It's been a bad week for the NFL. The elevator video of Ray Rice punching his wife Janay and knocking her out was terrible. Adrian Peterson taking a wood switch to his step son and leaving welts and cuts is simply awful. I've enjoyed watching AP play for my beloved Vikings over the years but these recent revelations are simply too much. Both he and Ray Rice should never play in the NFL again.
Although each situation is markedly different, there is an overriding issue that bind them together in commonality. To illustrate this similarity, I have to begin by noting how thoroughly sick I am of the media and their race to prove which one of them is a bigger defender of abused women. I'm a very proud liberal and Democrat but I am completely disgusted by outlets like ThinkProgress, HuffPo, and MSNBC for their hyper over reaction to the Ray Rice story. Here's the deal, folks.
No one is going to dispute that Ray Rice is awful. He should be charged with assault, not a petty misdemeanor. But guess what? Janay Rice is also awful. She spit on him and charged him. That does not give him the right to do what he did but it most certainly means she's not a passive victim from an ABC afterschool special about spousal abuse as the media is making her out to be. That's what makes the Ray Rice story different from the AP story. AP's step son was a passive victim who simply got into an argument over a video game with this brother.
As soon Janay's payday was threatened, she showed her true colors.
Both Ray Rice and his wife are emotionally unintelligent people who need years of intensive therapy to be better members of our society. So does Adrian Peterson. So do millions of other couples or parents who think it's OK to solve their problems through violence. This is a problem within the NFL but it's really our society as a whole that has failed to address this issue properly.
If the media wants to perform an actual public service here, they should stop trying to get an "A" in Women's Studies 101 and start promoting good mental and emotional health for all US citizens. Encourage people to go to therapy for their problems and become more emotionally intelligent.
EVERYONE needs therapy and the day domestic violence ends is the day the stigma about mental and emotional health is gone with people talking about it as openly as they talk about going to the dentist.
At an even higher level, our revulsion to Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson represents just how much society has changed over the past fifty years. I recall a debate on TSM a couple of years back in which one of biggest fans (DJ) advocated corporal punishment. His support of this shows just how out of step his mentality is with our current society. What we are seeing with these stories is a shift away from that "golden age of America" that conservatives childishly pine for on a daily basis.
There was no fucking golden age of America. Blacks were treated like shit, gay people were arrested, men beat their wives and got away with it because women were considered inferior, and dads whopped their kids leaving welts and cuts. It was a very emotionally unintelligent culture and we are seeing the remnants of that being swept away.
2 comments:
Both he and Ray Rice should never play in the NFL again.
What is it your Good Book says about judging M?
who need years of intensive therapy to be better members of our society
Holy redemption via therapeutic improvement - and as measured by social norms. Good Christ what kind of Christian are you? [That really is a rhetorical question, but if you feel inspired to answer...]
I recall a debate on TSM a couple of years back in which one of biggest fans (DJ) advocated corporal punishment. His support of this shows just how out of step his mentality is with our current society. What we are seeing with these stories is a shift away from that "golden age of America" that conservatives childishly pine for on a daily basis.
There's a huge difference between a quick slap on the butt of an ornery child and using a switch and drawing blood and raising welts. Similarly, there's a difference between slapping a spouse and throwing him or her down the stairs, or breaking someone's nose or inducing a concussion by punching them in the face or hitting them with a bludgeon, or inflicting spiral fractures by twisting an arm.
There's also a difference between a 300-lb man striking a 120-lb woman in anger and a 120-lb woman ineffectually flailing at her 300-lb husband, unable to lay a hand on him. The man can easily injure a woman who weighs much less than him, while the woman would have a hard time hurting the man without some kind of implement.
The issue isn't about corporal punishment, it's about judgment and proportionality. I don't have kids, so I've never had to discipline them. But I've observed a lot of parents and lot of kids. Everyone is different. Some kids are totally oblivious to timeouts, asking nicely and even yelling, and the only way to get their attention is through some kind of physical action.
It's possible to inflict far more lasting harm on a child by emotional mistreatment than by slapping their hand or bottom. Men often say that they physically hurt their wives because the women inflicted unbearable emotional pain upon them. It's no excuse, but as Mark implies with his appeal for psychiatric care, emotional scars can be much worse than physical ones.
A parent that manipulates a child's emotions by forcing them into unbearable isolation and threatening abandonment is doing far more long-term damage to their child than a parent who swats their kid on the bottom when they just won't listen.
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