Enough, enough, enough.
Shame on you, Steubenville.
Shame on everyone who thinks like you.
Shame on everyone who weeps a tear for two rapists whose excuse was "well, she said she wanted to before she passed out".
Shame on all of you anywhere and everywhere who thinks it's funny to shame and ridicule and taunt and exploit incapacitated people.
Think about that the day you have a stroke and are lying helpless in the street and some yahoo thinks it's hilarious to roll you and urinate on you and mark your face instead of checking if you need help or at the very least leaving you alone.
Shame on every person, group, school, conference, whatever that believes that participating in organized sport entitles you to anything beyond the satisfaction of competing. Shame on all those who have pathetically failed to imprint the true meaning of sportsmanship on their young charges.
Sportsmanship does not mean being a bully or preying on the defenseless.
Sportsmanship means athletes must think of themselves as champions, not in the sense of winners but in the sense of championing the weak and the defenseless, of protecting those who need protection.
She deserved it? It was her own fault?
Yeah, alcohol abusers need to be held accountable for their own actions. THE YOUNG LADY IN QUESTION DID NOT RAPE HERSELF, HOWEVER.
And Don't. You. Dare. Say she should have expected something like that to happen by getting drunk at a party.
As the California Supreme Court ruled in 1855: “A drunken man is as much entitled to a safe street, as a sober one, and much more in need of it.”
There are no heroes in Steubenville, certainly none on their football team.
A hero would have said, "No. Stop. Don't do that to her."
Strike that. Not a hero: A common decent human being.
If I were king of the forest, I'd teach Steubenville what it means to be a team by applying the Lee Marvin method: If one of you screws up, all of you get it in the neck.
No team in their conference should play them for the next four years, not until every current member of that team is through the school and out of the system. Forfeit the games, let them go unmet on the field.
Let them have nothing to show when try vie for college sports scholarships.
Slam that door shut on them.
Am I being vindictive?
Not if it prevents other rapes at other high schools, or other rapes in colleges and universities, or rapes by professional athletes.
Make conviction of a sex crime an automatic expulsions from any athletic league or conference for the entire team.
Make those guys keep an eye on each other.
Make them realize they are not the kings of creation.
And when we're done with them, let's start on Wall Street...