The Tribune

By DR IAN BETHELL-BENNETT

AS THE scourge of domestic violence spreads and invades our everyday lives, we are not surprised by the new victims, nor are we surprised by the perpetrators.

What does surprise us? Does it surprise us that people we idolise are abusers?

Or have we slipped into this popular culture induced haze where athletes, rock stars and musicians are demigods and can do anything they wish?

We may be saddened that in the global era where everything we do is monitored by some surveillance equipment either fancy or basic, that so many top athletes are being caught beating their partners, but we no longer seem surprised.

One man hits his girlfriend in an elevator, and then the stories come pouring out!

Famous, obscenely highly paid athletes some of whom did not finish high school, but make it cool to be rich, yet have no other way to make a living except through relying on their killer instinct or their athletic prowess that will only last as long as their youth survives.

They are massive, often 6 foot plus, 200 pounders and no one sees any inequality between them and their partners they abuse.

Like NFL player Ray Rice’s now wife, many of these women are happy to be silent about their abuse. They suck it up. They are all seeking assistance, without leaving their homes or the comfort of their riches, to prevent this from happening again.

And these are the heroes we have created! These are the people popular culture idolises! These are the characters Lorde refers to as “Royals” in her song. We seem to be creating violence and encouraging it with each step forward.

We are all acquainted with the reality of abuse. When a man abuses a woman or a child, or a senior, he will often repeat his offence. We often blame stress or alcohol and then say that it will not happen again. We often say that poverty creates violence. However, many of these uber-rich athletes come from the gangster block of the ghettos.

They are only raised up because they have money. Yet, they are more invested in using their power to harm than to do good. While our island becomes a murder-happy place, killers fear no law. They know that they will likely to get away with their crime.

Much like Oscar Pistorius, who was cleared of murder but found guilty of culpable manslaughter, they often do not fear their guilt.

Pistorius may be shamed by his violence, but is he sorry he killed his beloved? Be it murder or culpable manslaughter, he still killed her.

The difference between the Pistorius and the Rices of this world and the man on the street, is that the former are rich. Apparently, their money allows them to abuse while removing them from any responsibility. Every dog has his day, the old saying goes!

The Rice and the Pistorius cases, although separated by more than an ocean, speak to an alarming occurrence of partner abuse among elite athletes.

The NFL is rife with it, but it is also protected from most investigation and public scrutiny, except when the cameras that are everywhere capture the act in play and send it viral before it can be stopped.

One of the things these facts speak to is an unabashed rottenness among elite athletes, who are taught to embrace aggression, and who are in fact celebrated for it. We love them! At the same time, we see that they are immune to the regular public treatment.

They can rise above it because of their fame and fortune, even though they may have come from the blocks like their boys who were done for wife beating earlier. These are the people, the role models, we want our sons and daughters to emulate. They cannot control their anger, they abuse whomever they have around, they are cocky, callous and under-educated, but we apparently love them. We also forget to challenge their alleged steroid-induced explosions.

Similar to military personnel who are sent into active combat, taught to kill or be killed, many athletes are made callous to pain by the fact that they are constantly in pain; they are made unfeeling by steroids and other drugs, yet they are worshiped.

They are taught to ignore humanness that bridles most people, only to be thrown on the junk heap of history after their bodies fail them early in their lives. Yet they never develop their minds, as a general rule.

The exceptions are that, exceptions. They use their gangster credibility to wow women and then control and abuse them, through withholding money or providing punches. Is there a difference between the crack dealer we love to hate and the athlete we love?

In the case of the NFL, it is an absolute condemnation of a system that rewards a bunch of overgrown boys for bad behaviour that they can continue to be allowed to play, to wreak havoc on women and be made famous for their bad behaviour is shocking and unacceptable.

Once again, they are not responsible for their misconduct. We actually celebrate their misconduct. We may speak privately about how they need to be fired and they are not doing good jobs, but we do not publicly challenge.

Much like the Sandusky case where the powers that be were more interested in their profits than in protecting the rights of those children who were less strong, large, and imposing than a grown man and so became victims of their inequality, we allow them to beat and punch the women in their lives. It tragic how often we turn a blind eye to the abuse around us. We actually hold these men up as heroes. We wear their T-shirts and want our sons to be like them. In essence, we are creating yet another generation of people who only understand violence and the power of inequality.

The NFL players are well aware that had they not been playing American football in the major leagues, they would be fighting to survive on the streets. Instead of using their ‘power’ to benefit, they are using their money to exploit those around them.

This is bullying of the worst kind. When segregation and Jim Crow laws ruled the US, blacks were forced to fight for their dignity and equality. They were held to be unequal to whites to whom the law gave the power to whip and even kill their slaves and hired hands if they so chose. How tragic is it that a generation after the fight for equality, these young gangsters can use their ‘little bit of power’ to exploit those they see as weaker than themselves?

History’s lessons have fallen on hard ground! What is even more tragic is the number of women who are willing to be exploited, beaten, controlled by the men who love them, all for that Louis Vuitton bag or that flight in first class.

The last few weeks, months, years of public life have revealed a rotten underbelly of male empowerment through inequality and exploitation. In fact, we have created monsters who feed on the very people who worship them.

Public officials who do not stand against this kind of exploitation, those who are happy to go along with it, are more culpable than the actual perpetrators of promoting inequality and using it as a tool to control and destroy others. It was made law that whites could no longer enslave, maim, and kill blacks getting rid of one inequality and then the US Constitution was amended to allow blacks rights and equality; prior to the actual change in law, this was an unimaginable, massive victory against injustice and inequality; when will gender inequality be outlawed? The attitude that women are the source of this violence and inequality reigns, as one man said, she walked into his fist.

Apparently blaming the victim for her or his abuse is the best thing to do to protect these very public demigods. These inequalities promote violence. What message are we sending our youth?