He looks like he suffers from rosacea. He sounded scared and unaware. What a mess.

 

His 'background' is working his way up the NFL corporate food chain.

 

I bet Ragu is warming up the keyboard

 

Look, I know he's the consummate Fortunate Son.

But economics is a hard major.

Anyway, I digress.

 

Patrick Hruby weighs in:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/09/roger-goodells-the-nfls-nixon-on-the-ray-rice-scandal/380112/

"I don't do things for public relations."

Right.

 

We don't need to know why "she was getting in his face." Nothing she did short of pulling a gun on him was justification for the punch. Get out of the 19th century Xan.

 

Funny thing about that is that the NFL's culture is immersed in public relations. When Goodell first walked in the door at 410 Park Ave. almost every single top executive there was a former writer or PR guy. Rozelle cultivated that culture. Rozelle was a PR guy, Jim Kensil came from the AP, Don Weiss was an AP guy, Jim Heffernan was a Philly beat writer, Val Pinchbeck worked in PR at the AFL, Harold Rosenthal came from the Herald Tribune, etc.