You knew about it and so did everyone else. The story surfaced a couple of months ago with a video of Baltimore Ravens running back throwing his then girlfriend around outside an elevator in an Atlantic City casino. ESPN tells the story properly if you want a detailed read right here.
If you're like me, you thought the first video was plenty ugly but quickly put it on the back burner of your mind. The great mahouts of the NFL would figure it out. And the Jersey prosecutor would sort out the details. Ho-hum, time goes by and you think the matter's resolved.
And now this, the TMZ video of what happens inside the elevator. Janay goes for the high block and Rice gives it to her hard with a big left hook. She goes down like she's been dropped off a tall building. Then he tosses her around, arranging her this way and that way like she was just another crack-ho.
And then as the crap blows up in his face, he marries her so she can't/won't testify against him.
I heard the Ravens coach Harbaugh today and he sounded liked an idiot. The NFL commissioners also sound like idiots. And because the prosecutor also sounds like an idiot, it has become hard to find anyone in the happening who does not sound like an idiot.
If there is an idiocy reality show that connects with this, I would say that the prosecutor would win it. When you've got a video of a full-scale bludgeon assault, you don't need the former girlfriend/wife of convenience to testify anything.
And it doesn't matter the poor abused young woman doesn't want to press charges. This was a violent assault--aggravated assault in police legal terms. If a guy like Mike Tyson gave a shot like that to a female, he'd have gotten 25 to life with no chance of an alternative track other than prison.
And why would that be? Because boxing is boxing and you expect such things from boxers but not from football heroes. Football heroes are the people you would like to be. They attend college. They get fat pro contracts worth millions. They have press agents and reps whose only business is to make them smell good no matter what they do. But there is no way to make the NFL commissioner smell good, nor the Baltimore Ravens coach, nor the prosecutor who swooned before the Football Gods.
I'm not dictating that Ray Rice should get 25 to life. All I'm saying he should be processed through the system as most anyone else would be except sports celebrities. And then, after a jury has watched the video and come to a conclusion, the verdict should be rendered.
If at that point the sentencing authorities wanted to apply some enlightened remediation of the sentence, that would be quite another thing than how this is being handled now. As things stand, you're supposed to be an idiot too, and fall under the spell of every jock-worn sports cliche and feel sorry for the fool.
This was purely disgusting. You can't do this to women.
