Archive for the ‘Truly horrible behavior’ Category
National Outrage Ensues After Ray Rice Gets Suspended by the NFL for Only Two Games After Domestic Violence Arrest
Folks, there are some things as a human being that deeply offend me. Domestic violence against your life partner is one of those things.
Recently, Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was caught hitting his then-fiancée, now-wife on camera at a casino to the point that she ended up unconscious from the blow. This was a senselessly stupid act in more ways than one, and he was quite properly arrested for it.
However, as he married his fiancée not long afterward (exactly one day after an Atlantic City grand jury indicted him, according to this New York Times article), and as Rice both pled not guilty and entered a diversion program as a first-time offender (this according to an article from Huffington Post), apparently the NFL did not think it needed to suspend Ray Rice for more than a mere two games.
Considering Rice’s suspension is less than your typical four games for using steroids or other performance enhancing drugs, this has caused a national furor. And not just from outraged female sports fans, either.
Take a look at this quote from this past Monday’s Shutdown Corner column over at Yahoo Sports, which points out that this particular suspension doesn’t make sense compared to other suspensions dealing with NFL players committing violent acts:
Cedric Benson once received a three-game suspension for assaulting a former roommate. Albert Haynesworth got five games after stomping on an opponent’s head in the heat of a game. Terrelle Pryor received five games in the Ohio State tattoo case before he ever entered the NFL. Tank Johnson was suspended half a season for illegal firearm possession.
Where is the consistency? Is there any scale at all here?
And when you consider that someone who’s used marijuana and been caught using typically gets a four-game suspension for a first offense, this particular two-game suspension becomes even more baffling.
Look. I know that pro football is a very violent game. I know that the men who play this game have a good amount of aggression in them — they have to have it, or they could not possibly play pro football at a high level. And there are very, very few men like the late Reggie White who are as gentle off the field as they are near-murderous upon it.
Even so, it’s wrong that a man like Ray Rice gets only a “piddling two-game suspension” (paraphrased from the words of Frank DeFord, who’s on record as asking if Roger Goodell is truly good enough to lead the NFL) for hitting his then-fiancée when someone who takes Adderall without first getting a therapeutic use exemption (or whatever the NFL calls it; I’m using MLB terminology as I’m much more conversant with that) gets a four-game suspension?
How can the NFL possibly justify only a two-game suspension for Rice under these particular circumstances? How is taking Adderall or smoking Mary Jane worse than hitting your fiancée?
Also, this sends a terrible message to any female fan of every NFL team. That message goes something like this: “We don’t care about you. At all.”
Because if they did, the NFL wouldn’t have come out with this stupid, pointless, ridiculous and utterly senseless two-game suspension for Rice. Instead, they would’ve ordered him into counseling — tougher and more stringent counseling than he’s already paying for on his own. They would’ve suspended him at least the same four games for any other first-time offense whether the police pressed charges or not, or allowed Rice into a diversion program or not. And they would’ve then gotten some counseling — big-time, major counseling — for Rice’s now-wife. (Remember her? The woman Rice hurt badly? The woman the NFL doesn’t want to talk about, because they seemingly want to see this as a “victimless crime” because Rice already is in counseling and he’s already married his then-fiancée?)
Right now, the NFL’s message is really bad. It says that their players can hit any woman they please and knock them out, and they will do almost nothing. Then, after giving the player what amounts to a mild slap on the wrist, the NFL will turn around and say what a tremendously wonderful human being the guy in question is (in this case, Ray Rice), and how this was an aberration and will never happen again.
And how do I know this is their message? Because their actions speak much louder than their actual words; they say, loudly and clearly, that domestic violence just doesn’t matter to the NFL. Or Rice would’ve at minimum received a four-game suspension, and quite possibly longer than that.
That he didn’t, my friends, is just wrong.
A Plea to the Media: Leave the Family Members of those Lost on Malaysian Airways Flight 370 Alone
For the past seventeen or eighteen days, depending on which side of the globe you’re on, it seems that every news person in the world has been covering the strange and sudden disappearance of Malaysian Airways flight 370, abbreviated as MH370 for short.
Every night, news organizations such as CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, BBC America, and others have breathlessly reported on any available lead as to where this plane went. Various theories have been expounded, some having to do with Visual Flight Rules and how they might apply (if you’re flying low, you’re on VFR), some having to do with why the pilots might have simulators in their houses, various scenarios about how the cockpit might have had a catastrophic accident, and many, many more.
During all this time, the various families of the passengers who’d boarded MH370 expecting a safe and sedate flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing have been inundated with all of this. They’ve had to try to remain calm, even as the reputations of the pilots have been besmirched over and over again; they’ve been told all sorts of conflicting information, as no one can even seemingly figure out exactly where the flight may have gone down.
Worst of all, the Malaysian Prime Minister, a man by the name of Najib Razak, seemingly says something different every single day. He can’t confirm anything, because the information is constantly changing, and the satellite data coming in from other countries seems to directly contradict anything he says anyway.
So when Mr. Razak said earlier today (as reported by Wolf Blitzer on CNN) that there is now “conclusive evidence” that MH370 went down in the Indian Ocean and that all passengers and crew must be accounted dead, who can blame the families for not believing him?
See, the families are in between a rock and a hard place. They want information; they have to know that it would be an increasingly long shot for anyone to survive in the cold ocean in choppy seas without land, even with floatation devices and possibly some food and a bit of water, after seventeen-plus days. But the information must be impeccable, must be comprehensible, and must be logical.
More to the point, every available authority should agree on it.
Because after all this time, with all of the information that’s been thrown at them day after day after day, the families of the passengers and crew of lost MH370 have to be completely shellshocked.
That being said, the families have reacted with dismay, frustration, loss, and a whole lot of screaming to the recent revelations by Prime Minister Razak. All of this is completely understandable.
What isn’t understandable is why the media insists on showing these poor people being carried out on stretchers, screaming at the top of their lungs while gesticulating wildly, or other scenes of pain, loss, and outright suffering.
Where is the decency of the media? Why aren’t they treating these poor families the way they, themselves, would wish to be treated if for some reason their family members and loved ones had gone down on MH370 instead?
Granted, not every media outlet is showing the screaming. MSNBC seems to have restrained itself, for the most part, especially in recent days, for which I thank them. Fox News has not shown a lot of that, either, during the past four or five days. I don’t think BBC America has shown much in the past few days (though it showed a lot more earlier), and that’s a good thing as well.
But CNN definitely has.
Worse, it keeps doing it, and shows no sign of stopping any time soon.
My view is simple: The media needs to leave these poor families alone. (Yes, CNN, I’m looking squarely at you.) They have suffered enough as it is.
And unfortunately, they will continue to suffer for a very, very long time, even if the current information is absolutely accurate and even if the bodies of their loved ones are eventually found and recovered.
The only thing CNN and other media outlets like them are doing at this point is to prolong the agony of the suffering families.
And that, my friends, is just wrong.
Adam Lanza’s Father Finally Speaks . . .
In a new article in the New Yorker, writer Andrew Solomon discusses Adam Lanza with one of the very few people who knew him well — his father, Peter Lanza.
Now, why is this significant? Well, no one’s sure why Adam Lanza killed twenty-six children at Sandy Hook Elementary School to this day, and despite what we’ve learned about Adam Lanza over the past year-plus, we possibly never will know, either.
But at least Peter Lanza knew his son, Adam, and can discuss Adam’s mental illness and other issues . . . which is probably why Mr. Lanza consented to be interviewed by Andrew Solomon in the first place.
I wrote about the Sandy Hook school shooting back in December of 2012, and at that time asked the basic question: Why did this happen?
As I said at the time:
I normally have sympathy for the mentally ill, even severely mentally ill types like it sounds like the latest shooter, Adam Lanza, probably was. (And I’m decidedly not talking about his Asperger’s Syndrome; I’m talking about the behavioral issues he’d have likely had whether he had AS or not.) But in this case, I can find no mercy in my heart for him — far less mercy than one of the parents of the victims, Robbie Parker, who’s already expressed sympathy for the surviving family members of Adam Lanza.
Mr. Parker is a far better person than I.
My focus is elsewhere, because I just do not understand why any responsible parent, such as Nancy Lanza has been described, would ever allow a troubled young man like her son to get a hand on any of her guns.
Much less teach him to shoot them herself, as it appears she did.
What Peter Lanza has done by consenting to an interview by Mr. Solomon in the New Yorker is to answer that question — why did Nancy Lanza teach her son to shoot in the first place? And why did she seemingly enable her son to withdraw into his own violent fantasy world rather than get him treatment?
In addition, Mr. Lanza also discusses many, many other things. He believes that his son Adam would’ve gladly shot him, too, if Adam had had the chance . . . a tremendously sad thing for any father to say about his own son. And he discusses why he thinks Nancy Lanza, his ex-wife, took the odd approach of laissez-faire parenting on the one hand with over-the-top enablement on the other, too, and through writer Solomon comes to a somewhat healing conclusion that perhaps this was just the best Nancy Lanza knew how to do.
The eight-page article in the New Yorker is well worth reading, if you haven’t seen it already (again, the link is here), but it is unsettling.
I’m glad Peter Lanza, Adam’s father, has spoken. I’m glad he was able to shed some light on things from his perspective.
I know that speaking must’ve been difficult for Mr. Lanza. I applaud him for doing it, and hope it will help others in some way.
But it’s a sad, sad commentary when a father says of his own son, “I wish he’d never been born.”
Especially when it’s true.
‘This is a Disaster:’ Federal Government Shuts Down
What a mess.
The federal government has been shut down, all because the Congressional Republicans wanted to defund the Affordable Care Act (popularly known as “Obamacare”). The Rs did not get their wish as the ACA was funded anyway . . . but the government is still shut down until further notice.
Does this make any sense to you? Because it surely doesn’t make any to me.
“But Barb,” I can hear you saying now. “You’re a political junkie. Surely you knew this was coming, so why are you so bemused?”
I did know this was coming, yes. But I don’t understand why anyone — especially a cool political operator like Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) — would want to shut down the United States government. Because, as Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) said on Rachel Maddow’s Monday evening late night show at 11 p.m. CDT, “This is a disaster.”
Now, Schakowsky was talking specifically about the people who will be “furloughed” due to the Congress’s overall inaction tonight — many of them making less than $30,000 per year. Those are the people who do not have the resources to withstand even a day without pay, much less weeks or months . . . and the knowledge that the current Republican leadership has absolutely no endgame in progress (that is, any way to avoid doing what they’ve just done) makes this even worse.
“But Barb,” again you say. “The Republicans do not like Obamacare and are standing on principle. Isn’t that a good thing?”
Um, no, it isn’t.
Obamacare was funded anyway. So the people who aren’t going to get paid now that the government has been officially shut down are the lower wage workers Rep. Schakowsky mentioned, right along with people who work in the federal park system (shut down), much of NASA (shut down), much of the Department of Defense (yes, the active duty military will be paid, thank goodness, but the civilian analysts helping to analyze threats have all been effectively laid off for no good reason, something Boehner and his compatriots among the Rs had to know), and many, many more.
All of this gets even worse, folks, when you consider that Congress will still be paid even though most of the rest of the government is shut down. And that is not just wrong — it’s completely and utterly hypocritical.**
All night long, I’ve tried to understand why the Republicans — supposedly the party that wants to “keep the United States safe” — would want to cause this catastrophe. Because it’s obvious that shutting down the government is likely to harm national security.
But then again, I suppose the Rs weren’t satisfied with simply harming the people just trying to get by — those G-1 and G-2 workers out there who have been indefinitely “furloughed” (meaning: sent home without pay).
So, why did all this happen, anyway? Was there any rhyme or reason to it whatsoever? Or is this all the equivalent of the political theatre of the absurd?
The pundits, whether they’re on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, or some other station, all seem to blame the radical right-wing Tea Party Representatives right along with freshman Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) for the current government shutdown. (Fox News is complimentary toward these people, while the others are all condemnatory. But the person mostly being named as being the prime mover here is, for better or for worse, Senator Cruz.)
To my mind, though, the one person who is responsible beyond a shadow of a doubt is Speaker Boehner. Boehner’s been in the U.S. House of Reps. since 1990, which means Boehner saw what happened the last time the government shut down. At that point, Newt Gingrich (R-GA) was the Speaker of the House, and things did not go favorably for him or his party due to Gingrich’s insistence on shutting down the government to get his own way.
Speaker Boehner knows better than this. He has to know better than this. But for whatever reason, he either couldn’t get his Republican caucus to listen to him, or he just didn’t care to set them straight.##
So here’s where we stand at this hour: The federal government has shut down. The low-wage workers will be hurt badly by this, the defense contractors will be hurt badly by this, NASA will be hurt badly by this . . . and the Congress will still get paid for their overall intransigence.
It’s at times like this that I truly wonder about the state of American democracy. Seriously.
———
Notes:
**Before anyone says it, I am aware that the Rs wanted to level the playing field and make sure that everyone in the Congress, the White House, and elsewhere in the government that’s currently exempted from the ACA would have to abide by the same rules as everyone else. I agree that this makes sense, and had the House tried to talk about this earlier this year — long before now — I’d have been happy to entertain the idea.
Now, though? What sense does it make?
##I’m not enamored by the way the Congressional Democrats have acted, either. But the Ds in the House have no real power, while the Ds in the Senate have at least tried to do their jobs, as they’ve been trying to get the House to come to the bargaining table since late March or early April. The R-driven House refused to do so, which is why I blame them far, far more than the Ds.
Milwaukee Casino Shooting Leaves One Injured, One Arrested
Folks, it’s getting bad out there when you can’t even go to a casino anymore to try to get away from it all.
Early Sunday morning, a 27-year-old man shot his 23-year-old girlfriend after an altercation at Milwaukee’s Potawatomi Bingo Casino according to several television reports (Fox 6, CBS 58, WTMJ 4 among them). The girlfriend was shot in the leg and taken to Froedtert Hospital, while the boyfriend was arrested. Then the casino told everyone to leave. (Here’s a link to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s report about the casino’s Sunday morning re-opening at 9 a.m.)
After all that, the casino itself put out a statement praising its security guards, but of course the patrons who actually were there at the time had different stories. According to several televised reports, most of the security guards cowered under tables or on the floor, and did not help patrons get out safely, though a few apparently did their best. And casino workers such as blackjack dealers and cocktail waitresses apparently had no idea what to do, though one security guard apparently told at least one card dealer to “safeguard his chips” according to the various reports.
Look. I’ve been to Potawatomi Bingo Casino several times. It’s the closest place to play bingo most nights, and I’ve always viewed it as a safe and even a relaxing place to go.
However, due to these various news reports all basically saying that most of the employees didn’t have any idea how to help the casino patrons in an emergency situation, I will now think twice about going down there.
As one man said in the Journal-Sentinel article linked above, maybe it’s time for Potawatomi to install metal detectors. (Not so good for people with artificial hips, of course, but can’t that be worked around?)
And maybe — just maybe — Potawatomi should spend some of its profits on training its employees to handle any emergency situation thrown at them, so the reports of so many employees not having any idea what to do — much less most of them abrogating their responsibilities in helping the various patrons of the casino get out safely — will never happen again.
Youth Soccer League Referee Dies a Week After Being Punched by Player
Folks, some things just should not ever happen. Period.
Take the case of the recent death of youth soccer league referee Ricardo Portillo, 46. He gave a yellow card — a caution — to a seventeen-year-old goalie playing in a game on April 27, 2013, in a Utah recreational soccer league. The goalie was so incensed at getting a yellow card, he punched Portillo in the head. Portillo initially thought everything was OK, but then needed assistance to stand. After that, according to this article from Yahoo Sports’ blog Prep Rally, written by Cameron Smith:
Portillo then sat down on the field and began vomiting blood, eliciting panicked calls for an emergency ambulance at the field.
This article from the Christian Science Monitor goes into a few more details:
When police arrived around noon, the teenager was gone and Portillo was laying on the ground in the fetal position. Through translators, Portillo told EMTs that his face and back hurt and he felt nauseous. He had no visible injuries and remained conscious. He was considered to be in fair condition when they took him to the Intermountain Medical Center.
But when Portillo arrived to the hospital, he slipped into a coma with swelling in his brain.
Worse yet, Portillo had previously been attacked by doing what he loved — refereeing soccer. Even though Portillo’s family “begged” him to quit refereeing, he refused. According to Portillo’s daughter, as quoted by the article in the Christian Science Monitor:
“It was his passion,” she said. “We could not tell him no.”
The article from Prep Rally explains what’s happened to the seventeen-year-old goalie thus far:
The goalie in question has since been booked into juvenile detention on suspicion of aggravated assault, though he could face additional charges now that Portillo has died. There has also been an ongoing debate about whether to charge the teen as an adult, despite the fact that he is 17 and not 18-years-old.
But lest you think this is an isolated incident, think again. The Prep Rally article — truly a must read — goes further, discussing the instances of violence against referees at youth games of all sorts, including attacks by parents, players, and most disturbingly of all, coaches.
Deaths like Portillo’s are incredibly distressing. Here’s a guy just trying to do the best job he can, refereeing a youth soccer game in a recreational game. Yet he gets punched in the head by a player, slips into a coma, and dies in a week.
All because Portillo was doing what he loved.
Look. If you have anger management problems, go see a counselor and discuss it. But do not — do not — take them onto the field with you. Your anger should not result in the death of an innocent man.
And while the seventeen-year-old didn’t intend to kill Portillo, he should be charged with Portillo’s death and be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. That won’t bring Portillo back, of course. But it may give some comfort to Portillo’s family, all while reminding players, parents and coaches the world over that life and death are far more important than any mere game.
Bare minimum, everyone who has children in any youth league needs to read Cameron Smith’s last paragraph from today’s Prep Rally column:
One can only hope that the lessons from this attack — and the subsequent jail time that the teen in question is likely to serve — will provide ample deterrent for future athletes and parents who struggle to contain their emotions in the midst of what is just a game, even if similar incidents in the past haven’t succeeded in doing so.
Smith’s words cannot be improved upon. But I wish they’d not have had to be written.
Terror in Boston on Patriots’ Day
Yesterday, I thought the only thing of importance I’d do all day was to go in and pick up my prescription for antibiotics.
Sure, I knew it was Patriots’ Day in Boston, and that the Boston Marathon was underway. But I hadn’t a clue that by midway Monday afternoon, over 180 people would be hurt and at least three killed due to at least two bombs.
These were cowardly acts of terrorism, though no one’s sure as of yet whether we’re dealing with a foreign threat or if this came from our own people (domestic terrorism).
At any rate, I picked up my medication, saw the typical highlights of people running in Boston (sans results; they’d just started), and went to get some rest.
When I got back up again, the airwaves were filled with scenes of horror and violence, along with many scenes of heroism from first responders and other, trained medical and non-medical personnel. They confirmed both the worst in humanity (the bombs) and the best (the heroism) in one, fell swoop.
Pete Williams of NBC and MSNBC has had the best reportage so far, and what he’s said as of 11:00 AM CDT is this: There are many leads. There are many, many pictures that have been turned into the Boston Police Department, the FBI, and other agencies. And as much as is humanly possible, all available leads will be checked out, while the time values on all the pictures will be synchronized in order to perhaps find something, anything, out of the ordinary.
And thus find whoever did this.
As a writer, there’s much I could speculate upon at this time, I suppose. There are aspects of the two known bombs that worry me, most particularly the fact that one of the bombs, according to Boston resident and former WTMJ-620 AM sports anchor Trenni Kusnierik, exploded at a well-known running store. (She was interviewed by WTMJ-TV, Channel 4 in Milwaukee, and her interview was shown around 10:35 p.m.) And the very fact that something so terrible could happen at an innocent sporting event — one in which 96 different countries took part — sickens me beyond anything this nasty bronchitis could ever do.
All I know is this: I hope the FBI and the Boston PD will find whoever did this, and prosecute this person or people to the fullest extent of the law. Because runners should be safe at the Boston Marathon.
And so should the spectators.
Barb Caffrey's Blog 