By: Ben Johnson
Here's a partial list of reasons why the Ray Rice
Saga is upsetting.
1.
(Most
important) That Ray Rice, an incredibly physically strong professional athlete
man, struck Janay Palmer, an unarmed woman not physically strong enough in
comparison to represent any actual imminent threat to Rice’s safety, hard
enough to knock her unconscious.
2.
That
a video of Ray Rice dragging Palmer’s unconscious body out of an elevator
showed an apparent lack of tenderness and respect for her and her body in the
immediate aftermath of his having struck her.
3.
That
Ray Rice and Janay Palmer were engaged at the time, and had a daughter
together, indicating that regardless of the inherent wrongness of any man
striking any woman and dragging her unconscious body, Rice had also implicitly
and explicitly agreed, by asking for her hand in marriage and by fathering a
child with her, to act with an especial deference to Palmer’s humanity and
safety in particular.
4.
That,
a day after Rice’s indictment for Aggravated Assault, Rice and Palmer were married,
which though a choice made by two adults, may strike some as incongruous given
Rice’s actions.
5.
That
the State of New Jersey, while charging Ray Rice with Aggravated Assault
regardless of Janay Rice’s expressed wishes not to prosecute, offered Rice a plea
deal which would allow him to avoid jail time with probation and mandatory
anger management counseling, which will still be valid pending his application
to a pretrial intervention program for first-time offenders. If he is accepted
into and successfully completes this program, his record will be expunged. This
may strike some as being too lenient.
6.
That
the now-married Ray Rice and Janay Palmer appeared together in a press
conference in which Palmer apologized for her involvement in the incident, which
was blameless and involuntary on her part, as she was the victim of an assault
committed against her by Ray Rice.
7.
That
neither during this press conference, nor subsequent to it, did Ray Rice openly
admit to or claim sole responsibility for his actions. He apologized to his
business partners, employers, and fans, but did not take advantage of the
opportunity to apologize, publicly, to his wife. He did thank and praise both
his specific counselors and the counseling process in general for support
recently received, but did not stress the urgency of the counseling process or
mention future counseling plans.
8.
That
sound legal advice is likely the reason why Ray Rice has not openly admitted to
or claimed sole responsibility for his actions, indicating a legal system which
on an institutional level incentivizes secrecy or at least a lack of
forthrightness on the part of domestic violence offenders.
9.
That
as a result of his conduct the NFL suspended Ray Rice for the first two games
of the season, half the length of the suspension usually given to offenders of
the league’s substance abuse policy, indicating an internal NFL priority system
more tolerant of violent crime against women than on nonviolent drug-related
infractions.
10.
That
some self-styled commentators on social media, and, more shockingly,
professional pundits on television networks affiliated via partnership with the
NFL, posited on possible justifications of Ray Rice’s actions which suggested
Janay Palmer may bear some responsibility for having been struck in the head.
11.
That
the NFL admitted to missteps and revised its policy on domestic violence only
after it was exposed to over two months of public scorn.
12.
That
a second video of Ray Rice actually striking Janay Palmer, leaked to TMZ, shows
that Rice did in fact punch Palmer in the face, and not in response to any
action on her part which could reasonably be construed as a threat to his
safety.
13.
That
the NFL and Ravens waited until after the widespread release of this video to
release Rice from his player contract and suspend him from the NFL
indefinitely.
14.
That
rumors and accounts of this second video had been in circulation for months
prior to its leaking, and that both the NFL and the Baltimore Ravens, both
organizations with incalculable resources, say that they had not seen this
video until after its release on TMZ.
15.
That
both the NFL and the Ravens continue to insist they had not seen this second
video of Ray Rice striking Janay Palmer, even though an anonymous law
enforcement official stepped forward to contradict that claim in a report
released by the Associated Press, a 168 year old journalistic organization with
presumably rigorous standards of verification.
16.
That
the NFL is now launching an “independent” investigation of its actions, to be
headed up by a former FBI investigator and overseen by two NFL team owners.
17.
That
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who has overseen the NFL’s response to both
this situation and the preceding cover-up of
concussion science, as well as several other insensitive missteps such as
siding with Washington owner Dan Snyder over the continued use of the nickname
“Redskins,” still has a job he will reportedly “never”
relinquish.
18.
Whatever
happens next regarding this will happen in a legal and economic environment
which has revealed itself repeatedly throughout this process to be more concerned
with protecting vested interests, avoiding individual culpability for moral
decision-making processes, and making grand-gesture changes to policy only in
reaction to public relations crises than it is with doing whatever is necessary
to protect or serve the victims of an all too common crime. Everybody involved
in this incident, except for Janay Palmer, from Ray Rice, to his employers in
the NFL and with the Baltimore Ravens, to the media which has covered this
story, self most probably included, has done much more harm than good when
faced with a tremendous opportunity to address an important and complicated
issue responsibly.
19. That, highlighting the systematic misogyny in dealing with this case, most of the high-profile actors within it are men, and all of the business interests directly involved are controlled by men. I'm a man too. We spout our damn mouths off too often, and sometimes we punch women, and those are interrelated decisions we can by dint of our gender feel entitled to make, and that is patently unfair.
Here’s a partial list of what I believe about this subject:
1.
That
Ray Rice bears sole responsibility for intentionally punching an unarmed woman
who did not pose an immediate threat to his or anybody else’s safety, which is absolutely
morally indefensible, and especially so in this case given that A. she was his
fiancé and the mother of his child, and B. he has the physical bearing of a
professional athlete, and hit her with sufficient force to knock her
unconscious. No words or actions of Janay Palmer, nor any ingested amount of
consciousness-altering substances such as alcohol, offer any excuse whatsoever
for Ray Rice’s decision to punch Janay Palmer.
2.
That
neither Janay Palmer nor any other woman should be held responsible for Ray
Rice’s, or any other man’s, decision to employ violence against her. That is a
decision, and it was Ray Rice’s decision which happened internally within Ray
Rice’s brain and was acted upon physically by Ray Rice’s arm and fist, and that
decision did not involve or consult Janay Palmer. It was a violation of her
basic right as a human not to be physically assaulted.
3.
That
while the issue of whether or not it is morally wrong for a man to punch or
otherwise use force against an unarmed woman who does not pose an immediate
threat to his or anybody else’s safety, and the issue of who bears the
responsibility for such a decision are both simple, the issue of how we as a
society should best understand, prevent, process, and punish domestic violence
is complicated.
4.
That
Ray Rice is not a monster. Ray Rice is a human being who did something
absolutely morally indefensible which nonetheless human beings, all male human
beings, are capable of doing. As such, he is also solely responsible for the
continued care and maintenance of Ray Rice and must therefore take and maintain
all actions necessary to ensure that he does not hit any woman ever again.
5.
That,
as Janay Palmer did not have a choice over whether or not to be punched, it
should not be up to me or anybody but Janay Palmer and those she chooses to
consult to tell Janay Palmer how best to address the situation. While I, like
everybody, am entitled to my opinions, one of those opinions is that Janay
Palmer, like all people, has the agency to make her own decisions regarding
whether or not to marry, separate from, support, or condemn Ray Rice, and to
say or do whatever she feels a need to say or do on the matter at any given
time. Further, I do not think her decisions on the matter should in any way
lessen her standing in the public eye as a strong, capable woman, as any
questioning of the validity of her choices based on any conceptual value system
external to Janay Palmer herself constitutes a willful denial of her ability to
choose what’s best for her, and does so in a manner akin to the original
offense in kind but certainly not magnitude. But: this is not to say that Janay
Palmer should be granted more agency than otherwise in her ability to make
decisions, and that some decisions, such as regards the present status of Ray
Rice’s legal fate, about how the crime of aggravated assault is enforced and
punished in the State of New Jersey, are necessarily going to remain out of her
hands.
6.
That
battered person syndrome, preventable domestic homicide, and the serial and/or
severe and/or expertly manipulative abusers who are the sole cause of each are
all very real phenomena representing recognizable patterns within the spectrum
of domestic abuse. BUT, each case of domestic violence involves different
people in unique circumstances, and therefore blanket conceptual approaches to
addressing domestic violence will in at least some cases further incentivize
and empower the feelings of secrecy, shame, and isolation which are domestic
violence’s milieu, which is as real a danger as certain offenders falling
through the cracks of policy platforms with too much designed elasticity. As
such, there is as much sense in the existence of amnesty programs for certain
first-time offenders as there is in creating much harsher penalties for repeat
offenders or especially violent offenders, and many of the state’s laws and
on-the-books enforcement mechanisms are as close to correct now as they are
likely going to be. I believe that New Jersey’s legal system is handling the
Ray Rice case in an exemplary fashion.
7.
That
alcohol use and abuse poses a larger influence on our consciousness and
societal framework than it is credited with, and that while alcohol abuse
cannot cause domestic violence, it can contribute to the sort of distorted
mindset which domestic violence is enabled by.
8.
That,
perhaps more complicated as is the case with alcohol being no excuse for Ray
Rice’s behavior, erratic and aggressive behavior are symptoms of CTE, the degenerative neurological disorder
associated with repeated blows to the head which several professional and
amateur football players are known to have suffered from. I obviously do not
know if Ray Rice suffers from CTE, nor do I know much about CTE’s affect on a
person’s psyche, or how to care for or manage a person who suffers from CTE, or
even if CTE has any connection whatsoever to domestic violence other than my
own perceptions typifying domestic violence as “erratic and aggressive behavior,”
a listed symptom of the disorder. Hopefully medical science will know more
about this disorder in the near future. Also, to the unknown and perhaps unknowable extent that Ray Rice's actions may be related to CTE symptoms, and to the extent that NFL is culpable for a work environment which would contribute to such CTE, the NFL would be that amount complicit in Ray Rice's actions.
9.
That
Ray Rice is genuinely contrite about his actions, and that Janay Palmer is
justified in supporting him, but that due to their particular circumstances and
personalities, neither of them are as articulate or as prepared or as
insightful about this complex issue as may be ideal given the enormity of the
attention focused on their case and the pervasiveness of domestic violence.
This is totally forgivable. They are not, nor should we expect them to be,
professional advocates.
10.
That
domestic violence is an act of cowardice, and to expect an above average amount
of both courage and conviction from an abuser is unrealistic. Nevertheless, I think
that Ray Rice should have publicly admitted to what he did, demanded full
responsibility for his actions, and accepted the consequences. If by not doing
so he has been responding to Janay Palmer’s wishes on the matter, which should
for a time supersede his own sense of right and wrong, I respect him for making
the decision not to admit to the commission of a crime on that basis and that
basis alone.
11.
That
the scorn heaped upon Ray Rice does not help Ray Rice in his task of working on
Ray Rice, nor does it help Janay Palmer, nearly so much as it soothingly helps
the scorners distance themselves from Ray Rice and his actions.
12.
That
the actions of the powers that be within the NFL and within the Baltimore
Ravens are not Ray Rice’s fault, and that he very probably did not lie to them
about his actions. And that even if he did, the high profile nature of his
actions would necessitate a full and thorough investigation rather than blind
trust in Ray Rice’s word.
13.
That
the sheer obviousness of all the well-moneyed parties with a vested interest in
minimizing, covering up, and transparently spinning Ray Rice’s commission of
domestic violence is at least as sickening as the act itself.
14.
I
do not believe that the NFL and/or the Baltimore Ravens would not have made all
possible inquiries into the nature of Ray Rice’s actions, including viewing all
available video surveillance footage, and I am therefore also unwilling to
accept that the initial two game suspension penalty was not informed by a
viewing of that video. Several journalists had seen that video and/or made
mention of having seen it or hearing accounts of it as early as May. I refuse
to believe that the NFL and Baltimore Ravens had fewer resources or less
interest in the truth than these journalists, or TMZ.
15.
I
am willing to accept that neither the Baltimore Ravens nor the NFL could admit
to having seen these videos without also admitting to interfering with an
ongoing investigation, but I cannot accept the pragmatic necessity of lying
about it.
16.
That
commentators on any of the television networks who have business partnerships
with the NFL are not trustworthy sources of information regarding an act of
wrongdoing on the part of the NFL.
17.
That
both the NFL and the Baltimore Ravens have been tone deaf, reactionary, and
transparently manipulative through every single step of the timeline of this
story’s development, and they continue to be so to this day. I believe they are
doing so in a spiraling attempt to protect their brand name and interests, and
I believe that stems from an initial but fully informed decision to protect
their brand name and interests by continually suppressing and spinning and
downplaying the significance of what Ray Rice did.
18.
That
even if I am wrong about this, even if the NFL really did not see the tapes or
manipulate the media or downplay the situation, their actions bespeak a
lumbering institutionalized misogyny that is disturbingly ineffectual at acting
morally. And if I am correct in my belief that the NFL willfully covered up
their knowledge and overtly manipulated media sources and lied about timelines,
then that lumbering institutionalized misogyny is even more disturbingly
ineffectual at acting with calculated immorality.
19.
That
institutionalized, de facto corruption is inherent in any billion-plus dollar
business in 2014, and that the wielders of decision making power behind such
organizations are inherently untrustworthy, and that among countless others
like him, Roger Goodell, and a likely high percentage of his staff, should not
be trusted to run so powerful and so high profile an organization.
20.
That
I enjoy football, my favorite sport to watch and follow, a lot less because of
all this, and while that is unfortunate because it decreases the overall amount
of joy I experience in my life, the NFL’s handling of this situation is further
evidence to me that maybe I shouldn’t have been enjoying it so much in the
first place.
21.
That
I am glad Ray Rice is not playing football right now, and that I hope he
focuses hard on the task ahead of him, and I hope that he and Janay Palmer can
live their lives in a way that is healthy, productive, and provides adequate
support to their daughter.
And that’s all I got.
