After facing felony assault charges for allegedly knocking his wife unconscious in February, Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice held a press conference today to address the media for the first time since the incident occurred. (On a Friday afternoon before a long weekend…convenient.)
While the alleged assault – which ultimately resulted in Atlantic City casino security cameras capturing Rice dragging his unconscious then-fiancee out of an elevator – and the fact that he likely won’t serve a day in jail is despicable enough, the Ravens and their social media team couldn’t have handled the situation much worse than they did.
Um, wow. Okay.
First things first: Rice probably should have thought out his phrasing on that quote a little better, especially considering his thought process determines that his wife is a failure because she didn’t get up after he knocked her out cold.
Second of all, why the hell would the team tweet that quote? I’m not sure I could have thought up a more cringe-worthy string of words if I tried. Good work, team.
Arguably the most sad and disgusting part of the press conference came when Rice’s wife was (presumably) forced to apologize for her “role” in getting beaten into unconsciousness by a professional athlete. And, yup! The Ravens tweeted that too.
The Ravens tweeted several other quotes from Rice as well, but none of them included an apology to Janay – because he never issued one.
Rice thanked her for loving him in weakness, but never muttered the word sorry in her direction. He did, however, issue an apology to “everyone affected by this situation that me and my wife were in.” Call me crazy, but I’d say the person most “affected by this situation” was the woman you decided to put to sleep with your fists. No apology for her, though.
Far too often, women in abusive relationships are tricked into feeling guilty and responsible for receiving abuse they don’t deserve. Basically, Stockholm syndrome. This appears to be what is happening here, and it’s disgusting that the Ravens organization is actively working to further it along.
It’s also pretty depressing to think about the fact that we just spent months debating whether an NFL team would be able to embrace a gay man, yet one team just held a press conference to convince the public that one of their players who beats women is a pretty great guy.
Awesome job, Baltimore.
