# Stephen A Smith suspended 1 week. **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [July 29, 2014, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366 "2014-07-29T22:42:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366/61 "2014-07-30T18:24:47Z")
> [@blindboyard](#): > > As far as I’m aware there is only video of his taking her out of the lift. Presumably if you’re right about there being footage of the incident itself which is currently unavailable to the public then it would show what happened, which I think it most likely to be her initiating the incident. I thought you made a reference to such footage, which is why I thought it might exist. I guess it was actually more idle speculation that you were passing off as a definitive version of what happened. > [@brickbacon](#): > > Which means nothing given that the only people who google “Ray Rice” are people who know who Ray Rice is, and who care about him. How do you know that? > [@](#): > > No, I didn’t say that, and it’s not as if you couldn’t have done a search to confirm that if that was your suspicion. It’s getting hard to figure out who said what given the sheer volume of uninformed speculation being posted in this thread. > [@](#): > > I did say it reasonable to assume she did hit him first given in the span of an elevator ride, she was knocked out and that she was charged with assault as well (among other things). And that could be true. Or not. Since you don’t know, I’m going to go ahead and say you don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366/62 "2014-07-30T18:26:26Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > We really cannot say any of those things. You are motivated to say or believe those kinds of things, I guess, but speculation would be a kind word for them. They’re all WAGs, or like I said earlier, shit you just made up. Well, the police have confirmed that she also hit him, apparently, and she was also arrested. I didn’t make that up, or guess it. He hit her last, that I’ve deduced from her unconscious form. but the burden of proof here is really on those who think this Smith should be punished, the burden to show that his position was not just incorrect but so offensively and obviously wrong that it deserves a punishment. His statements certainly can’t be shown to be wrong in putting responsibility on the woman in this incident, and that’s that. Odds are that his “victim blaming” is perpetrator-blaming, and his critics are the ones really blaming the victim. He’s being punished for blasphemy and thought-crimes against the orthodox position that women are always victims of men. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366/63 "2014-07-30T18:26:48Z")
> [@Kiros](#): > > Re: 1 and 2, unless it turns out on the full tape that she had a weapon of some kind and Rice’s action were influenced by real fear of serious injury/death, these don’t mitigate things for me. “He/she started it” didn’t work in elementary school, and it doesn’t work now. Attacking someone on self defense grounds is the only mitigating factor in play. This guy, who routinely takes on 270lb Defensive Ends, and gets clobbered by 250lb Linebackers, is fearing for his safety because his girlfriend punched him? Maybe. Or maybe the spitting and hitting just made him mad. “She pissed me off” is not a mitigating factor in knocking out your girlfriend. ---
**Author:** ![Kiros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/439d5e/32.png) [@Kiros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kiros)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366/64 "2014-07-30T18:28:10Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Attacking someone on self defense grounds is the only mitigating factor in play. This guy, who routinely takes on 270lb Defensive Ends, and gets clobbered by 250lb Linebackers, is fearing for his safety because his girlfriend punched him? Maybe. > > Or maybe the spitting and hitting just made him mad. “She pissed me off” is not a mitigating factor in knocking out your girlfriend. Thank you for saying this more clearly than I did. 🙂 As for the video, I have heard that the NFL does have such footage of what happened in the elevator, but I don’t think it’s been officially confirmed by anyone at this point. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366/65 "2014-07-30T18:37:17Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > While it was clear a while back you went from impassioned defense to crazy town, there is no need to pretend the history of domestic violence is an equitable distribution between men and women. Such a contention is either mindbogglingly ignorant or willfully blind to the facts. It’s true, for all that. Well, there is inequality in the fact that law and government have made far greater efforts to curtail intimate partner violence by men against women than the reverse, but I doubt that’s what you had in mind. Nonetheless the facts are clear, although prosecutions are heavily weighted towards female victims, to the order of some to one, sociological studies show that violence by the two sexes is broadly equal, although men are only about two thirds as likely to be killed by their partners, probably due to greater physical strength. They didn’t really do sociology in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, but they did do prosecutions and those show a consistency with the proportions of today, and the scalds and skimmingtons show a greater prevalence of “unofficial” intimate violence against men. In short, you are ignorant. > [@](#): > > Fine meaning not meaning morally correct or appropriate, but rather well within one’s rights to do so. I clearly stated my belief that such a contention was illogical for some of the reasons you highlighted. You have a strange definition of fine. I mean, one is perfectly entitled, perfectly within one’s rights, to believe that Jews have horns and sate themselves on the blood of the innocent, but I don’t think “fine” would be either an accurate or a widely-accepted description of such a position. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366/66 "2014-07-30T18:43:33Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > As far as I can tell, I’m focusing on what he said, too. He said was he’s sick and tired of men being vilified and accused of things, and he wants us to “dig in” to the victim. I believe him. I think that’s what he meant. > > I do think that he doesn’t believe Ray Rice should have been vilified is the most obvious inference to draw, but sure, he didn’t explicitly say that. That’s why I asked well, why else was it relevant to Ray Rice’s suspension? I’m kind of lost here. Yes, he was speaking in the context of Rice’s suspension (which he said was too short), and yes he was saying Rice shouldn’t be vilified, and I agree – vilification being by definition _excessively_ disparaging. Rice should be disparaged and punished in proportion to the severity of his actions … but a fair judgement of those actions includes taking into account the context in which they occured, and that involves looking at both parties and what role each played. That’s what I take Smith as saying, and I agree. What part of that do you disagree with? ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366/67 "2014-07-30T18:44:22Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Attacking someone on self defense grounds is the only mitigating factor in play. This guy, who routinely takes on 270lb Defensive Ends, and gets clobbered by 250lb Linebackers, is fearing for his safety because his girlfriend punched him? Maybe. Absolutely. Maybe he would have been. And just to take it one step further, if he had tried to file charges because she punched him, and people had mocked him and belittled the severity of the situation on the grounds that he’s an NFL player, that would be a problem. People would probably do it and it would be wrong. And if he had pushed her away or something, and she had filed charges based on that and people were up in arms about him only getting a two game suspension, then there’s an obvious case where people aren’t taking the context into consideration. He punched her the fuck out. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366/68 "2014-07-30T18:55:09Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > While it was clear a while back you went from impassioned defense to crazy town, there is no need to pretend the history of domestic violence is an equitable distribution between men and women. Such a contention is either mindbogglingly ignorant or willfully blind to the facts. Depending on how you define “equitable distribution,” that is in fact the case. It’s still a much-debated and controversial topic, but there are numerous studies indicating that women are just as likely as men to initiate violence and just as likely to perpetrate it. Men’s violence tends to be more effective, and thus women are the ones that end up with broken bones, etc. The general pattern in serious abuse cases is one person gets violent, the other responds, and then they get in an escalating cycle, much of which is out of view. It ends when his violence is effective enough to give her a black eye, broken bone, etc. and people DO notice that, and imagine that he just cold-cocked her out of the blue. But the majority of the time, the abused wife was not just innocently sitting there all that time never hitting back; that’s largely myth. > **[Domestic violence against men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_against_men#Estimates_of_male_victimization_and_reporting_data)** > > Domestic violence against men is violence or other physical abuse towards men in a domestic setting, such as in marriage or cohabitation. As with domestic violence against women, violence against men may constitute a crime, but laws vary between jurisdictions. Intimate partner violence (IPV) against men is generally less recognized by society than intimate partner violence against women, which can act as a further block to men reporting their situation or otherwise seeking help.: 1  > While wome... ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366/69 "2014-07-30T19:00:34Z")
> [@Kiros](#): > > Re: 1 and 2, unless it turns out on the full tape that she had a weapon of some kind and Rice’s action were influenced by real fear of serious injury/death, these don’t mitigate things for me. “He/she started it” didn’t work in elementary school, and it doesn’t work now. So if someone starts punching you, and you hit them back, you don’t think them hitting you first is relevant? > [@Kiros](#): > > Re: 3, as I understand it if the fiancee/wife doesn’t want to cooperate, the prosecution has to take what it can get. Bullshit. There is a video of the incident. You don’t need her testimony if the video actually shows a brutal assault concluded with him dragging her out of the elevator unconscious. Also note that her charges were dropped as well. > [@Kiros](#): > > Re: 4, there’s all sorts of motivations for why this might have happened, and under most of them I wouldn’t take it as a point in his favor. Again, the speculation is that she went there to explain why the situation was not as it appears, and to take responsibility for some of what happened. > [@Kiros](#): > > I’m pretty consistent on this in that I wish there would be more suspensions for basic assaults as well, particularly when we have video (rather than having to rely on “he said/he said”). But domestic assaults tend to have other psychological and behavioral factors involved, which does make them qualitatively different. Maybe, but this was his girlfriend at the time. Why is that necessarily worse than getting in a fight with your good friend or a stranger? In fact, I think it’s in some aspects worse for the NFL brand if your players are beating up random strangers. > [@Kiros](#): > > I’ll give you “many” on the second part. Doesn’t mean it’s right or okay, or should be the default response. Of course, now we’re talking about bigger picture stuff like the culture of violence, particularly as it applies to athletes playing an extremely violent sport. You can make that broader point, but the issue I was raising is that a man responding to an assault is acceptable or even cheered when the attacker is a male, but not when it’s a female, regardless of the possible damage the attacker might do. That double standard should not be the basis by which an employer doles out punishment. > [@Marley23](#): > > How do you know that? Because most people don’t sting together random characters to Google. I am not saying everyone Googling his name is a fan or has an intimate knowledge of who he is, but you must be aware of who he is to Google him. > [@Marley23](#): > > It’s getting hard to figure out who said what given the sheer volume of uninformed speculation being posted in this thread. Right, because “uninformed speculation” makes it hard for you to use a search function? Did this speculation render you unable to read one page or a thread? Was it laziness or the desire to smear me and my position with a knowingly inaccurate and misleading question? Wasn’t it you who was saying you liked fucking pigs? Or was it goats? Maybe I’m mistaken. > [@Marley23](#): > > And that could be true. Or not. Since you don’t know, I’m going to go ahead and say you don’t know. Good thing I didn’t say I KNEW it happened. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366/70 "2014-07-30T19:16:35Z")
> [@furt](#): > > Depending on how you define “equitable distribution,” that is in fact the case. No, it’s not. And it certainly wasn’t historically speaking. Your cite doesn’t even back that up. Look at the underlying DoJ stats regarding victims _and_ perpetrators. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366/71 "2014-07-30T19:16:39Z")
> [@furt](#): > > I’m kind of lost here. > > Yes, he was speaking in the context of Rice’s suspension (which he said was too short), and yes he was saying Rice shouldn’t be vilified, and I agree – vilification being by definition _excessively_ disparaging. Rice should be disparaged and punished in proportion to the severity of his actions … but a fair judgement of those actions includes taking into account the context in which they occured, and that involves looking at both parties and what role each played. > > That’s what I take Smith as saying, and I agree. What part of that do you disagree with? Yeah, my bad. You’re lost at least in part because I got the two issues confused. I was talking about the quote about the Chad Johnson thing, but then I said Ray Rice. What I disagree with about the Chad Johnson thing is that I don’t believe that he wasn’t bringing it up to excuse the behavior. I think it’s possible to walk around with both the idea that assault is bad and has no excuse and, simultaneously, the idea that people shouldn’t provoke other people because then they might assault you in your head, and to never combine those two ideas in normative terms. But I think when you say you’re angry that men keep getting blamed, because let’s talk about provocation, in a context where it seems pretty clear that the best case is that the guy committed a D+ assault instead of a D- assault… I don’t think that’s what you’re doing. [QUOTE=brickbacon] Again, the speculation is that she went there to explain why the situation was not as it appears, and to take responsibility for some of what happened. [/quote] What do you mean by “the speculation is?” Is it your speculation? ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366/72 "2014-07-30T19:26:52Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > What do you mean by “the speculation is?” Is it your speculation? Not mine, what has been reported in the media. For [example](http://deadspin.com/why-roger-goodells-meeting-with-ray-rice-and-his-wife-w-1611087864): > [@](#): > > As it turned out, this was a critical moment for Rice’s fortunes. Janay, per King, pleaded that the “incident” in the elevator was a “one-time event,” that “nothing physical had happened in their relationship before or since,” and that it would only “ruin Rice’s image and career” for Goodell to hit him with heavy sanctions. > > King said it was “a moving and apparently convincing case.” I have heard others on TV say they were “told” her appeal included giving more context to the situation and accepting responsibility, etc. I have no idea whether that was accurately reported, but the reporters saying that seem to believe it. The whole meeting probably should not have happened, but assuming it did go as people say it did, I can see why Goodell might have erred toward leniency. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366/73 "2014-07-30T20:04:52Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > Yeah, my bad. You’re lost at least in part because I got the two issues confused. I was talking about the quote about the Chad Johnson thing, but then I said Ray Rice. What I disagree with about the Chad Johnson thing is that I don’t believe that he wasn’t bringing it up to excuse the behavior. I think it’s possible to walk around with both the idea that assault is bad and has no excuse and, simultaneously, the idea that people shouldn’t provoke other people because then they might assault you in your head, and to never combine those two ideas in normative terms. But I think when you say you’re angry that men keep getting blamed, because let’s talk about provocation, in a context where it seems pretty clear that the best case is that the guy committed a D+ assault instead of a D- assault… I don’t think that’s what you’re doing. But see, that’s just the problem: there is no “A” assault. Realistically, you’re not going to have a situation where the guy being accused of domestic violence was 100%, or even 80% or 50% “justified” in some sense. By definition, we’re talking about the difference between bad behavior and awful behavior … but that difference is worth making. Letting yourself get into an abusive relationship cycle in which both of you are violent and which ultimately culminates in a punch to the jaw is a bad thing. Punching your wife immediately after she tells you she had an affair with your best friend is worse. Repeated blows to the face because she spilled your coffee is worse yet. I’d make a moral distinction among those, and so would the law. In the court of public opinion, however, the push is on to obliterate those distinctions, and to categorize things like “she hit him too” under the heading of “blaming the victim.” The Rice case is a prime example: I haven’t been following it closely, but I’ve heard it mentioned a bit on the radio, etc., always with condemnation of Rice as 100% at fault and with media types falling all over themselves to condemn it louder than the next guy. Until this thread, I was not aware that the fiancee was arrested, too. That’s very important context, but nobody mentioned it. Just looked up a couple news stories, and they mostly don’t mention it either; certainly they don’t do anything to suggest what the context of it might be: the conclusion they invite is that Rice was just whaling on her out of the blue. And what happened to Smith is evidence of why: despite what the law and common sense tell us, in public discourse the only narrative allowed is “Woman is helpless innocent victim, black athlete is rampaging beast.” I can see why a black man who hangs out with athletes gets tired of seeing the same one-sided narrative again and again. ---
**Author:** ![Idle\_Thoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/838e76/32.png) [@Idle\_Thoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idle_Thoughts)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366/74 "2014-07-30T22:35:11Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > While it was clear a while back you went from impassioned defense to crazy town, there is no need to pretend the history of domestic violence is an equitable distribution between men and women. Don’t insult others outside of the Pit, **Brickbacon**. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366/75 "2014-07-30T22:59:39Z")
> [@blindboyard](#): > > It would seem that in the incident being referenced the woman hit the man first, by her own account. If you don’t want to get beat up then don’t hit people bigger than you. We need to [teach women](http://youtu.be/9MR0C-AlZl4) not to bring beatings upon themselves by starting fights they can’t win. Where do you get that? There is no video of what happened inside the elevator, and TMZ has been trying to find it for weeks now. ---
**Author:** ![Kiros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/439d5e/32.png) [@Kiros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kiros)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2014, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366/76 "2014-08-02T03:11:06Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > So if someone starts punching you, and you hit them back, you don’t think them hitting you first is relevant? I don’t really want to do 38 responses to everything since it seems like this thread is dying down, but I also don’t want to just ditch your long and considered response… so I want to say that my fundamental position is that as soon as one gets to “hit them back”, that’s where one is in the wrong. I hit a guy back once, when I was literally 14 years old, and it was one of (if not the) worst things I’ve ever done. I told proud stories about it when I was 21 and drinking, I’m slightly embarrassed if I have occasion to talk about it now at 29. Doesn’t matter if it is a guy or a girl, “hit them back” is only appropriate if you’re in a “running is not an option, serious self defense” kind of situation. In which case you often (though not always) need to evaluate the choices that got you there in the first place. The NFL really needs to catch up with the rest of civilized society on this - regardless of whether it’s a man or a woman being hit - but that’s going to be that much more difficult since the sport self-selects for, well, hitters. /preach off. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stephen-a-smith-suspended-1-week/694366.md?page=3)