Treat All The Same

I had only been a supervisor for about ten minutes when I learned a valuable lesson. Let's say you're supervising 17 people. You give one of them a break, let them off the hook for something, or give them a requested day off when you really shouldn't.

The other 16 people will not say, "Hey! What a great guy! Let's hear it for our wonderful and gracious boss!"  

Nor should they.  Fair is only fair when it's equally applied, which brings us to the current unpleasant state of the National Football League.  Players are in trouble for domestic/spousal assault.  Ray Rice of the local team here slugged his partner unconscious in a drunken fight in an Atlantic City casino and has been suspended indefinitely.  Other players are sidelined following similar foul events.  Adrian Peterson of the Vikings is on the carpet for walloping his four-year-old son WITH A TREE BRANCH and his lawyer is pointing out that Mr Peterson only did it in the name of better discipline among his many children.

It makes one almost miss the days when the biggest NFL scandal was lunkheaded wide receiver Plaxico Burress smuggling a gun into a disco in his pants (I know, what was a disco doing in his pants?) and the gun went off and he shot himself and ran into the night howling, also running afoul of a New York law designed to stop people from shooting themselves in the pants.  Burress served jail time to the tune of a couple of years, and New York's night life seemed a little safer for a while.

My point, and thanks for waiting for it, is that miscreants all deserve the same treatment. I recently found myself being hollered at by a couple of people who urged compassion in the Rice case and said that he is not a wife-beater, even though there is video tape that proves otherwise.

East Jersey State
Prison (formerly Rahway State Prison)

I know that rich and famous people sometimes get breaks from the legal system.  In Rice's case, he got a sweet deal from the New Jersey authorities and was allowed to attend a diversionary counseling session instead of joining the football team at East Jersey State (Prison). The program they found for him was supposed to be for non-violent offenders committing victimless crimes.  Wrong twice, New Jersey!

I urged strict punishment and was branded a "typical liberal," which makes as much sense as letting bad guys walk away unpunished. Any man who would hit a woman deserves firm sanction.  In fact, people of any gender who go around knocking out people of any gender deserve to be taken aside and given some time to consider other ways of dealing with their issues.

It's only fair.