The NFL rightfully deserves any and every amount of criticism thrown their way for their complete mishandling and systematic failure on dealing with the domestic violence that is running rampant in their league, and from the beginning of the Ray Rice incident, it was pretty clear to everyone that it was a compromised process and their response was more about protecting the vague and ambiguous “integrity of the shield” than protecting the victim. You can’t see what you saw in that video, suspend Rice for two games, then react to the public reaction by trying to take some moral high ground by suspending him indefinitely hoping that will be enough to stem the PR tide long enough for people to forget about it and move on. But as it turns out, people aren’t forgetting about it and it’s not going away. Enter last week’s Thursday Night Football game between the Ravens and Steelers on CBS. Because they wanted to jump at the chance to have a “serious tone” and briefly give a Nicholas Sparks speech about domestic violence before their viewers got to see grown men get irreparable brain damage and Budweiser ads for three hours, CBS yanked a musical segment featuring Rihanna.
“CBS you pulled my song last week, now you wanna slide it back in this Thursday? NO, F*** you! Y’all are sad for penalizing me for this.”…She followed that up by writing, “The audacity …”
You can say what you want about Rihanna, but ever since her own experience with domestic violence in 2009, she’s clearly reclaimed her life on her own terms, but five years later, while all of a sudden trying to be the Domestic Violence Police, CBS just victimized a person who has worked extremely hard to reach a point in her life where she no longer has to identify herself as a victim. Great work, CBS. Maybe next time you can have a segment where Chris Brown walks through the stands and punches one lucky fan at random. Maybe Dr. Pepper or Capital One can be sponsors.
