March 24, 2008

Dan Rooney Did Not Inhale...

"What Jimmy Harrison was doing and how the incident occurred, what he was trying to do was really well worth it...He was doing something that was good, wanted to take his son to get baptized where he lived and things like that. She said she didn't want to do it."

- Dan Rooney
Dammit guys, Dan Rooney is at it again! I mean, what a controversy machine. First the Rooney rule, now this? It's like he's looking to purposefully make waves...

Ah sarcasm, how I love thee.

Anyways, so I figured I should just weigh in on this whole Dan Rooney comment thing. Because, you know, OFTOT is like, a serious, responsible journalistic outift...and stuff. Ok, I'll stop now. But seriously, I'd like to take a crack at it here, if I might...

So Dan Rooney's controversial comment is above. And naturally the part that everyone's got their panties in a bunch over abuzz over is where he seems to say that James Harrison hitting his girlfriend was justified because he wanted to take his son to get baptized and the bitch she wouldn't let him.

Here's what I think - Number one, Rooney also said about 100 times over the course of his news conference that "the Steelers do not condone domestic violence," or other such things. Number two, the Rooney family and the Steelers organization have a pretty good track record when it comes to character (Bam Morris and recent events notwithstanding). I'm pretty sure given that actions speak louder than words, Dan Rooney meant nothing more than what he later clarified he meant - James Harrison did not go to his girlfriend's house with the intent to hit her, whereas Cedrick Wilson knew where his girlfriend was, and sought her out with the intent to either hit her or do some type of damage. That, my friends, was the determinative difference.

What he said explicitly was certainly puzzling. But any attempts to chalk it up to anything more than poor word choice are ill conceived. In otherwords, some people (read - Ravens fans) will naturally want to take any discrepancy and blow it up to something it never was. But frankly, I have to give the man the benefit of the doubt here.

Of course if this were Bill Belichick saying shit, I'd be the first one to blow it out of proportion...so yeah...Bill Belichick is a dick.

Comments on this whole sitch (Rooney's comments not the fact that Belichick is a dick)?

REFERENCE MATERIAL:
Rooney's Rationale in Abuse Case Leads to Criticism [Post-Gazette]
Steelers Explain Wilson's Release; Rooney Clarifies Statements [Post-Gazette]

Ballhype: hype it up!

3 comments:

The Immortal Silky Johnson said...

Dan Rooney believes in the, "Rule of Thumb".

Anonymous said...

It's almost as though his PR people wrote up a statement, then Rooney said fuck it decided to freestyle.

Either that or he's just getting old.

Anonymous said...

My guess is that "she" wasn't quite as "innocent" a victim as everyone assumes. While it's never good to hit, sometimes people use their familiarity to provoke those they supposedly "love" into fits of rage, just because they know how to do it. And because it can become a huge source of both financial and social leverage.

Bottom line: yes- sometimes she DOES deserve a smack.

Say what ya want. That's my opinion. Like it or lump it. I seriously doubt Silverback just decided to beat up on his baby's momma for fun, and Rooney is a devout Catholic; if James was trying to do something good and being impeded and verbally abused he *might* have been justified in whack-a-bitch.

Daddies have rights too.