Ben Carson On Ray Rice: ‘Don’t Demonize This Guy’

by JASmius

A rather....unique point of view for such a Tea Party favorite to argue, isn't it?:

Dr. Ben Carson, the celebrated neurosurgeon and rising conservative star who is mulling a run for president, says football great Ray Rice desperately needs help after the release of a shocking video in which he is seen punching his fiancee, who later became his wife.

Carson, former chief of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center, also urged that the Baltimore Ravens running back, who was terminated by the team on Monday, not be demonized.

"I'm hopeful that they will get some help for him. Obviously, anyone who would do something like that needs some help," Carson said Monday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV."

Let's not all jump on the bandwagon of demonizing this guy. He obviously has some real problems," Carson said. His wife knows that because she subsequently married him."

Well, let's feed all the available facts through the early-twenty-first century BS filter and see what it spits out, shall we?

1) Mrs. Rice, Ray's fiancée at the time of the bout....



....nevertheless went on to marry him.  Which means either that she really is a dumb broad, or this was completely out of character for him and there is a context that's being omitted from this narrative.  Although I feel compelled to point out that I haven't struck anybody since that fourth grade playground skirmish with Lonnie Burton over a four square game in 1974, much less Mrs. Hard Starboard, I've never felt the urge to suddenly go berserk and bludgeon her lights out, and I'd wager my life and career stresses (when I HAD a career) over the 26 years of our holy matrimony have been at least comparable if not more so to that of the ex-Ravens running back.  Which is true of the vast majority of husbands out there who remember the Foxworthy Principle: "If she ain't happy, YOU ain't happy."

2) The NFL's error in this incident was not under-reaction, but over-reaction.  Once the domestic violence charges were filed against Ray Rice, the Ravens suspended him for two games, pending the outcome of the investigation.  What they should have done is refrained from taking any premature action until the full extent of what happened was determined, as the San Francisco 49ers are doing with similarly-accused Ray McDonald.  That way, once the video above emerged, the course of action would have been obvious, and the Ravens and the league wouldn't have looked craven and reactionary in casting Rice to the outer darkness.

3) The reason the NFL made that mistake is the same reason they excommunicated Rice: public relations.  Image.  With the league under assault as never before from an American Left whose panzy-assed sensibilities are naturally, instinctively riven by the very nature of the game of football....



.....and the injuries that are part of it - recall the three-quarters of a billion dollars the NFL had to cough up in that class-action lawsuit over Concussion Syndrome just a year ago - the last thing the league needs its for its stars to be seen as drug-addled, wife-beating Neanderthals.  Hell, why do you think they pushed such a marginal player as Michael Sam to the moon and beyond?  "Coming out of the closet" is, however perversely, good PR in this day and age.  Which makes the St. Louis Rams' cutting Sam all the more remarkable.  T'is a pity the Ravens didn't pick up Sam for their practice squad.  If you think Ray Rice punching out his fiancée was a PR disaster, imagine how his punching out Michael Sam for copping a shower feel would have been depicted.

4) Mr. and Mrs. Rice are both black.  That means this is a feminist issue, and Ray Rice is a violent, wife-abusing, male chauvinist pig.  If Mrs. Rice had been white, the ex-Ravens running back would have been in the clear, because she'd have "had it coming" because of her skin color, and his knocking her block off would have been cast as "social justice".  If, however, Mr. Rice had been white and Mrs. Rice black, he'd be a violent, racist, wife-abusing, male chauvinist pig, and he might as well have stayed in that Atlantic City hotel elevator and sawed her unconscious head off with a salad fork while reciting Koran verses from beneath a turban.

That is the context, I believe, for Dr. Carson's urgings of the hoi palloi to "not demonize" Ray Rice.  And Dr. Carson can do so, even if he is only an "honorary" African-American, because only black people are allowed to voice opinions on the despicable actions of other black people.

For my take - even if I'm not "officially" entitled to one - the Rice's problems exist entirely apart from those he caused the NFL.  I don't know if this was a sudden brief mind-loss or if Ray Rice is prone to punching out his significant others, although I think if that were the case it'd have come out long before now.  But, however ineptly the league handled it, once yesterday's vid emerged, the outcome was a fait accompli, and couldn't have been anything else.

We can only pray for the Rices, and that the fact that she married him despite what he did to her reflects his repentance and her forgiveness.  Otherwise this story may not end up well at all, and out of the public spotlight, assuming Mr. Rice has the sense to avoid camera-equipped hotel elevators.