Are All These DV cases Going to Screw up Hope Solo?

The Washington Post gave it a mention yesterday. From one of the sports news writers, not their usual soccer writer.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...mestic-violence-case-no-one-is-talking-about/

 

She never should have gotten arrested for DV but laws have been rewritten to take these decisions out of officers hands. Now that doesnt mean she shouldnt have been arrested. Once police were called they needed to do something. Maybe they just take Solo home with warning. Maybe they gave her a drunk and disorderly. Maybe she gets cited with simple assault and given an appearance ticket. The mistake here in my opinion is having Solo being a family member held against her. If Bob from Cleveland gets in a fight with the Solo nephew at a house party, no one is talking DV.

 

Right.

The "definition creep" aspect of the case is so apparent-- no other member of Hope's household was involved-- that only the "gotcha" types are apt to draw any parallel.

Add to that that the USWNT isn't a hundredth as high profile as the NFL, and therefore a substandard "gotcha" candidate, and I don't think much will come of it.

But I bet someone is out there counting up DV cases Bud Selig never suspended...

 

From the NY Times:
In Hope Solo Case, Soccer Turns a Blind Eye Toward Domestic Violence

From ESPN:
Why Hope Solo should be suspended from team USA -- immediately

 

You can always count on folks to eventually blame DV on women. These guys were the ones nodding when Stephen A Smith was talking about how women need to stop making men hit them.

But do you really expect more from sports media? Or Bill Archer?

 

These guys? The ESPNW article was written by Kate Fagan, the WaPo article was written by Cindy Boren, and the NYT article was written by Juliet Macur.

 

Bill Archer posted this blog on Friday. See the home page of Big Soccer.
https://www.bigsoccer.com/blog/2014/9/19/abandon-hope

It is pointed, for sure. Please make your own conclusions about what he says.

 

The problem with all these articles is where was this insight in June. If they came out then with warnings of domestic violence and what USSF should do about then its responsible, brave journalism. Riding the coattails of an NFL story is just self-serving grab for headlines. If this wasnt a big story in June, why is it now?

 

The same reason why it wasn't for the NFL either. Public awareness of the issue, the relationship you maintain with your sponsors, negative blowback, etc. Sept. 2014 is a different world in a lot of ways in terms of attitudes towards athletes behaving badly then June 2014 was. The NFL explained away their different reactions by "we hadn't seen the tape," but all NFL athletes in domestic violence cases are getting serious scrutiny even without the tape. For example, there was a lengthy article in this week's Sports Illustrated about the Carolina Panthers

You also have a pretty tone-deaf reaction from USSF about Solo being close to a record with an implication that she deserved to pursue it seemingly regardless of the other issues. That is getting some pretty significant backlash in a lot of circles, just as the lame justifications from NFL honchos (front office, team owners, etc.) got hammered in the press and social media. USSF isn't going to be able to ride this one out IMO.

Are you consciously ignoring what all of the other media outlets or saying, or does Bill Archer's opinion that badly taint your reading of what significant female sports journalists are writing?

 

I'm sorry, I should have said, "these idiots" the fact that they are women doesn't make them any less of apologists than Stephen A Smith was. Some folks just want to give them a pass because of gender - and it's hilarious to read someone claim they are "significant" journalists based on the fact they're providing cover for men on this one issue.

It blows me away that Hope Solo getting in a fight with family members and ending up in court is IN ANY WAY equated to a 220 lb. football player dropping a woman half his weight with one blow. The fact remains it's highly unlikely Hope Solo is eventually going to kill her sister. One of the NUMEROUS NFL players who has assaulted a woman is FAR more likely to eventually kill a partner.

But hey, if bashing Solo or whatever floats your boat, why not do it while also providing cover to domestic abusers, right? Have at it.

 

This is a pretty terrible false equivalency. It paints people like me with the same brush for people who actually dismiss violence against women. And that's patently unfair. The fact that I think that any adult hitting anyone - siblings, nephews, teammates, friends - is wrong does not make me an apologist for anyone. Think terrible and even worse than that - what those men and people like them do to women is among the worst things imaginable in day-to-day life, alongside doing similar things to children. But what Solo did to her family members is pretty shitty in its own right.

 

So this is only a problem because of what happened in the NFL or journalists dropped the ball the first time? NFL players didnt invent domestic violence in September...it's been going on forever. Why do these journalists want to make stand now that it gets them a much larger audience with the NFL tie in? Oh, wait, I just explained it.

 

Yes, in large part because of the audience, the one that is much wider than just USWNT. You'll note that many NFL fans - certainly fans of teams on which the men in question play - cheered them, even gave them a standing ovation in Rice's case, despite knowing what he had done. But the NFL's advertisers in particularly have a wider audience than just NFL fans, and they were outraged.

Let's take Adrian Peterson and the Minnesota Vikings. Peterson whipped his four year old son pretty badly. Neither the Vikings nor the NFL deemed that worthy of more than a one game suspension even amidst the furor over Rice. Then Radisson Hotels - official sponsor of the Vikings - pulled their sponsorship. Perhaps they did so out of simple outrage on behalf of the victims of child abuse, but their clientele is much wider than just Vikings fans, and the general patron of Radisson Hotels is much more likely to be pissed off at the Vikings for not coming down hard on Peterson. So they took action.

Similarly, the sponsors of the USNT and the Reign are going to be asking hard questions. They may or may not particularly care if a woman hits her sister and nephew or not, but they will care about all of the negative publicity forthcoming. Perhaps USNWT fans will still want to give Hope Solo a standing ovation; for the sponsors, the audience they work with is wider than the pool of USWNT fans. They'll want the fed to take action.

 

I haven't expressed my opinion on Hope's situation, I only said the Archer blog was pointed and I did not say whether or not I agreed with it, and I am not ignoring other media outlets.
The sequence of posts was this: JeffN and Scotty posted links to three articles. Morris20 referred to the authors as "these guys," to which you replied that they were written by three different women. Morris20 also mentioned Bill Archer. Since none of the 3 links was authored by Bill Archer, I figured I would post the Bill Archer link in this thread so the folks here would know the reference.

 

Got it.

 

I want to take a crack at this.

First, on the NFL side, we have the players admitting what they are charged with. On the USWNT side, we have disputed facts.

Second, as has been pointed out, on the NFL side we have one of the biggest, strongest men in the world cold cocking and knocking out a woman and another beating a small child so as to show multiple welts over his body. On the NWSL side, we have a woman, who perhaps is one of the biggest and strongest women in the world, striking or choking another woman and a young man, if the woman and young man are telling the truth which is yet to be determined.

It seems to me that on both points, there is a false equivalency (unless one wants to equate the damage one of the biggest, strongest men in the world can do to the damage one of the biggest, strongest women in the world can do).

The two situations are not the same, and treating them as the same is part of the problem.

 

Im still struggling with what kind of moron would call one of the strongest women in the world a c*nt and not expect to be choked

 

But none of that justifies what the media is doing. First, these stories dont seem to be coming from the soccer media itself but other writers who wouldnt waste a minute on a soccer story let alone a womens soccer piece if it wasnt for the juicy NFL angle. Second, as I mentioned before, the timing is all wrong. If u want to take Hope Solo to task on this issue u either did it back in June or u wait until the trial starts in November. Instead they r jumping on this now because the topic is trending do to the NFL current troubles. Their editors r looking for similar stories and suddenly the tenor of these stories has gone from crazy Hope is out of control to up there with wife beating. Lastly, they try to cover their tracks with lame references to Solo shouldnt have been captain for a game or shouldnt be in the lineup trying to tie a record. Ur a soccer guy. U know as well as I do that the people suddenly interested in pontificating on this topic wouldnt have had a clue who the captain was or anything about Brianna Scurry. The people writing this stuff didnt give a damn about soccer before they had this great insight and wont care about it two weeks from now. This just exploitive journalism at its finest.

Now none of this has anything to do with what I think of Hope Solo. Personally her quirks were wearing thin on me long before she threw down with her nephew. But some times u have to take a step back just ask what is fair. If it's fair for the media to do self serving stories like this then it's just as fair for people to call them on it.

 

I think you're FAR too generous in assigning motive to these writers. It was really disappointing to me to see Archer in the same caveman pool as these idiots, honestly.

 

Very interesting opinion piece on how and why Hope Solo is being drawn into this thing...worth a read.

http://thesportspectacle.com/2014/09/21/sexism-hope-solo/

 

What an idiotic post. Oh wait - men are all rapists and women are incapable of domestic violence. Got it.

 

Probably. And I think the leak of those disgusting selfies are going to put a crimp in her role model persona...

 

Pretty interesting long-form blog post from the terrific Beau Dure, once of USA Today and now purveyor of the web site Sports Myriad.

Wrong Time to Suspend Solo

He's a long-time journalist about women's soccer, and author of this book about the Washington franchise.

 

guess logic isn't your strong suit either, eh?