I do use Facebook. It helps me keep up with friends I don't see very often. Sometimes, I wish it didn't.
A friend of mine recently posted on a current news event. I'm not going to name him, but I found his view ... disturbing, to say the least. It reads as follows:
"So Ray Rice gets fined and suspended for his stupidity ... Then, TMZ releases video of said stupidity ... and the video causes Rice to get fired and then indefinitely suspended. So, the NFL literally quadrapunished Rice."
For those who, somehow, have missed the issue, Ray Rice was — before this incident — a running back for the Baltimore Ravens. News came out a while back about an incident on Feb. 15 at the Revel Casino in Atlantic City when Rice was seen dragging his unconscious then-girlfriend/now-wife Janay Palmer from an elevator. The story was leaked stating Rice had hit Palmer, knocking her out. In response, the National Football League fined him and suspended him for two games.
Recently, the "news" service TMZ got a copy of film footage from the elevator's camera and posted it on the web. It shows Rice hitting Palmer not once, but twice. The second punch was a left hook that would have knocked out Joe Frazier in his prime, and Palmer went down like a sack of potatoes, hitting her head on the elevator's hand rail. The utter brutality of the video caused the Ravens to cut Rice from the squad and the NFL to suspend him from football indefinitely.
Meanwhile, since Rice entered a pretrial intervention program in May, he will receive a year's supervision. If he behaves, the felony charge of third-degree aggravated assault will be expunged from his record. As it is, because he entered the program, he will not be prosecuted.
Let me repeat that. Rice will not be prosecuted for a third-degree felony of hitting a woman hard enough to knock her unconscious.
I looked up "unconsciousness" on the web, looking for any possible side effects. Almost every medical website I went to directed me — not to a page on unconsciousness — to a page on concussions. Seems you can't have one without the other. With the current hullabaloo about concussions in football and other sports, you can imagine what Palmer experienced.
Palmer — now Janay Rice — is ripping on the media for sticking its nose into their business. If you're looking for a poster child for Stockholm syndrome, there she is.
I've said it before. There is no excuse for a man to hit a woman unless you're both in a ring in competition. I believe in equality, but I also believe the inherent strength difference between most — MOST — men and women should influence a man to restrain an angry woman attacking you instead of pounding their skull into the wall. Especially if your job description calls for putting other men on their face in the ground.
"Quadrapunished?" How about grossly underpunished?
Ken Schroeder can be reached at kschroeder@putnamcountyrecord.com.
Ken Schroeder can be reached at news@tonicanews.com.