It’s hard to say which abhors a vacuum more: nature or sports media.
The latter has made a compelling statement during the saga of a certain NFL running back, and like a mob seeing a dead child, silence is not an option–especially when a partial visual has such power to inflame passions and percolate bloodlust.
This past week, Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was penalized two games for an incident on Valentine’s Day, which resulted in him carrying the limp body of his fiancée, Janay Palmer, from a casino. Broken by TMZ, the video clip of the exit went viral, joining Rodney King and the “nanny child abuser” in infamy. After both he and Palmer were arrested, Rice was charged with felony aggravated assault, which was later reduced, and ordered into a diversionary program. The announcement of the meager suspension sparked a fury of protest, nearly causing social media to melt from the heat.
Sports On Earth’s Tomas Rios, The Nation’s Dave Zirin, New York Times columnist LZ Granderson, and Yahoo!’s Dan Wetzel, just to name a few, went apoplectic. The consensus of the cacophonous chorus was “How callous of the NFL, not to send a message that Violence against Women will not be tolerated? They had a chance to send a message and failed.”
However, according to sources of ESPN’s Chris Mortenson, and even some known to Stephen A. Smith, Ray Rice did not knock out Palmer. Rather, with a defensive blow, he drove her backward and she hit her head on a wall or railing.
So who’s right?
Well, as ESPN’s Jonathan Coachman and Jason Whitlock rightly point out, like the dead child, the only way to answer that question is to account for the block of time leading up to the infamous “Elevator Drag,” a block of time only police, prosecutors, the principals, and NFL investigators are privy to.
Either the Atlantic County Prosecutor must release the entire video or NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell must come before the public and explain what was in that video. One should result in jail time, and no one should shed a tear if it leads to Rice’s career going poof, exiled like Chad Johnson.
The other falls into the category of “assumed risk.” You know, kind of like the end result of poking a ground nest of yellow jackets with a short stick, sans bee suit. No tears need be shed for anyone who suffers a bump on the head as a consequence of an attack on another adult human being.
Far too many women in this culture see a penis as peremptory forfeiture of self-defense rights. The “Grrrrl Power” train can become a Crazy Train, and crazy trains are subject to going off the rails. I don’t know if that’s the case here, and neither does sports media, but that’s the point that brings us back to vacuums.
That’s not to say sports media gets it right even without a vacuum. They have little moral authority in the realm of sexual and gender politics, as their selective indignence is far more pronounced and nauseating than the general media, as I pointed out last year.
Indeed, just this past year, Tennis Hall of Famer Martina Hingis’s return to the winner’s circle was celebrated, while her alleged coordinated beating of her previously cuckolded husband went unquestioned, not to mention unpunished, the allegations having vaporized inside some Swiss legal Bermuda Triangle, the journalistic trail spookily ending the day before Halloween. That’s on top of “Baseball Wife” Anna Benson getting probation for busting into husband Kris’s apartment to rob him and chasing him from it, armed like Duke Nukem or one of The Expendables, and stalker Jennifer Capriati getting her charges dropped by prosecutor Dave Aronberg after sitting with sick kids for two days. No word on whether Jennifer was required to change their bedpans. Nary a peep, let alone the invocation of the phrase “domestic violence.”
Heck, in a year where there were multiple cases of them behaving badly, even molesting kids, and getting a pass, ESPN’s “Outside The Lines” only exposé of NFL cheerleaders was about their admittedly exploitative compensation arrangements.
Indeed, there is ample evidence to suggest Ray Rice is more Rayon McIntosh than Tony Farmer. Exhibit A is Palmer’s much lampooned “apology” for “her part” in the incident, flippantly (and thoughtlessly) dismissed by sports pundits, or blasted as a betrayal of victims everywhere, despite her arrest at the same time.
Exhibit B is the report by ESPN’s Chris Mortensen, TV’s most reliable and trusted NFL media source, breaking the news on how the blow came about.
Exhibit C is the date and venue; it’s possible that Rice took his fiancée to the most surveilled of businesses on Valentine’s Day with the sinister plan to begin his career as a wife-beater, in order to effectively end his more lucrative vocation, but it’s doubtful.
Exhibit D is the “sentence” itself, from a man widely recognized as a “hangin’ judge” in far more trivial matters, and who suspended an NFL quarterback on uncharged rape allegations.
However, asking the questions requires Socratic work. Mass I Am Legend-style hive-rage is so much easier, especially in a vacuum. That is indeed the purpose of investigations: to fill the vacuum by asking questions, making findings and disclosing them. A child could be dead in the hot car because Mommy had a seizure and passed out or because Mommy tried on multiple outfits from Victoria’s Secret’s clearance selection. A few camera shots and a medical finding is all that’s necessary to figure out circumstance and, ergo, culpability.
NFL investigators missed the last step. Absent the visuals of what they saw, sports media, in its hubris, filled the vacuum, lighting the Patriarchy/VAWA kindling, with predictable results. The resultant brush-fire threatens to scorch the profit-verdant Eden that is the NFL Empire. Water cannot contain this fire. Only the retardants uttered by Commissioner Goodell or disclosed by the Atlantic County Prosecutor can. That is why it’s imperative that the interior elevator video contents be revealed. Should the video show what some assume it will show, Ray Rice should be done for at least half the season, if not longer, and deserves to squirm. The Baltimore Ravens, remember, can still suspend or even cut him. On the other hand, should it show an act of self-defense, the squirming will be of those forced to confront head on the depth of their disregard for the basic human rights of adult human beings to neutralize attacks of other adult human beings on their person.
