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Something went down at a party one night in Atlanta 13 years ago, resulting in two people dead of knife wounds and Baltimore Ravens all-pro linebacker Ray Lewis and two companions charged with their murder. The case against them fell apart, with the companions acquitted at trial and the prosecution being reduced to a deal with Lewis himself where he pled guilty to a misdemeanor for not having his story straight when first questioned by the Atlanta police. That’s pretty much it, but the Washington Post will not let it go.
Last weekend, some hours before it was known that the Ravens would go to the Super Bowl this year for Lewis’s last game before his retirement, WaPo ran an Op-Ed-cum-feature-story entitled “Lance Amstrong vs. Manti Te’o: When does a sports hero deserve redemption?,” in which Lewis was put in the same bag as those who broke the rules of their respective sports because he was once accused of murder.
Now that it is known the Ravens and Lewis will be at the big commercial in New Orleans on February 3, the DC paper of record has seen fit to run the three-hanky weeper in its sports section “Ray Lewis’s ties to Atlanta murders now a footnote – except among the victim’s family,” in which the mother of one of the deceased men is interviewed at length about her pain. (The headline of the version in today’s print edition is more NYPost-like: “I made myself numb,” quoting the mother about her reaction upon learning of the death.)
Where to begin? I guess with “murder.” That was never proven: it might have been self-defense, for example, but who needs such niceties when you are trying to sell newspapers, and of course you have to have a “victim.” And then there is “footnote.” Yeah, like nobody’s talking about the matter: See, for example, “Future Ray Lewis employer dredges up murder case” from a couple of days ago.
I lay a lot of this to the Baltimore-Washington relationship as seen by the Post. The former place is, or at least was, an industrial city, whereas the latter is “a bourgeois town” (Leadbelly). In the sports arena this shows up most in baseball, where readers often complain that there is not enough coverage of the Orioles now that we have the Nationals, but what such readers may not notice is that the principal owner of the Orioles is a labor lawyer, whereas the Post is an anti-labor organ of long standing. But as to the sport at issue here, the Ravens have gone further in the playoffs this year than did the Washington R-words, after the latter’s coach refused to take an injured RGIII out of their last game when he clearly wasn’t helping the team, with the results that they lost the game and that their future may be compromised.
It sure helps to have a villain 40 miles to the north.
4 Comments
The Ravens are the old Browns that Art Modell moved from Cleveland in the middle of the night because the voters of Cleveland refused to blackmailed into paying for a new sports palace for him. Since I live in an inner ring Cleveland suburb, let’s just say that the Ravens are hated here, for good reason.
Doesn’t mean anything you say is wrong, though. Maybe WaPo thinks it can sell papers by bashing “the rich black thug who got away with murder.” You know, the OJ angle. Or maybe for the reasons you say.
Or both.
I was unaware of the Balt-Wash relationship as you described it though. Rec’d for that alone.
Regardless, I lived in Denver for 20 years. Mike Shanahan won there because he had great players and a damned good coaching staff. He is an overrated boor, and a turd. He once threw a public fundraiser for George W Bush’s 2000 election campaign and was astonished at how many Bronco fans were outraged.
It never occurred to the idiot that not all football fans are Republicans.
Thanks for your insight on Mike Shanahan, OB. In Washington he’s generally been viewed as the Great White Hope who will lead the team to glory (racist name and all), after a long line of similarly-viewed personages have failed to do so. Still, a lot of people are mad at him now for not taking the injured quarterback out earlier in their last game this season, with the result that the injury was severely aggravated. Next year might be interesting on that score.
The move from Browns to Ravens could be viewed as revenge on Balto’s part after a similar midnight caper some years earlier, when the owner moved the Baltimore Colts (the team of Johnny Unitas) to Indianapolis.
they are just pissed off becasue the Redskins(what a charming corporate brand name and logo), and who are a nonentity in thier league since the days of Joe Theisman, Redneck John Riggins and the best president ever, Ronnie “Gipper” Reagan, got eliminated from the playoffs early.
We should not use the R-word in these pages, solerso, and I’ll pretend I didn’t see what you said about that other R-word who was president before Bush 41. But as to the team, you are incorrect that it hasn’t been any good since Joe Theisman: they won the Super Bowl in 1988 with a black quarterback, Doug Williams, and the famous Hogs on the offensive line. (And Williams has since been a respected college coach and football executive, whereas Theisman is a TV talking head and pitchman for a prostate drug.)