Goodell should be next
Keith Olbermann deserves accolades not only because he's the most prominent observer to date to call for Roger Goodell's job in the wake of the Ray Rice affair, but because he was doing so already on August 1st, before the video of Rice punching his girlfriend on a hotel elevator became public.
Clearly, Commissioner Goodell is lying when he says he had not seen the video, and if he truly hadn't, it's only because he didn't ask to see it. (For Goodell, it would be the cover-up, not the crime, that does him in.) Like the rest of us, he had definitely seen the surveillance video of the punch's result-- Rice dragging his unconscious then-fiance, Janay Palmer, out of the elevator into the hallway. If he doesn't lose his job over this-- and Roger Goodell has helped a lot of rich men get a lot richer, he will still have to live with having badly blown his one chance to disprove that he's a corporate executive without a conscience blinded by greed.
Why do so many of us dismiss this type of violence unless we actually see it? It's because a ridiculous number still buy into the long-held fallacy that a woman who is struck in a domestic situation like this somehow "had it coming." (Last month, ESPN's Stephen A. Smith was only saying on television what many other men, and even some women, say privately.) Rice's idiot teammates are now stating that he lost their support only after they saw the video of Palmer being struck. Apparently, when only the initial video of Rice dragging the body surfaced, he convinced his colleagues that he had been "defending himself." As if.
Everybody in the Baltimore Ravens organization-- from management down-- has behaved abominably in this. None of them are bigger than the game-- not the P.R. staff, the head coach John Harbaugh, the general manager Ozzie Newsome, nor the ownership group headed by Steve Bisciotti. They are all enablers of a man who hits women-- to use Olbermann's description of Goodell. None of them should be considered bigger than the corporation-- and that includes the commissioner.
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Memo to President Obama and others: A "real man" doesn't hit other men either. It's not just women.
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What Roger Goodell is to Ray Rice, USA Today is to Henry Kissinger. Could somebody please arrest this war criminal already? Before he gives another interview.
posted by CM @ 7:29 PM
3 Comments:
Why all of this attack at Goodell when the court system only ordered Rice to counseling and a suspended sentence? If the courts didn't take this seriously and the victim, Janay, wasn't necessarily being cooperative in her story of events how much can the NFL actually do? Are we to expect them to perform independent investigations of any suspicious activities their players may be involved in?
Absolutely we can expect that he should have performed an independent investigation into this. You nailed it actually. I'm surprised you're not more outraged by the wide gulf between the NFL's very corporate and public participation in breast cancer awareness and its reaction to this incident of domestic violence against women. Usually we can count on you, RS, for a healthier dose of cynicism.
Plenty of us would like to take the court system to task as well, but don't live in Atlantic City. Goodell's organization is national, however. His cartel extracts billions of dollars from us in tax breaks and to build its privately-owned stadia. We have the right-- and the prerogative to call for Goodell's ouster. His bosses can take these calls to heart or they can ignore them, but I believe that people will speak with our pocketbooks one way or the other.
The attacks are going to escalate now because he has compounded his ignorance with lying. (As I said in the post, it will be the cover-up, not the crime, that gets him.) That's what the AP is implying anyway. Goodell's independent investigation should have been easy as pie when law enforcement officials mailed him the video well in advance of his initial ruling on Rice, even though he claims nobody saw it.
In what world are you the public head of a $9 billion a year corporation and not have some accountability to the public? I realize that the NFL pays no tax on that $9 billion, but we can still stump for some alternative measure of responsibility towards the communities that the NFL calls home.
Are you referring to the AP's ANONYMOUS source that Goodell was sent the video? This person has chosen to be anonymous because the law enforcement was not allowed to share the video and, while the NFL might not have requested the video footage directly from the casino, the Ravens did request it and were denied because the casino was not allowed to release footage being used in an investigation.
I completely agree that the initial punishment was soft but rather than believe that the release of the video "trapped" Goodell into banning Rice, I believe that the release of this video provided an opportune time for Goodell to do what he should have done the first time and strengthen the punishment.
My question now is, what happens to other players in similar situations in the future? Does the NFL follow their "new" policy and suspend a player for 6 games or is that person banned from the NFL for the same length of time as Rice eventually is?
I am not sure I understand your thoughts; do you feel that the NFL should be making judgements on players when there is no criminal act, as far as the legal system or law enforcement is concerned? If a player is accused of rape and later settles with accuser and charges are dropped should the NFL still suspend the player due to the accusation? I think this is what happened to Roethlisberger, he was originally suspended for 6 games and eventually reduced to 2.
I understand your disdain for these corporations, but if I was accused of something and never charged I certainly wouldn't want my employer to play "investigator" and decide for themselves my guilt.
Of course, most of your comments are based on Goodell making his initial 2 game ban after seeing the full video. I for one do not feel that he did see the full video.
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