Help For Hope?

Mid-morning update: In case you were wondering how the president feels about all this, it's not Hope Hicks he's worried about:

Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 10, 2018

Original post:
Former White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter didn't have a good week. He had to resign from his job, his reputation is ruined and the whole country knows that he couldn't qualify for a security clearance to work at the White House. Probably not a situation that would bring out the best in a violent wife-beater.

I don't particularly admire Hope Hicks but I'm sincere when I say that I fervently hope she's not getting beaten to a pulp this week-end.

Read the latest about this story here and here, and by-the-way, a second White House staffer, speechwriter David Sorensen, has also resigned due to domestic violence allegations. (A speechwriter named Sorensen? I did a little googling and as best as I can tell, he's no relation to Ted.)

I Hope...

... that Ray Rice's punch to his fiancée's head really was a one-time thing, as they both claim. I hope he really is a good man who did one bad thing, as Ravens management claimed up until Monday morning.

I hope neither Ray or Janay has a problem with alcohol. They've apparently said they had had too much to drink on the night in question; I hope that was just a little over-celebrating on Valentine's Day and not their usual pattern.

I hope they have better communication and conflict resolution skills than they demonstrated on the video. Spitting, swatting and face-punching are not acceptable ways to resolve whatever their problem was that night.

I hope they've been exercising good money management, and that one or both of them have marketable skills not related to football, because Mr. Rice is now unemployed.

I hope Mr. Rice is indeed standing strong for his family, as he claimed yesterday.

Why do I hope all these things? Because I don't want Janay Palmer Rice to end up dead.

This has been a difficult week for them, to put it mildly. If Ray Rice is a serial abuser, if one or both of them regularly drinks too much, if their usual way of fighting and solving problems is to get physical, the events of this week could send them over the edge, with consequences far more serious than public embarrassment.

I don't want Janay to end up dead.

Show Me The Money

The Ray Rice story is still big news this morning, with much commentary, moralizing and pontificating from both inside and outside the sports world; Ray Rice is currently at the top of the Top Stories list on Google News and the Trends list on Twitter.

You could spend the rest of the day clicking through all the stories out there. For now, my favorite is the Baltimore Sun's editorial titled titled "Reckless and Callous." Here's the heart of the matter:

For all Mr. Harbaugh’s talk of character and family, the Ravens are a business. They supported Mr. Rice when they thought he still added value to the team. Now, no amount of on-field talent can make up for the revulsion Ravens fans will feel when they remember the sight of his left fist smashing into Ms. Palmer’s face. If team officials really hadn’t seen the video until Monday, their unwavering support for Mr. Rice was reckless, in that they had to assume that it would have come out eventually, and callous, in that they knew all the pertinent facts about what happened in the elevator without having seen it. Evidently the Ravens can stomach having a player who would knock a woman down and then treat her with all the care he would give to a sack of flour — just so long as the public doesn’t see it.

So once again, it's the video that did it, or as "Frannie" put it in a tweet I re-tweeted last night: 
Ray Rice was not cut from the Ravens and suspended from the NFL indefinitely bc they saw that video. He was cut bc you saw that video.
So will Ray Rice ever play pro football again? The NFL suspended him "indefinitely" which isn't the same thing as "from now until the day you die." Although most observers appear to believe his football career is over, I'm intrigued by Jeffrey Toobin's comments on CNN last night. Toobin insists that Rice will eventually be reinstated, after some kind of therapy and a "teary press conference," because in a league where winning is the only thing and billions of dollars are at stake, Rice's value as a player will eventually trump his shortcomings as a man and a human being.  

Media feeding frenzies have a pretty short shelf life and something else will no doubt bubble to the surface and knock Ray Rice out of the spotlight soon. (And of course, these days he and his wife can't just "go on Oprah" to tell their side of the story, although I'd bet bookers from GMA, Today and Dr. Phil are on overdrive trying to get the "get" with Mr. and Mrs. Rice.) For now, at least, I'm curious to see how things turn out for Rice, and more specifically for his wife. I'm going to try to follow the story, unless and until something juicier comes along.   

The Knock-Out Punch

Monday afternoon update: After seeing the new video, the Ravens cut Ray Rice from the team; shortly thereafter the NFL suspended him indefinitely. Based on what I'm reading it appears Rice's career in the NFL is over.

Original Post:
Have you been following the saga of Baltimore Ravens player Ray Rice? Here's the short version: in an incident at the Revel Hotel in Atlantic City on February 15, Rice punched his then-fiancée Janay Palmer in the head, hard enough to knock her unconscious. Video emerged showing him dragging her, still unconscious, out of the elevator. The NFL evaluated the situation and (lightly) punished Rice with a two-game suspension. Outrage ensued, not least because of the comparison with another player who was suspended 16 games for smoking pot.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell reconsidered, acknowledged that "he got it wrong" and implemented a new policy for players who beat women: A six-game suspension for the first offense, followed by indefinite suspension for a second offense. (Note that I've seen the new policy for a 2nd offense described as everything from indefinite to full season to at least one year to a lifetime ban. So it's not completely clear.)

Done deal, right? No. Now TMZ.com has video of the actual moment inside the elevator when Rice punches Palmer, and it's graphic and disturbing. The s--t is hitting the fan all over again.

I like Mike Lupica's column in today's New York Daily News; read it here.

I also agree with what Steve Almond wrote in The Daily Beast in July (before the inside-the-elevator video came out): this is what the NFL is. It's misogynistic, violent and all business. Money quote:

After all, as a nation we worship football players specifically because they embody an ideal of hyper-masculinity that is inherently violent and impulsive. Football is a world where the basic role of the female is ornamental, at best.

It’s the fans who create and sustain this ideal. We’re the ones who spend billions of dollars and hours watching the game.

And we’re the reason why, from a young age, boys with the required talent and drive are segregated from the rest of the population and granted the privileges of an effective warrior class. We’re the reason so many players come to feel they are above the law: because as a culture we make them feel as if they are.

It is foolish to think that the mindset of brutality and entitlement that has governed their identity for years simply clicks off when they shed their uniform.

Full article here. 

By-the-way, in the first paragraph I referred to Ms. Palmer as Rice's "then-fiancée." If you think that means that after getting punched into unconsciousness she told him he's toast and walked away, think again. She's now his wife. Why, why, why???