OT: Olbermann on Hope Solo's Double Standard
I think sports organizations should stay out of legal matters letting the court of law decide unless it's like Hernandez level of bad...
However...
At least be consistent if you are going to react to social media and public opinion on these kinds of things...which also brings us to the initial problem... when is social media/public opinion EVER consistent about "outrage?"
Meh...
Serious question, do soccer players get paid at all for playing in the World Cup?
I know that the US has the same medal bonus for men, women, team and individual sports for the Olympics, and it's not very much compared to what an NHL or NBA player takes home (EPL, La Liga, ect in this case). It's only like $25k for a gold, and less for silver and bronze.
Thanks.
Yes, it was the only thing Ghana's team was interested in; various countries promise players an appearance bonus for qualifying for the World Cup--sometimes said countries don't pay these bonuses, which can be problematic for the poorer players (they exist) in national teams.
And LeBron/Brittany Griner?
FIFA will make about $2 billion from just broacast rights to the 2018 World Cup (Mens). Overall, it made $4 billion from the 2014 Cup in Brazil.
The Women's Cup will not generate anything close to that, in either TV rights, viewership, attendance, or sponsor advertising.
That's really not the (direct) point in a revenue driven business.
Sometimes, the interest is greater for the women--take figure skating and gymnastics, for example.
And I don't think the US men have ever generated a moment like this:
Let the spoils be divided in proportion to their generation.
Pros are better athletes. It's not debatable. Stronger and faster.
I'm not Canadian, so I can't confirm this, but some comments I've read elsewhere about this issue indicate that the weather in these areas makes growing and maintaining grass fields too expensive for the Canadian soccer federation. All the would be lawncare money is being siphoned to an account in Trinidad and Tobago. But seriously, I don't think the women have the funds to have grass fields, which makes the games a bit unusual when watching how the ball bounces differently.
The real reason is that these are CFL stadiums. The CFL is a barely profittable league depending on how much local/provincial/federal governments are willing to prop the thing up on a given year. They use turf simply because it is easier to maintain. Grass could be done but isn't.
Toronto has a perfectly good grass field that was converted from turf and is the national soccer stadium. Unfortunately Toronto is not a host city due to the Pan Am games starting in a month and Toronto's lack of political leadership at the time bids were needed.
I'm not saying the domestic violence is good. However, this "outrage", feels a little forced to me.
Hell, if I was an organization facing this type of issue, weekly, I'd sure as hell would at the very least, try to point my finger in another direction.
I know it sounds forced, but the only reason it sounds this way is b/c Solo is a woman and playing in a less popular sport. She is still representing the US, and I think that merits something.
The thing is 1.3 million women get abused. Everyone acknowledges that one, but no one acknowledges that 835,000 men also get abused a year from partners.
I get that one amount is significantly higher than the other, but those are still huge sums of people per year in either gender.
It's not as "lol women beating up men" as society makes it out to be.
Not to mention shrugging it off due to lack of popularity kind of just enforces the "nobody cares about women's sports" stereotype...
That equals to roughly 10,000 men a year who are murdered. That's nearly twice as many Americans who died in the decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Men are dying at a rate faster in America of today than they did in Vietnam.
The leading cause of death for black between the ages of 18-37 is homicide.
The full scope of the violence problem in this country is not discussed because male violence is just accepted in this country as being unaviodable.That needs to change for all of our sakes.
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She also has developed the habit of pretending to be Xenia Warrior Sister/Spouse Beater. She probably should be cancelled.
Olbermann is turrible. He picks the low hanging fruit so he can ooze his swarmy righteousness.
I was never surprised by the double standard with respect to Hope Solo because (a) women's soccer isn't a marquee sport, and thus the common fan wasn't going to get worked up about a major player in it, (b) there remains a pervasive sense in society that women (and in particular attractive women) cannot be as "violent" or destructive as men, so the idea of a woman physically harming another doesn't carry the same weight as if the assailant was a male (witness that Walmart video posted earlier as an example - if that was two men violently fighting in a store, I'm guessing people wouldn't have viewed it some humorously), and (c) it's soccer, one of the more poorly-run sporting organizations in the world. I know this involved USWNT and not FIFA, but I doubt that the US is trotting out an amazingly-competent organization.
She should have been suspended. At the bare minimum, she's had multiple run-ins recently with the law, I (think) had a DUI as well, and seems like a headache to boot (to say nothing of her husband's own checkered past). But this will largely be forgotten if the US wins, and so I'm happy Olberman at least made his point when more people will care.
Female violence isn't taken as seriously because women are still seen as dainty little flowers incapable of brutal acts.
This is just a question: is this a perception about women that women have promoted or is it because men (generally and historically speaking) have long associated women as weak? I'm not trying to cast blame one way or the other, just a curious question. I have a younger sister who has taught me first-hand (at times justified) how aggressive women can be.
That's 100% the reason.I suspect it comes from the concept of chivalrywhere women are placed on a pedestal and socked away in towers like Rapunzel. In a chivalrous society a woman is treated like a fragile marble stature possessing no real human traits rather than as a person of flesh-and-blood with very real thoughts, emotions, and abilities. Men in the Western world saw women not as equal partners but as child-like adjuncts existing solely to give birth to and raise children and to be a homemaker. It was a very limited world for women.
everyone should back off off the social media outrage bandwagon just a bit and try to let the legal system do its job. The public pitchfork and torch brigade against anyone that has supposedly "done wrong" has gotten a bit tiresome IMO. Yeah some people defintiely deserve it, but others are getting tried in the media without any chance to honestly defense themselves.
If you are actually convicted of a crime, you should be suspended/kicked off your team/fired/whatever. If you are ACCUSED of something, well, just that. You are ACCUSED. You aren't necessarily guilty. You shouldn't be assumed to be guilty. I'm not super down with the premature lynchings of public figures, even in situations where they appear to deserve it. We have a legal system in place for a reason and it should hold a lot more weight than Twitter, Facebook and TMZ.
People hate waiting for the justice system because it doesn't move fast enough for them in this instant gratification world that we now live in. People want instant justice.
Listening to the Olberman piece, I think Solo is probably full of it and probably was the perpetrator of the events of that night. But until someone actually convicts her of something, I have a hard time saying she should just be suspended for it. We still have innocent until proven guilty in this country or we are SUPPOSED to have that.
Until someone proves she is guilty of something, what exactly is she being suspended for? For being accused of something? So if anyone accuses anyone of anything, that means their life shoudl be ruined automatically with no chance to defned themselves? We're not talking about a case here were there is a video like Ray Rice or a situation like Adrian Peterson where there are pictures of what he did to his kid. There is no way to know exactly what happened in this fight. We can suspect, but that isn't how it really is supposed to work.
then you will almost never get suspensions in the nfl for domestic violence, since the spouses are not going to cooperate with authorities in getting a conviction and losing that nfl contract.
Technically if charges are dropped against someone, then their employer probably shouldn't be suspending them or preventing them from working. Yeah does that create a loophole from within which domestic abuse victims are likely to not press charges because they don't want their husbands fired from their jobs? Sure. But if I were charged with something, I would sure as hell belive I deserved the benefit of the doubt before I was summarily fired from my job.
Again, I'm not saying that everyone deserves it. Obviously a lot of these guys end up guilty. But our system of law and values in this country says people are innocent until they have been convicted of something. I don't like this rush to judgement and clamor for suspension/firing of people before they even have their day in court. Now in cases where there is clear public evidence that has been released (aka the Ray Rice video) well then I can understand it. But when the charges are yet to be proven, I've got a problem with it.
I work at an image-conscious business. If one of my colleagues, say, got into a brawl with a Rascal-ridin' patron of Walmart and it hit the internet - they're toast. Even if charges were dropped (or never brought). That colleague has embarrassed me and my colleagues, and (Kenny Powers voice) they're fuckin' out.
Hope Solo's off-the-pitch behavior has been a regular source of embarrassment. She does not deserve to be the face of U.S. Soccer. Megan Rapinoe, Tobin Heath, Sydney Leroux, Alex Morgan, Abby Wambach and the rest deserve better than her. So does the U.S.
Conflating a legal finding of guilt with sufficient reason to discharge is a mistake. The NFL is slowly figuring this out, and U.S. Soccer lags laughably behind.
in my post that if there was video of the bad incident that I understood. If there is video out there of you doing something terrible, well, that is probably your own damn fault and too bad for you.
But in these cases where it is "he said, she said" and the case is someone accusing you of something with no proof and even worse, no independent public witnesses, I don't agree with the public rush to lynching. Even if the person SEEMS somewhat guilty they deserve a chance to defend themselves from the charges before their life is totally destroyed.
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Miller's Crucible is especially relevant today.
However, in this case it is deserved. Solo has a history of violence. She needs to suffer the consequences of it as do all who employ violence. Unfortunately, this too often is not the case.
Whether it is a cop, a football player, or the goalkeeper for the US National Women's Soccer Team, America does a poor job of holding responsible those who committ violent acts.
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Her nudie pics are quite explicit. Hope is a dirty one.
Morgan/Leroux bandwagon filled up pretty quickly after that.
and they weren't even good pics
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ESPN starts all this morality bullshit to sell and then they make more money selling 'hottakes' on more bullshit.
I am gonna be honest and I say I don't give a fuck what someone has done. I don't care about the waiter bringing me a meal, the hostess at meijer, the fucking principal of my school, etc. etc. etc.
sports are just sports; the most important of all the irrelevant shit that goes on in this world.
Hell, I'm going to go buy a Hope Solo jersey!
jdon
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good point. Honestly, that is a good point... but what is the objective here? Can domestic violence by stymied by this conversation? Well then maybe it is valuable. I guess I just get upset when sports networks exploit 'morality' issues for rankings.
jdon