Charlie Baker, it is said, is trying to close the yawning gender gap reflected in the polls (the latest Globe poll shows Coakley holding a 16-point lead among women; WBUR has her up 20). He’s got a whole “Women for Charlie” thing going. At one of these events, he got asked a really easy question. And, well, this is what happened.
Oh dear, oh dear. Joan Vennochi tries to set Charlie straight.
The softball queries from family, friends, and running mate Karyn Polito were silly and insulting to female voters he is targeting — and so were the candidate’s answers.
That’s the judgment of a horrified Baker supporter who called afterwards to say when it comes to talking to women in settings like that, her candidate needs an intervention….
Fox 25’s Sharman Sacchetti … asked whether Baker believes NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell should be fired after the domestic violence incident involving former Baltimore Ravens player Ray Rice. “If we fired everybody every time we got into one of these situations, I don’t know, I would like to see more data and more information,” said Baker. So much for heart.
It’s especially good if you repeat Baker’s answer in robot voice. “I – don’t – know – I – would – like – to – see – more – data – and – more – information.” “MORE – DATA.” “MORE – DATA.”
With weak performances like that, Baker is not doing anything to erase his robotic number-crunchy reputation.
So, in the 2009 special senate election, who do you think Roger Goodell supported? Well, believe it or not, he donated $1,800 to Martha Coakley in her race against Scott Brown.
nt
Martha went out and said this.
You don’t lose any voters voicing an opinion an overwhelming number of Americans have, he should’ve said “I’d fire Roger and replace him with Condi”. Another popular opinion, and one that simultaneously inoculates him from all criticism. Good god, that was a horrid answer.
Why is this the handling of the domestic violence stuff more important than all the injuries and early deaths?
especially from a governor candidate.
His answer should have been, Pfft.
Thanks for the input. (get it data joke)
nevermind
This is a water cooler issue anyone can understand.
It also plays to Martha’s strength and Charlie’s weaknesses.
This also puts him into Dude Bro territory, which undermines his ‘serious guy’ ‘fixer’ schtick. The evidence is out, things need a fixin, but dudes…. come on bro, we need Roger and the NFL.
I heard two guys say, “I don’t care about this. Just get the game on”. Honestly, those are the guys that Charlie has to keep. These are the Scott Brown Democrats.
and most of them don’t vote for democrats, anyway.
those are blue collar guys. Sure, they’re not always on the Dems side w.r.t. civil rights, working for the poor, etc. But, they’re guys who believe in private sector unions, in working hard and getting a fair wage, in a strong middle class.
They’re not single issue voters, and they can be fickle. If Charlie Baker doesn’t win them, it’s that much harder for him to win the corner office.
can can do something about this, right now. The head injury stuff, though likely more significant to the business in the long term, isn’t really something they can fix easily at zero cost.
It is a little odd that politicians have to have an opinion on how best to maintain the NFL brand value, but politics is dumb.
As Charlie Baker engineers his responses to try to seem progressive while assuaging his own base(and perhaps his own beliefs) his forward motion is impeded by a foot in his mouth. He forgets who he is sometimes, and what he is running for. He was raised by politicians, and nourished by the financial class. Getting some ground level insights goes no further than his restricted experience. He tries to profess some liberal values(those accepted long ago by almost everyone), but who does he hang out with? The latter is more telling, and probably interferes with his ability to give a thoughtful answer. For some time conservatives have swelled his head by calling his past work “brilliant.” When he is challenged off the cuff on a real life situation where the public has been tuned in(like this one), suddenly he is wearing a dunce cap. Even if the Party designations were reversed between these two candidates, I would not vote for Charlie Baker. Hopefully the unenrolled, especially the male side, will see the shallowness of his public spontaneous utterances, and vote for Martha Coakley.
I don’t see a campaign credit.
But anyway … I’m really reluctant to comment on this, because it’s so hot an issue. But basically, Charlie is right. Everyone is ASSUMING Goodell saw the tape, but he says he didn’t, and our own supposedly credible local owner Robert Kraft is vouching for him.
I think it’s safe to assume Goodell COULD have seen the tape if he wanted to, and from there it’s probably safe to assume that he didn’t want to. So it raises further questions, but firing someone is no small thing. How many assumptions are we comfortable making?
It is my belief that further revelations will force Goodell to resign, and that that will be justice. But there are enough questions to prevent his automatic firing. I would expect more — What’s the word? — jurisprudence from the attorney general.
It happened. It happened on his watch. It wasn’t just one episode. In my view, it has many similarities with the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal.
It seems clear to me that this is much larger than what was or was not captured on one video tape and when one person did or did not view that video tape.
This is about a culture that celebrates violence and abuse. This is about a culture that discards a great many of the norms that govern the behavior of civilized society — including, in all too many cases, norms that govern our treatment of women and children.
Mr. Goodell is, like it or not, the person whose office most embodies that culture. He must step down.
…about Adrian Peterson, but it just as easily applies to Ray Rice:
Let’s not forget that while the average lifespan of a typical American male is 75, it’s 55 for an average NFL player. Add to this the thousands of NCAA and others who sustain head injuries that result in early dementia, Parkinson’s and so on. Football is big money, huge money, and the men behind it make far too much for them to care about anything else.
Whether he saw it or not is actually not so relevant. The question, to my mind, is whether the organization he is heading is going to tolerate woman abuse. Culture is very important here, and, if he resigns because of this, it will have a salubrious effect on the NFL’s culture.
Also, he shouldn’t be let off the hook because he has plausible deniability. That’s really not what we want.
I don’t think I said that.
If the issue is really culture, as you and Somervilletom assert, why have an NFL at all? Goodell has tried to bring cultural change, and he claims some success.
But that said, I don’t really want to be Goodell’s defender. The FIRST video, the one he did see, should have raised more questions that he should have pursued. But he had the word of the player, his wife, and the local police. If TMZ hadn’t released the other video, I could reasonably believe he didn’t know about it.
I’m just leery of mob mentality on stuff like this. We are (culturally) too quick to say resign or willing to let people get fired. Yes I know we can’t expect the same standards as a courtroom, but if we’ve evolved on these issues we ought to demonstrate it with some jurisprudence.
one that is massive and hugely profitable.
We can no more get rid of it than we could get rid of the Catholic Church.
So your question, ‘then why have the NFL’ is a strawman.
The question is can it be reformed.
As I detailed below, he is a proven liar on this issue who shouldn’t be trusted — and whether or not he saw the video (or chose not to, in order to maintain plausible deniability), he knew exactly what happened.
He is a man with a $44 million salary, running a “nonprofit” organization. Like other very, very rich men, the chances are far, far more likely that he’ll get away with it.
How many mobs have resulted in scandal ridden and/or criminal corporate executives in this country getting thrown out of their job because of “mob mentality.”
The problem in this country isn’t mob mentality. It’s that the rich and powerfully connected fat cats do anything they want and always get away.
The Catholic Church has a more consistent response to abuse than these guy by comparison.
Both kbusch at somervilletom raised the issue of culture. Look upthread.
If the problem is cultural, and it well might be, then it’s far beyond Goodell. So calling for his head may accomplish something, but it may not.
He is the commissioner, the buck stops with him.
In my view, it’s perfectly reasonable to expect the commissioner of the NFL to clearly, forcefully, and unambiguously insist that this behavior have no place in the NFL.
Charlie Baker should join civilized people who have no tolerance for this kind of behavior in demanding his resignation.
then allowing Goodell to get away with it only reinforces the culture. Putting so much pressure that he’s forced to resign and the NFL is forced to open up its books on these matters… and it’s far more likely the culture will be changed.
The problem may be cultural, but $$ trumps all in the NFL. The owners will quickly change the culture — including their own culture — if they see their brand and the money it brings them is at risk.
And it is at risk.
Every new incident, every story about how the NFL buried and covered up this, will reopen the old wound and inflict new ones.
Without cleaning house and instituting changes, the NFL will only get further buried and buried by this scandal.
Think about how the sexual abuse of children persisted in the Roman Catholic Church. It is precisely the lack of curiosity — even if the second video never appeared — that is at the heart of institutions not taking these kinds of issues seriously.
Without public scrutiny, the owner of the blind eye gets rewarded. Bad stuff persists. If public scrutiny only goes so far as leniency when the owner of the blind eye gets caught, then all the cases where it is not under public scrutiny (Penn State anyone?) encourage even more blindness.
They didn’t want to know.
Disagree on the church. They knew.
It’s about the MONEY
Upton Sinclair — ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.’
every NFL team in the country has a high priced director of security, most of whom are retired big city cops with serious investigative or leadership experience. It’s a plumb position.
These are the guys who know how to find out information, figure out what happened, where the bodies are buried, and so on and so forth.
The Raven’s head of security knew exactly what happened in that elevator in February.
February.
Very shortly after the incident happened, he was given a detailed description of what happened in the video from the casino’s head of security.
I think the title of director of security should be changed to director of covering things up.
http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/24716640/report-ravens-executives-knew-details-of-ray-rice-video-in-february
He’s not alone. The NFL and the Ravens have lied repeatedly since then. The comparisons to the Catholic Church and Penn State are apt — repeat coverups to protect the $ and brand.
The NFL and the Ravens just wanted this whole thing to go away. The Ravens wanted a key player in the lineup winning games — and didn’t care about what happened in that elevator, even though they knew all the details.
You’re absolutely right — this is all about money. They wanted it to be buried to protect their team and investment, then when it got out, they cut Rice and hoped the whole thing would go away.
But journalists, investigators and — most importantly — the fans,; aren’t letting them get away with it this time.
As people learn about the full scope of the NFL’s cover-up, about how it’s part of a massive history of cover-ups, they’re just getting angrier and angrier.
Roger Goodell will be fired. It’s just a matter of time. But the longer that it takes to happen, the angrier people will get and the more costly it will become to the NFL.
The key is that the fans must not let this be just about Goodell — they must keep going until the very culture of the NFL is changed so that the next Goodell won’t be able to cover the next Rice and Peterson incidents, and will instead bring these matters straight to the law enforcement authorities with the expectation that the incidents will be pursued to the fullest extent of the law.
To a degree, you’re right here jimc. Goodell is being asked to resign. Lots of others who perhaps in a similar situation but unseen are not being asked. To a degree, instead of being an individual with good deed and virtues as well as misdeed and flaws, he has become a symbol.
But to demand something completely fair at this point is somewhat unreasonable. Likewise, stopping motorists for speeding is unfair for similar reasons, but still an eminently good idea.
Further, in the American past and the European present, such scandals were always the cause of resignation. We’ve gotten oddly adverse to resignations.
That’s a good point. I’m not entirely comfortable with it as a standard, but I agree the offense here is egregious enough that somebody should get canned, and canning Goodell is at least as fair as canning someone who works for him.
to maintain plausible deniability.
FACT: Rice did not dispute the relevant facts of what occurred in the elevator, that he beat his then-fiance unconscious. The tape shouldn’t matter beyond that — the only thing it did was embarrass the NFL.
FACT: The NFL was given a tape of what happened early in the investigation. The police authorities had a voicemail recording of an NFL employee saying they got it and saying it was disturbing.
FACT: The NFL, including Goodell, said no one employed by the NFL had seen the tape before the TMZ leak. Goodell lied.
FACT: The director of security operations of the Baltimore Ravens (a job usually occupied by a top former big city cop), was on the phone with the police as the police were watching the tape right after it happened — and given a detailed description of what happened.
Goodell is a liar and someone who has repeatedly allowed men in his employ to get away with beating wives and kids to an inch of their lives so long as it was able to be kept hushed up.
The evidence is overwhelming.
Charlie Baker’s claim that he needs to see the evidence either means he isn’t paying attention to the biggest national story going on over the past month — or that he, like Goodell, is afraid to piss off potential male NFL voters.
Charlie Baker should be ashamed of himself.
… at least one of your FACTS is in dispute. I’m not sure it’s established (beyond rumor) if an NFL employee saw the tape. Goodell said yesterday that no one had, but her certainly could be lying.
It’s on freaking voice mail. An NFL employee received and saw the video in April. Goodell is a liar.
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/11503851/ray-rice-videotape-sent-nfl-executive-april
ALDOUS HUXLEY.
In listening to Charlie Baker’s lame excuse I was reminded by something Dr. King once said : ” The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Fred Rich LaRiccia
But, like I said, in dispute. From your link:
I think you would accept that denial, and be suspicious of law enforcement, if this involved someone other than the NFL. In this case I also trust law enforcement over the NFL, but let’s not mistake our assumptions for certainty.
This is my last comment on this.
“Goodell is a liar and someone who has repeatedly allowed men in his employ to get away with beating wives and kids to an inch of their lives so long as it was able to be kept hushed up. ”
It’s the coverup that gets you in the end, right President Nixon?
What exactly has he done to earn his immense salary? If for no other reason he should have been fired for being ineffective at his job. But whether he saw the video or not, he definitely knew enough of the facts to make a better decision. It is absolutely crystal clear that he has been trying to sweep this under the rug. I guess that is what the NFL pays him for, but not for him to do such a crappy job of it.
In any case, I don’t have to wait for more evidence. I am going to not spend any of my time or money on the NFL or its advertisers until he is shown the door and replaced with someone who actually has a genuine sense of morality and ethics.
In that sense, Goodell has done a fine job.
I am disgusted that this question even needs to be asked today. I’m reminded of Bernard Law, squirming around a question about why he had actively protected so many known child abusers decades earlier, answered “we know a lot more about pedophilia today than we did then” — as if it took decades of study to discover that priests who diddle children need to be locked up.
Of COURSE Mr. Goodell should step down. I’d like to see us all asking ourselves why we are surprised that an entire culture dedicated to violence, abuse, and aggression has “heroes” who abuse and batter women.
In my public high school in a MD suburb of Washington DC in the late 1960s, the members of our football team were widely and loudly trumpeted by school administrators as heroes. School “pep rallies” were held during the school day, whose entire purpose was to spend an afternoon cheering the football team. The members of the football team were the anointed few who could do no wrong.
Those same members of the football team were notorious for walking the halls and terrorizing any student who they felt was not sufficiently supportive. Terrorizing as in the beating the daylights out of them. Those of us whose hair was longer were frequent targets. Being 6′ 6″ tall and outspoken, the abuse directed at me was only verbal.
Those same members of the football team had two other heavy and burdensome responsibilities. It was their job to select which girls were promoted to the varsity cheerleading squad (from the JV), and which of the several homecoming princesses were selected to be homecoming queen. I assure you that whatever lurid fantasies you might have about the selection criteria would not be far off.
All this was widely known to authorities, and those of us who objected to it were viewed as “agitators” and “disruptors” who were just “causing trouble”.
I suggest that the very fact that a television reporter is asking these questions — never mind the reprehensible answer offered by a major party candidate — suggests to me that our culture has not changed nearly as much as we claim about matters of sex and violence since the 1960s. If anything, we are more, rather than less, tolerant of this kind of abuse.
It is sorry state of affairs when a professional football player can beat a woman into unconsciousness and not immediately be incarcerated for an extended period (never mind banned for life from any participation in the sport).
It is a sorry state of affairs when a major party candidate doesn’t answer with an incredulous “Of COURSE I think Mr. Goodell should reason” with a clearly implied “why do you ask such a stupidly obvious question”.
It’s sad that so many people, NFL fans in particular, are dismissing this or questioning the actual level of this activity. As Upton Sinclair wrote, ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.’ There is so much money in pro sports that morality is forgotten. I made the decision to stop watching pro football a while ago. Money kills sports.
and he can get away with saying nothing, since the cameras won’t be locked on that issue anymore.
That is what’s happening here.
If we are talking about Roger Goodell, I don’t think we should be talking about whiffing on a softball.
Shouldn’t we be saying that Charlie Baker fumbled?
Scored a safety?
Dropped an easily caught pass ?
Took the ball and ran the wrong way?
He really should have been prepared for this question, but it appears he wasn’t able to scramble out of the way…
The Goodell exchange certainly had to be the worst part of a pretty bad day.
As Joan Vennochi reports, Republicans are concerned that women view their party as “stuck in the past.” So far, this whole “Women for Charlie” effort seems bent on reinforcing that message rather than challenging it.
She talks about the DA’s office.
It caught my eye on twitter. Discuss amongst yourselves.
to you. Just a general observation and question.
Would you say she is being nuanced toward Marian Ryan?
If we start including twitter comments from random misinformed twits, it’s going to degrade the level of these discussions severely.
let’s not do that.
Repubs panic
That would have been my response. This is one of those questions that has nothing to do with the office he seeks, but tests a candidate in a way that borders on gotcha. I actually respect that he did not automatically jump on the outrage bandwagon without knowing all the facts and circumstances.
http://wwlp.com/2014/09/19/weekly-roundup-the-xx-factor/
If he weren’t making a play for women and didn’t watch football, he could probably get away with no comment.
As a candidate for governor, you would have no comment on a high profile case of domestic violence? Do us all a favor – don’t run for office!
He wasn’t asked if domestic violence is acceptable – clearly it is not. He was also not asked what he as Governor would do to address the issue of domestic violence. He was asked whether the Commissioner should be fired. I believe questions should be about the office one seeks or one’s own record and I’m fairly certain the Governor does not have the authority to fire the Commissioner nor has Baker ever held a position where he would have such authority.
There are a lot of things I don’t know and it would not be appropriate for me to set myself up as judge and jury. I do not know what Goodell knew and when he knew it, and there are conflicting stories on that one. I do not know what the NFL rules are and how consistently they have been applied. I do not know to what extent this was covered up and again I have heard different stories. I am not sure it’s appropriate for the NFL to be a stand-in for law enforcement for conduct off the field. I would not expect that Baker necessarily know these things either. Not everybody has to have an opinion on every item in the news.
LOL indeed not. But everybody who runs for Governor does.
a lot of Americans do have an opinion on this topic.
Regardless of how well-founded the average American’s opinion is, there’s no way a candidate for statewide office can try to beg off this one the way Baker did.
In this case I’d probably be in the majority disapproval myself, but as has been said all I know is what I read in the papers. There are way to many things on which Americans have uninformed or misinformed opinions for me to put to much stock in that standard.
They have to have an opinion on issues that will come before them in the office they seek, though even then no comment buys time to come up with an intelligent answer.
is what gets us to the unfortunate situation we find ourselves in today.
.
…to issues or potential issues that will actually hit their desk.
Well, yes, we do want to know how they’d react to desk-hitting issues, but the job of being governor involves handling stuff with lots of trade-offs and lots of layers. J. Q. Public frequently feels under-qualified to judge such issues — and rightly so.
On the other hand, common issues of the day that news reports have dived into and that have been discussed by talking heads and water coolers alike are much clearer to Ms. Public and so the candidate’s responses to them may yield more information than, say, the size of the MBTA’s capital budget to the typical voter.
We can’t all be paulsimmons, hesterprynne, and stomv.
All due respect, Christopher, that is dead wrong. When Paul Cellucci was Governor, he made domestic violence a priority, and he did a lot to raise awareness and also changed some laws for the better (full disclosure: I was involved in some of those efforts as his Deputy Legal Counsel). And asking a candidate for a major statewide office about a story that has been extensively reported in the press for the last couple of weeks is hardly a “gotcha.”
Running for Governor is different from running for Treasurer or Attorney General. The portfolio is extremely broad; almost no public policy issue “has nothing to do with the office he seeks,” and there is no excuse for a candidate for that kind office to take a “no comment” attitude on issues like Ray Rice and the NFL. Especially because Baker is a self-professed football fan!
By all means, ask about domestic violence as it relates to public policy, but even a football fan does not necessarily have the information to speak intelligently about the internal procedures of the NFL.
as a candidate for major statewide office to speak intelligently about hot topics in the news that plausibly relate to any major public policy issue, and this NFL business without question falls into that category. Politics ain’t beanbag, and running for Governor is hard work.
who has paid any attention to this issue has the necessary skills and abilities to speak intelligently about this issue.
What Goodell did and has been doing for years is wrong. The evidence is out there and overwhelming. Any executive in his position — who has buried stories like he has done and who has failed to act to protect abuse victims like he has — should be fired. Period.
It may very well be true. If I had a microphone thrust in my face with an irrelevant question I wasn’t prepared for I’d hedge too. Even if it were a relevant issue question for which I was not confident in my answer I would say I’ll get back to you. There is no shame in saying, “I don’t know,” and I have a lot more respect for that than I do the proverbial shovel.
This has been headline news for awhile. Surely Mr. Baker and his staff know that he is running against an opponent who has been an ardent advocate for abused women.
To not be prepared for this question is telling indeed — so much so that it makes me wonder if this was the recommended response from his staff.
I think in your second sentence you just actually gave Martha Coakley credit for something!:)
Seriously, I as a voter have no expectation he would be prepared to weigh in on the specific question of firing, though it is reasonable that he would have something to say generally about domestic abuse.
You are the one jumping to conclusions about my state of mind.
I have never argued that Ms. Coakley was anything but an ardent defender of abused women. Each of her opponents was the same.
Look – you’re taking that previous comment a lot more seriously and harshly than I ever intended. I used the term because there have been previous references over the years in our political discourse to Clinton Derangement Syndrome, Bush Derangement Syndrome, and Obama Derangement Syndrome, which were of course not actual diagnoses, but simply meaning that the person seems to believe that the subject is incapable of doing anything right and an object of that person’s hatred. That is the attitude it has seemed you have often demonstrated toward Martha Coakley so when you didn’t this time I thought I’d have a little fun with it. Sorry.
I apologize.
I don’t “hate” Ms. Coakley, I don’t even know her. I simply have zero use for her as a candidate.
Do you really want to spend your credibility defending Baker and Goodell?
Do you really want a governor who has to consult with his lawyers and pollsters before he can answer any question? A governor who can only respond to crises that he was already prepared for in advance?
I do believe in giving space to intelligently answer a question without just jumping on the bandwagon without all the facts. If you’re not prepared there’s nothing wrong with saying so. Immediately answering an irrelevant question with a microphone in your face is not responding to a crisis, especially when it’s not one you will face as Governor. Even actual crises don’t get a response without gathering the right people and going over options. I don’t believe in governing by polls; if I did calling for Goodell’s head WOULD probably be the easy answer at this point. In some cases consulting with lawyers would be a valid first step, but not here since it is not actionable by the Governor.
That’s a huge part of what they do, from constituent services to assisting in labor disputes to making sure the state government is doing its job (no one wants an angry call from the governor, I imagine).
So, hell yes Charlie Baker should have an opinion on this issue — and that opinion should be to stand up with abuse victims, not millionaire fat cats who always get away with abuse with no more than a slap on the wrist — or, in this case, the billionaires who empower them.
for a candidate or elected official. His thought process–that he needs more information–isn’t necessarily bad. He may not be following the issue that closely. I know I haven’t been.
Goodell, it seems, is also largely unprepared for the question, responding to the domestic abuse issue by appointing a team of 4 white women to deal with the situation. What percentage of NFL players are black? What percentage of domestic abuse victims are black?
Baker’s, not so much.
A candidate needs to be prepared to answer any question.
Every time this guy opens his mouth, I get inspiration to get out there and make sure that a Democrat is in the corner office.
Does anyone think Baker is in favor of domestic violence? Is the NFL really the front line on that issue?
Anyone want to talk about AP’s seven kids by five women? Not sure if that counts the one killed by the mother’s boyfriend. Kobe, R Kelly, Chris Brown, and about a hundred other celebrities. Oh Michael Jackson, the Boston Archdiocese, Catholic Church worldwide.
If you want to make it an issue, anyone want to talk about Remy and who let that continue over all those years?
Sure Baker didn’t have a pithy response. Sorry he does have the slick Deval lines where he expresses outrage and then does nothing, or if he doesn’t want to deal with it passes it off as anecdotes.
I’m not sure what your calendar looks like, but mine says it’s 6 weeks to election day, and the fact that you’re commenting on this sure makes it look like an issue to me…
…not everything that is discussed at the water cooler or appears in the media within 6 weeks of an election is automatically an election issue. Except for his slam at DLP I agree with MG above.
And the informed voter would mostly likely be making their mind up on a range of issues, and I’m suggesting that whether Baker answered the question ” should the NFL commissioner be fired” will not be one of them. Of course most informed voters are partisan and have already made up their minds anyone. When something is an”issue” it’s whether the suburban housewife has heard it and votes on it. I say unless Coakley can spin this one answer into a series of compelling attack ads, it’s unlikely.
You might well be right about that. Imagine, however, that Goodell actually does end up resigning or being fired before election day. Then the ad writes itself, and could be quite powerful.
but it seems that change comes at a very slow pace.
then the changes happen as quick as the Ravens dropped Ray Rice post TMZ.
Change not too quick there.
By the time Baker was asked the question objective facts were known
-Ray Rice had beat his wife unconscious and dragged her body out of an elevator at an Atlantic City casino
-Goodell knew about this and gave him a 2 week suspension
-After widespread criticism,he gave him a 6 week suspension
-After the tape was leaked, the Ravens dropped him from their roster
Conjectured fact with 98% probability of being true: Goodell saw the tape
But the tape shouldn’t be what’s relevant-it’s just a visual confirmation of what Rice, his fiancee, and the police report already described happening. For Goodell to have a gut check and say ‘2 weeks’ is alarming, with or without seeing the tape. And grounds for firing by any sensible American who respects women. Charlie Baker is not one of those sensible Americans after this remark, and it will be a big deal since he is running against a seasoned female prosecutor who made her name prosecuting dirtbags like Rice. This is the kind of gaffe that loses elections.