Ray Rice Victims

Let’s discuss the Ray Rice story from the standpoint of the victims.  If this were a beginning journalism class, we might start with the classic 5 W’s and an H.

 

·         Who are the victims?  It’s hard to find any others than the couple themselves, two extremely young and otherwise apparently exemplary people who got in a fight in a public space.  Because of this, they have both been stripped of job, career, future prospects, and cast into the darkness of a future of perpetual underemployment or worse.

·         What was the crime?  Nobody filed charges.  Nobody was permanently hurt.  If this were two male friends fighting, two female friends fighting, even a drunken couple mixing it up in a bar, nothing more would have happened.  This was not an unprovoked lashing out, but the culmination of a lover’s spat.  This was not even part of a pattern of escalating abuse, but a momentary flare that probably could be handled easily with counseling _ at least if our social professions are not lying to us all the time.

·         Why is there so much outrage?  Obviously, most of it is fueled by envy _ he is making too much money, the NFL is too rich and arrogant.  More comes from the righteousness of true believers, who see here a set of avatars they can burn at the stake for the crimes of society at general.  The actual victim does not count, just another dumb woman girlfriend, she is a symbol.  And she would have had too much money, too.

·         When did the line to personal issues completely disappear?  Not since the days of Henry Ford and his house-invading spies have employers been so able _ even required _ to fire able workers for private acts.  These are the tactics of totalitarianism, but more than that they are the tactics of big business keeping employees under their thumb (Henry Ford did everything for the “employee’s own good” also.)

·         Where is our conscience?  Everyone who is yammering away casting stones has presumably never sinned.  Just like the religious fanatics who impose Sharia law.  But civilized people are supposed to understand that life is complicated, and temper their own sucker punches.

·         How did we get this way?  Polarized factions invoke saintly unblemished heroes who never existed.  The bible is great literature precisely because all its characters _ including God _ have flaws.  Believing in perfection leads only to cults of liars and frauds: Stalin, Mao, Dear Leader.

 

Apparently the idea of redemption, forgiveness, and possibility of change is only applied selectively and randomly.  Hardened criminals may yet be reformed, criminal politicians given another chance, but young lovers are beyond the pale.

 

Once upon a time it was at least a goal of responsible journalism to keep these issues in mind, and to try to treat them with attention to nuance, complication, contradiction, and the essential humanity of whatever had occurred.  I weep at what we as a culture have lost.