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Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins wrote a scathing article on Stephen A. Smith’s comments on domestic abuse, specifically in relation to the NFL’s decision to suspend Ray Rice for two games for beating the woman who would become his wife.
In the column, Jenkins described Rice’s actions like this:
“As Stephen A. Smith says, “See, we keep talking about the guys, when we never talk about the elements of provocation.” See, some guys can sound so dumb you’d think they had a chair broken over their head, but the first element of provocation a woman should avoid is calling them on it, whether it’s an NFL official justifying a two-game penalty for a running back going all Flintstone on his wife, or an ESPN announcer who holds your cable subscription hostage while he tries to string two sentences together.”
Now, if you saw that and thought “Oh, Jenkins is saying that Rice essentially acted like an uncivilized caveman”, you’d probably be fairly close to the writer’s intent.
If you saw “a running back going all Flintstone on his wife” and got upset because there is no episode of The Flintstones where Fred Flintstone knocks Wilma unconscious in the brontosaurus elevator before being lightly reprimanded by Barney, your line of thought is much more aligned with Martin Kramer of Takoma Park, who actually wrote the newspaper to try and prevent poor Fred Flinstone’s name from being sullied by Ray Rice.
