Woop, I turn around for one second, completely ignoring my past self who was all, “Belle, just put some words or music or something on your blog! It’s not brain surgery, and Ben Carson is a brain surgeon, so….” and the result is that our blog stagnates! Well, no more of that. I’m saying stuff. Stuff like, you should listen to this insanely good Breakwater song, “We’re Going to Work it Out”!

So mellow, with a Latin swing thing happening. Also, this rubby-dubby sound like someone was rubbing on a balloon; what is that even, well-informed commentariat?

In not-mellow-at-all-bummer news we have this article on Deadspin documenting a case in which NFL player Greg Hardy assaulted his girlfriend. It’s an excellent piece that pulls together evidence that seems to have been publicly available for some time. Hardy was both charged and convicted (unusual for DV cases, especially with a powerful man involved), but the case was overturned on appeal and then expunged. I wasn’t aware this could even happen except when the Innocence Project proves that a person was unjustly put on death row, but in principle it’s an intuitive mechanism. The criminal justice system needs to be able to say, not merely “not guilty” but affirmatively “innocent.” This could be useful–in other cases.

There are photos of the woman’s injuries, and it may be that, as in the Ray Rice situation, the visual imagery will make an impact where the conviction (howsoever temporary) did not. Wait, except Ray Rice got the charges against him exchanged for some anger management or something? Well, we can say his career was permanently injured.

Greg Hardy is a better player than Rice and more valuable to his team, so they are probably backing him up all the way (even when he gets in a fight with coaching staff! Special Teams, tho, the B-list coaches.) Part of Hardy’s defense involved the ludicrous claim that, given how much stronger and bigger he was than the victim, the woman should have been much injured more seriously. Like, if he had assaulted her, her mere beatdown couldn’t have happened. This makes less than zero sense (people can’t hold back?) and I believe it has the dubious distinction of being shared with Mike Tyson’s DV defense back in the 90s. From the Deadspin post.

When asked to explain Holder’s injuries during his bench trial, he and Curtis would testify that Holder had jumped into the bathtub, then thrown herself on the couch, and then went crazy trying to attack Hardy. Hardy’s lawyer, Chris Fialko, would assert that Holder must have caused the injuries to herself. If the 290-lb. pass rusher had really wanted to hurt a woman who weighed well less than half what he did, his argument went, the damage would have been a lot worse.

Riiiiiight. My eyes are oscillating like unhinged gyroscopes, back, back, ever back. I can only see darkness and brain now.

The following statement came after the fight with the special teams coach, but listen to the leadershippy leadership of the owner of the world’s most hated football franchise: “[Greg Hardy’s], of course, one of the real leaders on this team and he earns it and he earns it with respect from all of his teammates and that’s the kind of thing that inspires a football team,” [Cowboys owner Jerry] Jones said. Mmm, taste the respect of a dude who flips the coaches clipboard up in his face on the field.

Although Deadspin is mostly a snarky sports blog that tells you why your NFL team sucks, it is also at times serious investigative journalism. They broke the Te’o Manti catfishing thing too. (I can’t summarize it, really.) In cases like these the established sports media seem disinclined to look too carefully into anything.