RUSH: Well, darn it, the place that posted it has pulled it down and the search doesn’t pull it up, and I can’t remember the name of the course. I wish I could, because it’s so typical. It’s something like Gays, Lesbians, and Transgenders… It had something to do with primetime television. It’s a course at USC, and I cannot find it.
It was all about the coach of the Vikings having to go to sensitivity training for telling a gay joke to the team that Chris Kluwe got all upset about way back when. I haven’t even gotten to that subject yet. I’m way ahead of myself on it but I will get to it because what’s also happened is the commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, has — I don’t know, maybe on purpose or inadvertently — bailed Tony Dungy out because he done something that shifted the media anger away from Dungy and on to Goodell.
There is a running back for the Baltimore Ravens by the name of Ray Rice. He played college football at Rutgers. He was drafted by the Ravens. He’s been their starting running back, and he’s been very instrumental in their success. There was a video that showed him beating up his fiancee in an elevator at a casino in Atlantic City this past spring. He knocked her unconscious.
The video showed him dragging her out of the elevator when the doors opened. He has not publicly apologized to her. They have since gotten married, by the way. I guess he apologized to her privately. They had gotten married, but — since there was video of this — there has been a clamor for the commissioner to take some sort of disciplinary action against Ray Rice, so the commissioner did.
A two-game suspension.
The Drive-Bys are simply in an uproar because players that have smoked a doobie have been thrown out of the game for a year. This assistant coach for the Minnesota Vikings, who said something offensive about gays in a team meeting that was overheard by the punter Chris Kluwe… Kluwe didn’t say anything about it for a year, then the Vikings released him, and so he went public with what the assistant coach, Mike Priefer, had said.
It was something about putting all the gays on a deserted island and nuking it. Everybody’s saying that that’s a horrible opinion to have. It was a bad joke. But, anyway, the league… The Vikings, the league has nothing to do with this yet. The Vikings did an investigation because Kluwe was demanding one. Kluwe claimed that Priefer said that.
There were no complaints about it for a year until Kluwe got released. So the Vikings investigated and they found a lot of other things in that investigation. For example — and I didn’t know this. Chris Kluwe — who, you know, is a big gay marriage advocate. He’s the guy that complained about Mike Priefer making that joke about nuking an island with gays on it.
During the Penn State controversy with Jerry Sandusky, apparently Kluwe was running around wearing sweat pants/sweat shorts with a hole in the rear end — and laughing about it — as though he were a Sandusky target, making it easy for Sandusky. So people said, “Wait a minute, now. If you can run around and make jokes about what Jerry Sandusky did and not get offended, what the hell are you doing here with Priefer?”
Well, anyway, given that homosexuality was involved and given that is just an untouchable subject, in a manner of speaking, the Vikings have suspended Priefer for three games and made him go to sensitivity training. It was in that story that I read a comment from this professor at USC who teaches some obscure course about gays and lesbians in Hollywood. It’s not the history of gays and lesbians. It’s not that.
It’s something even screwier.
It’s not something that you would pay USC 14 or 20 grand to send your kids to learn. It’s just crazy. I wish I could find it. But now I’ve built it so much even if I did, when I gave you the title of the course you’d say, “That’s not that funny,” because I’ve raised expectations. Anyway the Drive-Bys are now saying, “What do you mean! The coach gets three games and sensitivity training, and Ray Rice — who beat up his fiancee and knocked her unconscious with his fist on plain sight in a video — gets two games?”
And the Drive-Bys are all saying, “Well, that makes sense because the league is all about money, and nobody pays to see a coach coach. But the Ravens might suffer and not attract as much money, whatever, if Ray Rice isn’t on the field.” This is the Drive-By Media. So this has moved the Dungy story off to the side here because the Drive-Bys have found something new to be agitated about, the sports Drive-Bys.
So let’s go to the audio sound bites. You talk about Ray Rice getting two games. What about the NFL’s big October every year where everybody wears pink, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, their big effort to reach out to women? So this is John Harbaugh yesterday at the Ravens training camp. He’s the head coach. He’s the brother of Jim Harbaugh, who is the coach of the San Francisco 49ers.
They do not have a player who beat up his fiancee or wife on the roster, as far as we know. And the head coach held press conference, and this is what he said about the two-game suspension that running back Ray Rice got for hitting and knocking out his then-fiancee. Janay is her name.
HARBAUGH: There are consequences when you make a mistake like that. I stand behind Ray. He’s a heck of a guy. He’s done everything right since. Umm, he makes a mistake, all right? He’s gonna have to pay a consequence. I think that’s good for… It’s good for kids understand that it works that’s way. That’s how it works. That’s how it should be. The next guy will have to step up, and then Ray will be back, you know, uh, when the time comes.
RUSH: Right. Ray will be back after two games, and so that’s that. Now we go to the Vikings where the assistant coach is Mike Priefer, special teams coordinator. Mike Priefer has been given a three-game suspension for cracking a joke that bothered Chris Kluwe. He’s being suspended for “homophobic slurs,” and is being sent to sensitivity training, otherwise known as “reeducation camp.”
He’s been given three games while a guy that beats up the girl gets two games. The Drive-Bys are fit to be tied, and Priefer is begging for forgiveness. He’s expressing the fact that he’s learned a lot here. He’s really, really learned a lot, and it’s something he’s gonna make use of. He’s learned a really, really, really hard lesson here.
PRIEFER: With my comment I’ve — I’ve failed. I didn’t just go below the bar, I went way below the bar. You know, I made a mistake. I was wrong. I brought a lot of undue attention to the Minnesota Vikings organization and brought an unwanted distraction. And, you know, I apologize. I’ve learned a lesson. I have learned a lesson here. Um, I learned a hard lesson that, you know, I’ve gotta be sensitive to other people in what I say, and — and that’s not gonna happen again.
RUSH: Right. Now, Kluwe, again, waited a full year to lodge a complaint. The head coach at the time this happened was Leslie Frazier, and the new coach is the former (I think) defensive coordinator of the Bengals Mike Zimmer. So he waited ’til Frazier was gone. I don’t know reason for that, but he did wait a year.
Then the Vikings had to investigate it, and this is what they found. So it’s three games for the special teams coordinator coach for a homophobic slur. Knock your girlfriend out on tape in an elevator and then drag her out of the elevator? Two games. Well, as I say, this is not sitting well with the Drive-By Media. Let’s go to audio sound 25. This is CBS This Morning. The cohost is Norah O’Donnell.
She spoke with the CBS Sports analyst Bart Scott, who used to be a teammate of Ray Rice. He was a linebacker for the Ravens and a linebacker for the Jets, and this guy Bart Scott is one of the players who said that there was no way I should be allowed to be any part of the NFL because of all these quotes that I never said but the Drive-Bys reported I had said.
So Bart Scott, not knowing anything, believed what he read, and he was out there saying that I had no business being in the league. He’s now a CBS Sports analyst, and he was on CBS This Morning discussing with Norah O’Donnell the suspension of Ray Rice: Two games for knocking out his fiancee and dragging her out of an elevator.
O’DONNELL: A two-game suspension. I mean, the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, has issued tougher suspensions for smoking marijuana and driving under the influence. What’s going on here?
SCOTT: Well, it’s not policy, really, in the conduct detrimental. You know, we have numerous cases of, you know, PEDs and marijuana. I think this may be something that’s gonna spark policy. They have to first, you know, put into policy and have things in there written out where, you know, they can state that this is what’s gonna happen.
RUSH: What Bart Scott’s saying there is that, well, there’s no policy against hitting your girlfriend in the NFL, but that there might be now. So their hands are kind of tied. They’re making it up as they went along ’cause there wasn’t any policy. There’s policies on performance-enhancing drugs, and there’s policy on marijuana, and there’s policy on driving under the influence, and there’s stated punishments.
There’s no policy against hitting your fiancee or your wife and dragging her out of an elevator at a casino in Atlantic City in full view of a hidden camera. That’s what he means when he says they’re gonna have to put it into policy and have things in there written out where you know they can state that this is what’s gonna happen, meaning punishment. Well, this didn’t sit well with Norah O’Donnell. That didn’t satisfy her. They kept discussing this, and you will hear next in this piece, there’s a guy Anthony Mason, who is a fill-in cohost or something like that.
O’DONNELL: Don’t you think that’s exactly the problem and why there’s been so much outrage about this? The NFL has a policy in marijuana.
MASON: Yes.
O’DONNELL: Drive under the influence, taking Adderall, but they don’t have a policy on domestic violence? What’s going on?
SCOTT: Well, because there’s been more cases about, you know, marijuana, PEDs and cheating and gambling —
O’DONNELL: What are PEDs?
SCOTT: Performing enhancing drugs. Yes, I’m sorry. It’s becoming a trend. I think the NFL is gonna have to be proactive and put in, you know, policies stating, you know, that these things not be tolerated.
RUSH: That’s right. So that’s gonna happen next. There’s gonna be a policy that you cannot beat up your fiancee or your wife or your girlfriend, and if you do, then this is what’s gonna happen. So the commissioner’s hands were kind of tied here. I guess there’s a policy for homophobic slurs. Words. Words that you utter get you three games and a trip to reeducation camp. Ah, well. In none of this do you hear the name Tony Dungy anymore. So there’s that aspect to it.