Leonard Pitts Jr.: As if we didn’t already know about Ray Rice By Leonard Pitts Jr. lpitts@MiamiHerald Apologies for the blunt language, but can we please cut the crap? Meaning: Can we stop pretending we know something now that we didn’t before about what Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice did to his then-fiancée in the elevator of that Atlantic City casino? Can we stop pretending new information has come to light? Granted, the surveillance video released Monday by TMZ is graphic and disturbing: Rice is seen slapping Janay Palmer, who rushes at him, whereupon he uncorks a left that hits her like a hammer. She bangs her head on a railing and crumples, senseless, to the floor. But we already knew this had happened. We knew it from the initial video, released shortly after the Feb. 15 incident, which shows Rice dragging Palmer out of the elevator like a sack of flour, like a piece of lumber, like me-Tarzan-you-Jane. How did we think she got that way? Did we imagine she was overcome by his cologne? For criminy sake, he said it himself: He slugged her. And the Ravens knew this when they did their Tammy Wynette imitation, singing choruses of Stand By Your Man. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell knew it when he “punished” Rice by suspending him for just two games. Ravens fans knew it when they gave the cowardly woman hitter a standing ovation as he trotted out for a preseason game. So as the NFL responds to the new video by suspending Rice indefinitely and his team shreds his contract, it is galling to hear Ravens Coach John Harbaugh claiming the clip “changed things.” And it is the height of backside-covering bovine excreta for an NFL flack to tweet that the increased penalty was a result of “new video evidence.” There is no new evidence — just a video that makes visceral what some of us were content to pretend we didn’t know. Yet even now, some folks don’t get it. “I think the message is, take the stairs,” said Brian Kilmeade of Fox “News.” Meantime, Dr. Ben Carson warned against “demonizing this guy.” Yeah. Because Rice’s feelings are what matter here. Read more here: miamiherald/2014/09/09/4338442/leonard-pitts-jr-as-if-we-didnt.html#storylink=cpy
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 14:27:18 +0000
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