The NFL Feels Like Rihanna is a Problem

So, just looking at the recent maneuver by the NFL in a part of their "message-control" to actually decide that running with Rihanna's music is an unfortunate reminder that their most recent scandal has to do with domestic abuse--how sad are these people?

You know, refusing to partner with a domestic violence victim because of how it looks is a little like saying, well--isn't she to blame, a little, if associating with her made us look worse?

When the NFL, after all, seems to have the problem with not knowing what to do with employees who batter spouses and children. They have an issue with batterers, so, why should they penalize someone who has suffered some abuse?

It is because it looks bad? Is it because it makes them feel bad to consider what she suffered is just so much like what Janay Rice's face must have looked like, and, well--it makes them look bad?

There's a terrible ironic analogy to make here.

Anyone want to guess how many battered people don't leave their homes, or wear long sleeves, or make excuses for their injuries, all on account of how someone who excuses violence wants to manage them because they don't want to look bad? How many people out there are trying to make themselves invisible, so as not to compromise their abuser in order to not catch any worse treatment?  Excising Rihanna like she did something is like saying victims shouldn't be seen because they are a reminder of what can happen, and who wants or needs to talk about that? (I mean, except for people who might need to open up about their abuse or seek help or whatever.)

The NFL is revealing some scary attitudes about the degree to which opinion and image takes precedence over people. I haven't been a fan since I started getting the feeling that players were getting bad effects from head trauma (I was a fan of McMahon--he was a sharp character on and off the field at one time and was pretty ecstatic that he came to back-up QB for the Eagles for awhile) and the like and the industry was cleaning it up (I feel the same way--in spades--regarding the short lives of professional wrestlers). But understanding that this spin control, money over humanity, extends to families and violence, and colors even little things like wrongfooting a performer because of her history in this unfortunate way--makes me think the business is sick.

They have a lot of wrong-headedness to sort out. But victim-blaming, even if accidentally, means they aren't yet actually seeing the real problem that they have.

The November Man: A Netflix find I watched In the Theater

I have a soft spot in my heart for action movies--I have watched and enjoyed (because of my ability to post-phone criticism) openly illogical and over-the-top shoot-em-ups like all three Expendables movies, because I grew up watching Rambo and Commando and all the Steven Seagal movies and the Chuck Norris Missing in Action movies, and so, so much more. I viewed them as a nice break from the teen slasher movies.  So I am forgiving of mindless action flicks. The November Man isn't technically an action film, but it isn't exactly the post-Cold War thriller it wants to be.

If I judged it on action movie terms, it is too slow-paced and has unnecessary character details. If I judged it as a spy thriller, well, it has some plot holes that are just awkward, and the movie has a real dilemma because it has at least one scene where an actual atrocity is committed by the Pierce Brosnan character (who we're supposed to sort of like, I guess) in order to shame his former protégé-turned-assailant about his inhumanity. He slices an innocent young lady's leg, after having held a gun on her.

Let that sink in: This movie has a female character who exists just so that the main character can brutalize her to prove a point in a very dumb way to another male character, because...

Uh, no movie. I will not play along with that. There is no "why" other than convenience.  We are never told what happens with her by the way--spoiler alert! Because technically, why should we care what happens to her so long as the lesson is learned!

I don't want to give away too much of the twists. Brosnan is good, he always is, here in a kind of "past-it and jaded, being a spy was never like "Bond" anyway", sort of way. Bill Smitrovich is impressive, and his character is not a good one. But he still owned it.

The acting is not any of the problem here. It's the story and the framing.

 Some of what happens makes no logical sense--and I have to be snotty--really? The movie has one of those awful "dude walking away from exploding car" cliché scenes--yawn. Car chases and the necessary accidents exist in a world where, apparently, cops and emergency vehicles don't.  Surveillance drones just fling about over major cities like no one would notice. Women seem to exist to be victims. Cats walk through walls. Being suspected of being semi-traitorous does not get you at least a suspension from a managerial position at a spy agency (well, I presume that shouldn't be true...). People just punch up intimate data about other people via a password over their phones or laptops (I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's bordering Snowden territory--way-too-easy.) The machina is all too deus-like for my taste.

This is a movie I'd have appreciated as a Netflix find for having some psychological drama and good acting, but on the whole, as a first-run viewing, it isn't great. Interesting and watchable--but not great.

Joan Rivers, You Tremendous Tramp.

She wasn't perfect and even said horrible things, terrible things, things that could even get you kicked off of television in some eras (that she lived through), but the thing of it is, she survived and already earned a lot of respect. Let's be honest, some of the dumb shit she said that other people would find objectionable could have been said by Don Rickles or Jackie Mason, and who would care?

I liked Joan Rivers for her potty-mouthed self. She wasn't full of shit. She said what she thought. Her face was an amazing thing. I admired her weird agelessness. She didn't seem to be striving for youth--just not looking old. If I look at today's fashion, her ongepotchket jewelry collection has made today's statement necklaces look reasonable.

I loved Heidi Abromowitz. You know--the tramp stereotype in Joan Rivers' hands got played out to where she was saying "Wouldn't you?" The best joke I got from her re: Heidi, was that being told you looked like a tramp was wonderful--because who could sell themselves, an ugly yenta? No. To be a successful tramp was to be a beautiful thing. She tried at being that beautiful, and feminine, and vicious. You (a woman) could marry being feminine and joking. You could be mean. You could talk--because can we talk?

Can we talk about Joan Rivers, as a pioneer, and somehow divorce her life from later ugly comments, that were not her at her greatest? Because she started in theater kissing Barbra Streisand and like me, she loved dogs and a good steak. She was an 81 year old person when she died, and maybe her face didn't say "Grandma"--but she was the kind of grandma  you might have forgiven her sometimes bullshit attitudes to respect the blazing trail she made for others.

Rest in power, comedy Queen. You were tacky and loud at times, but you were a survivor. And your act might have warmed up for a lot of others once, but is hard to follow, now.