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NW Raw Tempo Videos Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » Obituaries TV Listings Movie Listings Oregon Outdoors Oregon Healthy Living Magazines & Special Sections NEWS NOW Weed wildfire damage tally hits 200 structures ... Medford air quality remains unhealthy for sensitive groups ... CalFire offers $10,000 reward for information on cause of Weed blaze ... Weed wildfire damage tally hits 200 structures ... Medford air quality remains unhealthy for sensitive groups ... CalFire offers $10,000 reward for information on cause of Weed blaze ... Kent Bush: Feeding the outrage machine By Kent Bush More Content Now MailTribune.com By Kent Bush More Content Now Posted Sep. 16, 2014 @ 8:43 am By Kent Bush More Content Now Posted Sep. 16, 2014 @ 8:43 am » Social News Someone finally powered up the outrage machine and turned it up to 11. Apparently only two things matter to those accused of criminal behavior in professional sports: timing and video. When Ray Rice was initially accused of knocking out his wife and dragging her limp body out of an elevator in Atlantic City, the National Football League drew criticism because he only received a two-game suspension. The outcry had little to do with Rice. It was only used as evidence in how harsh the treatment of Josh Gordon – suspended for an entire year for marijuana use – had been. No one was calling for Rice to be punished more. The district attorney put him in an intervention program for first offenders that could end up erasing it forever from his criminal background. But the video of him knocking out his girlfriend (who is now his wife) will never be erased from the minds of pundits, activists and fans. After the NFL started getting pressure about how light his sentence had been in relation to other seemingly less severe crimes, they added a new policy that domestic violence would land a player on the sidelines for six weeks. Then the video surfaced. Suddenly, Rice is suspended indefinitely – not two games like before and not six like NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced. Because of video, he is suspended indefinitely – maybe forever. People are outraged. Pundits are angry. Thanks to this video, beating your wife has become a bad thing. Most of us always thought it was. But not the NFL. The Carolina Panthers were fully intending to use a man as a starter who had been convicted of beating up an ex-girlfriend. After the Rice video stirred up sentiment, suddenly that coach and owner were compelled to “do the right thing” and deactivated him for Sunday’s game. He had played the week before after the guilty verdict. He is no more guilty than before and his appeal is still pending, but didn’t you see that video? The outrage machine must be fed. The reaction to this event, as though Rice is the first professional athlete to strike his wife, is almost as bad as his crime – for which he is only being punished professionally since the district attorney gave him a legal hall pass. Joe Scarborough told his MSNBC “Morning Joe” audience that he didn’t watch any football at all this weekend as a protest against the NFL because of this case. Sports commentators have been equally over the top, but none have been worse than the handling of ESPN. They got a former teammate of Rice’s to defend him. They got Ray Lewis – the same Ray Lewis who Baltimore honored with a statue outside the stadium after his retirement – to talk about the problems his former teammate was having. He is also the same Ray Lewis who was a suspect in a double murder outside a nightclub who pled guilty to hindering the investigation of that murder and paid off the victims’ families. Somehow, the blood stained white suit Lewis was wearing that night has never been found. But now he is an expert commentator and honored with a statue. But Rice is vilified because there is a video. Perhaps the most humorous irony was when Lewis – the father of six kids with four women - quoted the Ten Commandments in discussing what his advice had been to Rice whom he called a friend and claimed to have mentored while they were teammates. The NFL can’t win here. In reality, society can’t win here. The legal system does a horrible job of prosecuting domestic violence because often the attacks are alcohol fueled and the witness decides to “stand by her man” and refuses to cooperate with authorities. The NFL has always done an equally poor job of policing this crime among its participants because there is no blood or urine test to determine guilt. Ray Rice is no more guilty than the hundreds of NFL players who have done the same or worse to girlfriends and spouses. He just happened to be caught on a video. He set the outrage machine into motion. Hopefully, this case can stop being a target of narcissistic outrage for pundits and actually will lead to a better discussion of the topic in the public for how these incidents can be avoided or fairly punished when they aren’t avoided. I don’t hold out a lot of hope for any meaningful change in this area. I suspect once the furor subsides and Rice leads a team to a win or two, everyone will move on to the next faux crisis. After all, Floyd Mayweather has about a half dozen cases of domestic violence on his arrest record, and hundreds of thousands of people paid $75 a piece to watch him punch another guy for a few minutes last weekend. If the outrage were real, it wouldn’t just affect a guy in a grainy video. It would cast a longer and less manageable shadow. Kent Bush is the publisher of the Butler County (Kansas) Times Gazette and can be reached at: [email protected]. By Kent Bush More Content Now MailTribune.com By Kent Bush More Content Now Posted Sep. 16, 2014 @ 8:43 am » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. calendar Connect with MailTribune.com Facebook Twitter RSS Back to top Reader Services Reader Services Home Subscriptions Subscriber controls Contact us Submissions Photos Events Letters to the editor Corrections Announcements Obituaries Story ideas Since you asked Alerts Email Alerts RSS Feeds Text Alerts Advertise Media Kit Home Products and services Ad rates Advertising contacts Mail Tribune Daily Tidings The Nickel Shop Our Valley Blogs Stay Informed Email newsletter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Your privacy is important, read our privacy policy. © Copyright 2014 Local Media Group, Inc. 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