SummerSlam Preview - Welcome to Brooklyn

RIP Roddy Piper and Everything Else Wrestling

Key & Peele - TeachingCenter

Hulkamania No More and The WWE BattleGround Recap

The Day Hulkamania Died

The Day Hulkamania Died

Team Authority vs Team Cena (made with Spreaker)

Rice's Light Suspension is Deeper Than Football

This week it was announced that Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice will serve only a 2 game suspension for domestic violence. In February, Rice was involved in an incident in an elevator that left his then fiancée Janay Palmer unconscious in Atlantic City. Rice and Palmer are now married and the league is now dealing with his violation of the personal conduct policy. According to police reports Rice punched is wife to be in the elevator which knocked her out. The lenient sentence handed down by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is a mirror of how we as society tend to look at violence against women.

Since Roger Goodell has been in charge of the country’s most popular sport he has been known to drop the hammer down on rules violators. The two cases involving women as victims it seems that the league’s sheriff has a soft spot. When Ben Rothelisberger got his 6 game suspension reduced to 4 games for violating the league’s conduct policy. That was when Big Ben was accused of rape in Georgia but the charges went away because of some suspicious evidence handling. Now player who have been caught smoking marijuana have served equal or greater suspensions. While Rice was getting 2 games for swinging on his wife, the Eagles Lane Johnson was suspended or 4 games a day before for violating the league’s substance abuse policy.

So is Roger telling us that smoking some weed or getting a DUI is doing greater damage to the league than spousal abuse? Maybe even that consider that last week Vikings special teams coach Mike Priefer hit with a 3 game ban for making homophobic remarks. I am not saying that these offenses should not be punished but there are definitely not equal to violating the safety of another human being. After doing a little reading it appears that Goodell is following the guidelines that have already been set by our society. In the larger world there are many young men and women serving time for having a little marijuana while domestic abusers are getting slaps on the wrist.

This topic of Rice’s suspension has sparked some debate in the sports talk world. While a lot fans, columnist and radio show host do feel that the punishment was too relaxed there are others who think it might be a bit much. What I have noticed that there is a large number of men and women who have a fractured view of how people should treat each other. We are raising a society of people who do not value one another and especially is cruel to women. ESPN host Stephen A. Smith is making headlines because he did a little victim blaming in this incident. To infer that a woman provoked a man to hit her is not an uncommon opinion. Smith’s ill-advised words sting a little more coming from a national platform but this is not a view that is alone on.

There are a lot of men going out of their way to defend the actions of a woman beater. It almost makes you have to look at those men and wonder about them. One of the keys is that their brethren who do not share those views have to be more vocal in denouncing that ideology that woman somehow brings these situations on themselves. These same men must also correct women when they hear them speaking that same ignorance. It is a sign that we are passing a dangerous sense of behavior down to the next generation. That flawed way of thinking will create silent victims who will not feel that they have a safe place to speak against their attackers. They will grow up feeling that they did something wrong.

The reality is that no one should ever feel the right to put their hands on you. Right now unfortunately we are dealing with a state of entitlement where somebody feels like they have the right abuse someone else’s body. We have to do better and think about how we want our daughters, sisters and mothers treated. The conversation around this lately is showing that as a society that we are not taking these things seriously.

Written By

Keith B. Holt

Follow on Twitter @Kholtjr

Ring Time Is Back - Mania Season 02/28 by Ringtimeprowrestling | Blog Talk Radio

Ring Time Pro Wreslting show is back on the air. We have taken a long break but we are now again to share our thoughts on whats hot in wrestling. Join us on BlogTalkRadio as we make our return

Ring Time Is Back - Mania Season 02/28 by Ringtimeprowrestling | Blog Talk Radio

Documentary Suggestion : The Power Broker

This week’s documentary suggestion has not aired just yet. So here is a chance to set your DVR or tune in to see it. This project will air on PBS on February 18th. It is an Independent Lens project about civil rights leader Whitney Young.

Young is a figure that is not discussed as much as a MLK or Malcolm X. Young’s methods were not through marching or other forms of mass direction action. He fought for the economic empowerment for African Americans. His work with the National Urban League helped blacks fight for employment in careers that were traditionally reserved for whites.

His influence allowed him to mingle with CEOs of Fortune 500 corporations and helped them see the value in the black workforce. His was very influential in political circles also. Young was an advisor to Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Nixon even tried to recruit Young to be part of his cabinet after the 1968 election but Young declined. Young was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Johnson. This documentary will be a great chance to learn more about this civil rights icon.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/powerbroker/

Watch Spotlight on Civil Rights Leader Whitney Young, Jr. on PBS. See more from Independent Lens.

Meet Charles Houston

In the ongoing struggle for civil rights in America there have been a lot of people who found ways to stand up against racial injustice. Charles H. Houston chose the legal system as his weapon to attack the injustice. His plan was to break down the fact that there was no equality in the “separate but equal” doctrine that was established in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case. Through his efforts Houston became known as “The Man Who Killed Jim Crow.”

Born in 1895 in Washington DC where his father was also a lawyer. Charles attended Amherst College where he was one of six valedictorians and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1915. For the first two years after graduation he taught English at Howard University until 1917. After that he entered World War I at the rank of 1st Lieutenant. His experiences in the military are what lead Houston to decide to study law. In one of his writings he stated so: “The hate and scorn showered on us Negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was no sense in my dying for a world ruled by them. I made up my mind that if I got through this war I would study law and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back.”

In 1919 Houston entered Harvard Law School and earned his Doctor of Laws degree in 1923. While at Harvard, Charles served as an editor for the Harvard Law Review. After leaving law school he was admitted to the District of Columbia bar and began practicing law with his father. During the 1930’s Houston began his relationship with the NAACP. He was the first special counsel and was involved most of the civil rights cases.

Houston was also involved in the academic world as he joined the faculty at Howard Law School. He helped create a relationship between Harvard and Howard’s Law Schools that still exist today. As a teacher he also mentored a young Thurgood Marshall. Using his position at Howard, Houston was able to recruit the best young black legal minds for the NAACP legal challenges.

With the NAACP Houston attempted to pass anti lynching bills and went after housing discrimination cases. His main focus became the unequal education system that he thought was the biggest problem with Jim Crow. He wanted to show how the states were failing to meet the “separate but equal” standard that the Plessy v Ferguson case was supposed to have established. His goal was to finally overturn the ruling of that case.

Houston was going to use evidence of how school systems in the south spent far less money on black schools than white ones. The facilities were out of date and materials were all hand me down at the black schools. He started out attacking law schools. He used the reasoning that judges might some sympathy toward the plaintiff who wanted entry into the profession that they loved so much. It worked as in evidence in the Gaines v Canada case of 1938.

Lloyd Gaines was denied admission to the University of Missouri Law School because he was a black man. There was no law school in the state for blacks to attend. Gaines felt like this violated his 14th Amendment rights. The school tried to pay his tuition and a law school in a nearby state but Gaines declined. Houston battled this case all the way up to the Supreme Court who ruled in Gaines favor. They ruled that state must provide in-state education to whites as well as blacks. States can either allow blacks to enter or created a second school of for blacks. There were other successful cases argued after that such as Siquel v. Oklahoma State Baord of Regents which was won by one of Houston’s prized students Thurgood Marshall.

Unfortunately Houston did not see his dream finally come true as he died in 1950. In 1954 Marshall argued the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case that ended legal school segregation in the United States. Houston’s legacy is strong and still lives on today. The main building at the Howard University Law School bears his name, Charles Hamilton Houston Hall. The Charles Houston Bar Association is named after him and Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice is located at Harvard when he studied.

The Editor of Harvard Law Review Barack Obama 1991