Sportsball Star And Lady-Beater Ray Rice Suspended For Two Whole Games Because Everything Is Terrible

 This is just gross:

Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice has been suspended for the first two games of this season for violating the NFL's personal conduct policy following his offseason arrest for domestic violence.

The suspension, which was announced Thursday by the league, stems from Rice's altercation with then-fiancée Janay Palmer at an Atlantic City hotel in February.

"Altercation" sure is a polite word for striking his then-fiancée so hard he made her unconscious -- ALLEGEDLY. Naturally, Ray Rice pleaded "nuh uh" to the charges, but you can watch the TMZ video of him dragging his seemingly unconscious now-wife out of the elevator -- ALLEGEDLY -- to decide for yourself that yeah, he totally did that.

Are we shocked -- shocked! -- to find that violence is going on in the NFL, and the NFL is not taking it very seriously? Nope, we are not. The NFL is too busy underpaying cheerleaders , by, like, A LOT, and clutching its pearls that a gay football player would be a "big distraction" to the other guys in the locker room, and suspending these sportsball stoners for "substance abuse." You will probably not be shocked -- shocked! -- to know that those players have all been suspended for a minimum of four games, which, for those keep score at home, is a harsher punishment than the punishment for Ray Rice lady-beating his lady because smoking pot is definitely a worse crime than domestic violence, in the bizarro universe that is the NFL.

What is even grosser than that is Rice is barely pretending to be sorry.

"It is disappointing that I will not be with my teammates for the first two games of the season, but that's my fault," Rice said in a statement released by the Ravens. "As I said earlier, I failed in many ways. But, Janay and I have learned from this. We have become better as a couple and as parents. I am better because of everything we have experienced since that night. The counseling has helped tremendously.

"My goal is to earn back the trust of the people, especially the children, I let down because of this incident," Rice said. "I am a role model and I take that responsibility seriously. My actions going forward will show that."

It's great that his wife has learned from this, isn't it, thoughwhatshe has learned isn't entirely clear, since she married the son of a bitch anyway. Maybe she learned to make better sammiches or don't make him angry because he will knock her ass out cold and then make her join him in a press conference to apologize for her "role in the incident." What role, you might ask? The role of being in the elevator with him at the same time and forcing him to knock her out, as we women are always doing, are we not the WORST?

It's also precious as heck that Ray Rice feels an obligation to The Children, what with being a role model and all, but maybe he should not be a role model because, kids, lady-beating is wrong, even if the NFL doesn't really think so. Sure, it suspended Rice for TWO WHOLE GAMES and fined him $529,411.24, which sounds like a lot of money until you realize that it is merely two games' worth of pay for Rice the Role Model. But everyone in the sportsball world is tripping over themselves to assure us that Ray Rice really is a nice guy, no really, and he will never ever knock his wife out cold again, he promises, even though the recidivism rate for lady-beaters is about 110 percent. (Okay, not exactly, but pretty close .) Here's the team's general manager, Ozzie Newsome, giving Rice some quality reach-around, but not in a gay way of course, because that would be a REAL problem for the NFL:

"We also respect the efforts Ray has made to become the best partner and father he can be." Newsome said. "That night was not typical of the Ray Rice we know and respect. We believe that he will not let that one night define who he is, and he is determined to make sure something like this never happens again."

Let's not even get into the NFL's racism problems . Or its rape problems . Or its murder problems because we are just far too depressed at yet another daily reminder of how not-seriously we take violence against women in this country, especially when we are talking about sportsball stars doing the violencing. Let's just skip straight to the drinking. It's drown-your-sorrows o'clock somewhere, right?

UPDATE:

In case you were thinking nah, you don't really need a drink, YES YOU DO , because this ESPN word-spewer, Stephen A. Smith, is under the impression that while yeah, lady-beating is bad, we should really be talking about what ladies can do to prevent being lady-beaten. And in response to the internets responding not very favorably, he's tweeting himself into a nice deep hole of mansplaining his mansplaining. For example:

Bet you want that drink now, right?

[ ESPN / Mother Jones / Deadspin ]

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