It's been a while since I've posted anything and there are two reasons - well actually more than two, but I will only share just two of them - I've fallen behind in my analysis of the Green Bay Packers.
First, not much was happening and I had already gave my analysis of the draft and the undrafted free agents, so any further comments during the lull could wait until the "Organized Team Activities" got underway this week.
Second, I am a working sports reporter and we have been in the middle of softball, baseball, track and girls soccer conference, regionals and sectionals and I've been very busy.
But today a story out of the Falcons griped my butt forcing me to return to the fray - even though technically it has nothing to do with the Packers.
Some idiot named Prince Shembo was cut by the Falcons (May 29) after being charged with killing his girlfriend's little dog. Great - zero tolerance on animal cruelty - is a good thing, but this action was only the tip of the iceberg of an attitude towards women by the NFL (and other sports leagues and organizations)
The Shembo Incident came after the Bears cut Ray McDonald when he was accused of breaking down a door and threatening his baby's mama with severe bodily harm. A few days later this upstanding young citizen, who was good enough to be signed by the Bears after he wasn't charged with anything concerning another possible assault, went after her again trying to get his child away from this unfit mother (I'm guessing that's how he feels) when he supposedly had a restraining order against him (has in this case and most others restraining order aren't worth the paper they are written on to stop an assault, but they are good after the fact to put him in jail (sometimes), but it's usually no solace to the woman who was either beaten within an inch of her life or killed. However, I guess it's something. (I have to take a breath after going through that long sentence without taking one).
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| Prince Shembo victim Lizzy Seeberg |
Back to Shembo. This piece of human flotsam was drafted in the fourth round of the 2014 draft as a linebacker out of Notre Dame, despite being accused of sexually assaulting a girl from St. Mary's College, which led to her committing suicide. He was never charged with a crime because the girl was dead and couldn't press charges. I hope other female abusers don't take notice of how that works in their favor.
Anyway, the Falcon front office at the time when they drafted him said, "they were very comfortable with him in regards to that incident." However, kicking a little dog to death brought about an immediate response by cutting him from the team that day. Sexually assaulting a girl and indirectly (or maybe directly) causing her death wasn't enough to stop them from drafting him and paying him 100's of thousands of dollars.
So I think we can draw a correlation here. Sexually assault a girl and cause her death - no problem. Kill her little dog and you are shown the door. So I can say by using this example the life and well-being of girls in our society fall below dogs on the list of what you can get away with and what you can't. Dogs are the low end of the things you can't get away with. Girls are in the middle of the things you can get away with.
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| Ray McDonald Mugshot |
Back to the Ray McDonald case for a moment. The Bears GM released this statement, "We believe in second chances, but when we signed Ray we were very clear what our expectations were if he was to remain a Bear. He was not able to meet the standard and the decision was made to release him."
That was all well and good, but here's the kicker when Chairman George McCaskey chimed in, "I’ve asked myself that question a lot: ‘What more could I have done? Is there somebody else we could have consulted with? Should I have taken more time to make a decision? I don’t know. We thought we had a good structure, a good support system. We thought we had safeguards in place in case something like this happened."
Is there somebody else we could have consulted with? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Try talking to the girl, the victim. They only talked to people who liked him and were satisfied because they needed a pass rushing defensive end. Plain and simple. Once again who cares if some dumb old girl gets what she deserves (at least that's what I think the good old boys are thinking). The girls contribute to this problem by not following through with the prosecution, by either taking a payoff or just not wanting to go through the trial, which more often that not, is settled in favor of the abuser. I can understand that but all it leads to is a pampered big man who thinks he can beat or do worse to a girl and always get away with it.
In fact, the attitude towards girls in well ingrained in the nation's psyche. Ray McDonald knows what he did and he explains it all away, "I had two incidents (in which) I feel like I didn’t do anything wrong, but still it’s in the spotlight. It was in the national spotlight for quite some time. I’m just trying to move forward from it."
Seeing the video of Ray Rice nonchalantly punching his then fiancée and now his wife in that elevation just shows you how much thought about her safety went through his mind. Just watch what he does after she is unconscious. You could tell it was standard operating procedure for Rice in his relationships with women and girls. "Disrespect me and I will punch your lights out." I bet you will find he's punched many girls in his short lifetime.
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| Lawrence Phillps and victim Kate McEwen |
Another prime example of how the NFL feels about assaulting girls and women is the great humanitarian Lawrence Phillips the No. 1 draft pick of the St. Louis Rams in 1996. Despite dragging his girlfriend (a athlete in her own right as a member of the basketball team) down a set of concrete stairs by the hair face first thusly destroying her life wasn't enough to keep him from being a No. 1 draft pick. (What ended up happening was she had her scholarship pulled by the basketball team). Girls and women are a dime dozen, evidently in the thinking of the NFL front offices and collegiate athletic departmens, so why get worked up about incidents like this.
I have to change something I said a few posts ago. I recommended the signing of Greg Hardy (before he was signed by the Cowboys). I was WRONG. I agree with Roger Staubach that I don't want to share a locker room with any man who puts a hand on a woman or a girl. There should be ZERO TOLERANCE for domestic or another violence against females of any age not just violence against dogs. The abusers should all be put in jail with the key thrown away.
I also feel sorry for lawyers who go out of their way (like what happened at Notre Dame by the school's lawyers when Shembo's victim decided to report the incident) to ignore the truth and trash the victim. Something needs to change when it comes to male on female violence. The few false reports shouldn't be used as an excuse of allowing the abusers to get off and be allowed to abuse again, again and again. College girls would come for forward more often if they didn't think they would be abused by the lawyers and harassed by his friends and boosters (as at Notre Dame where his football teammates tried to intimidate her (before she killed herself) by saying "you don't mess with Notre Dame football."
Well, that's how I feel about this. Lower than a dog. I feel so sorry for the girls, specifically, and American society on the whole.
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