Do we feel better now? Are we ready to move on to Week 2?
Better late than never, the Baltimore Ravens have banished Janay Palmer’s husband, Ray Rice, for what happened in that Atlantic City casino elevator back on Valentine’s Day weekend.
Please don’t confuse this with doing the right thing.
If the Ravens cared about Janay, or their image or maybe even their fading running back, they would have cut ties back in May when the only available video only captured the aftermath, where Rice is seen dragging his then-fiance not-at-all-tenderly or remorsefully through the doors of the elevator after he (presumably) hit her.
Once it was determined she was struck by Rice, the precise details about how that happened became irrelevant.
Did she charge him? Was she hitting him? Taunting him?
When it comes to male-on-female domestic violence there is never a proper way to explain ‘but she started it’ short of ‘she’ was holding a weapon.
The NFL failed this common sense test way before the prequel came out.
What now?
If there is anything positive that can come from an imperfect storm of a video of an NFL star hitting his partner being released on the opening weekend of the season it’s that everyone will talk about it.
The incident has — and will — generate more conversation about domestic violence than the subject gets in any typical 12 month period, even though partners (usually men) have been hitting (and far, far worse) those closest to them forever. Some estimates suggest that about 25 percent of women will suffer some kind of assault by men.
So the floor is open, but what will people say?
Sports has become the giant kitchen or darkened barroom of our increasingly secular culture.
It’s where people who might not normally meet gather to watch games and end up talking about race and religion and homophobia and now domestic violence.
And that’s just from the weekend.
The problem is that it takes about 30 seconds for any nuanced topic to devolve into a shouting match. Even if the topics don’t always lend themselves to ‘I’m right, you’re wrong; I’m not listening to you anymore.’
The easiest and simplest way to deal with the assault Rice made on his wife go away is likely what’s happening right now: he’s been cast out by the Ravens, the same organization that made a considerable showing of standing by an employee they felt was a honourable person who did a dastardly thing (and published that horrible apologetic apology by Janay; only now deleted from the Ravens website). He’s been suspended indefinitely by the NFL. Running backs are the NFL’s most disposable asset. There won’t be another NFL team that will touch him, at least in the short term, which is all running backs have. He many never play again.
The NFL has already reviewed its rules regarding domestic violence after commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledged he “didn’t get this one right” when he initially suspended Rice for two games even as excessive marijuana smoking was costing some guys a full season. If the video hadn’t been made public he would have been eligible to go back to work after the Ravens game against this Thursday.
A first offence — whether or not there is a conviction is six games. A second offence is a lifetime ban although perpetrators can apply for reinstatement.
These are all relatively positive effects to a repugnant demonstration of anger and power by Rice.
But the question remains: what next?
Where will the conversation go?
Vilification in matters like these always carries with it a sense of satisfaction, of righting a wrong. And proper vilifying defies nuance. It touches the Old Testament nerve that runs near the surface of most of us. Mercy for the wicked — or at least the wicked things even good people sometimes do — is a learned behaviour.
But there are issues beyond calling for Ray Rice’s head on a pike. If one of those issues is how to make sure that young men in the public eye for being bigger, stronger and tougher than the biggest, strongest and toughest (it’s what makes the NFL so fun for us couch potatoes) can learn to have positive healthy relationships with the women in their life, has the bar been raised?
If you accept that violence between intimates is a broadly nuanced thing, has the response helped or hurt the cause of making women safer?
Is anything going to be done reduce the cause? Or is everyone going to move on now that the effects have been satisfactorily punished and everyone has had their turn on the moral high ground?
This won’t be the last time an NFL player hits his wife or his fiancé or his girlfriend. Given the age we’re in we might even see it on video again.
But does an Old Testament approach – albeit only after the video evidence hits TMZ — make it more likely or less that the victim would report her partner the next time, knowing that her partner’s career will absolutely be on the line?
Does it make it more likely or less that the perpetrator would seek his own counselling for an anger that he can’t always manage, for learning what the triggers are and how to avoid them?
Take all the satisfaction you want in seeing some form of justice done. Applaud the policies and the stern talk.
And feel no sympathy for Ray Rice. He made his bed when hit his fiancé for what all involved swear was the very first time that night.
But she’s his wife now and they still share that bed as they make a home for their daughter. His career is shot. He’s a monster in the public’s eyes.
Will all of that make it less the likely for the next football star to hit his loved one? Or make them both less likely to do anything about it?