Before you have kids just about everything is different. Though I’d only been hit twice to my recollection, three times if you included the time I kicked my Dad in the ass as hard as I could just because I thought it’d be hilarious (he may have hit me in aftermath but I’d never know because I actually was laughing too hard to register), I had firm ideas about it. Ideas born out of a world view that created my Fight book: retaliation is ALWAYS acceptable. As a practice and a promise.
That is, anyone who hits should expect to be hit.
“I’ve never spanked my kids and never will.” I was dating a woman with kids and though I didn’t say so this seemed a skosh daft to me. Even in the face of me only being spanked twice, I had this idea that it was, somehow, necessary. But I understood where she was coming from. Or at least that’s what I said.
“Get up.” Her four-year-old son had jumped up on the bed and was excoriating me for my lazy ways. It was 7:30 am.
“I don’t feel like it.” I was of the opinion that I was “good with kids” despite the only kids I had anything to do with were my sisters who I was at least 10 years older than.
“I said ‘GET UP!’” The kid’s tone had changed and now I was as opposed to getting up as I could ever have been. It was feeling like a “teachable” moment.
“Nope.”
“GET UP!” And with this he hauled off, with all of his four-year-old power, which wasn’t much, and kicked me in the leg. Which garnered an immediate response: my left hand shot out from under the blankets and delivered a sound slap on his ass. Sound enough to have knocked him down. And the room froze.
For my part I felt disgusting. If this was a way to radiate power I thought I had failed. This was a way to marshal violence, nothing more, this punishment for violence with violence.
His mother, who had been in bed as well, witnessed this. I then apologized but reiterated that I didn’t want to get up. He couldn’t decide whether to cry and play for sympathy or take it on the proverbial chin. He took measure of the room and the woman that I thought would, in short order, be dumping me, had turned on him with a stony look, so he manned up, walked it off and when she and I had spoken about it again, outside of his presence, she had a take.
“I want him to learn that if you hit someone larger than you, you might get hit back.” And then an addendum: “as a man.”
For my part I felt disgusting. If this was a way to radiate power I thought I had failed. This was a way to marshal violence, nothing more, this punishment for violence with violence. Moreover, when it came, years later, to parenting my own four kids I just fell into what seemed like a much smarter/healthier reality: I NEVER hit my kids. For any reason. (Well, unless we were training martial arts, which we all did.)
So when Dana White, the head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), premier Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fight organization, slapped his wife after she she slapped him during a drunken New Year’s Eve imbroglio I found myself thinking back to courses of action that one might take. “As a man.”
And no matter what I came up with, I never came up with what actually happened: after he said whatever he said to inflame her enough to strike him initially, he slapped her once. Then slapped her a few more times. We guess to drive the point “home”.
Post-facto his scramble to get ahead of the story was almost masterful. Alcohol was cited, it being a sui generis event was also cited. White went on to claim that there was also no excuse, that he screwed up, that they’ve been together for 30 some-odd years, that they have kids and to round out his ramble that he was some measure of sorry. The wife/victim also released something short of an impact statement that seconded a lot of that.
All PR 101.
What happened next is what shocks the most though: NOTHING.
“If there was just one strike a piece,” said a police lieutenant we know, “then maybe no arrest. But the subsequent shots? Yeah. We arrest White.”
ESPN and Sports Illustrated, both of which have dogs in the hunt, mealy-mouthed it or said nothing. MMA media, really mostly a PR wing of the UFC, followed suit and Endeavor and Ari Emmanuel, UFC owners, can’t be found for comment.
“If there was just one strike a piece,” said a police lieutenant we know, “then maybe no arrest. But the subsequent shots? Yeah. We arrest White.” In his mind, taking into account the weight differential and the severity of the responses (one strike versus several) White would have been the one to haul off.
In other words: getting struck by someone smaller is not license to “stand your ground” and deliver earth-scorching counterattacks. No matter the genders, no matter who struck first.
So when a man who is about to debut the misbegotten PSL, Professional Slap League (this is not a joke) on TBS, slaps the shit out of his wife, in public, it calls for a debut delay of a week or so and a corporate “nothing to see here” response. It also seems to call for a raft of exculpatory sucking up, courtesy of a fan base of reprobates and fighters who know which side their bread is buttered on.
However, the day and the age that has us “searching” for solutions to a situation that has solution written all over it, is part of the day and age that makes me sick and is a commentary on capital if nothing else. Because? Because men much less well-heeled have all gone, justifiably, to jail this past weekend for doing the same thing.
Because if the sports organization had the letters NFL, NBA, MLB or NHL attached to it, instead of the UFC, the slappers would be unemployed. At the very least they’d have to cop to the PR two-step: admitting to a “Problem” with alcohol, going to rehab, and emerging six months later “cured”. Instead the red light district of the sports world, the UFC? Business as usual. But given that the UFC now ties into entertainment vis a vis Endeavor, what precisely does it mean when we say “business as usual”?
In light of alleged sex offender Conor McGregor, domestic abuser Greg Hardy who fought for the UFC for a time, along with former UFC fighter Phil Baroni who just murdered his girlfriend last week, and noted “misogynist” Andrew Tate who has appeared with UFC fighters in photo ops before being arrested last week for sex trafficking in Romania, what’s the business that’s usual for the UFC?
I guess not giving a shit if your employees have to lay the smack down every now and then. Especially true, it seems, if you’re the employer of those employees.
“Yeah, but what would YOU do if I hit you?” Like those Cosmo mag quizzes this would be a dangerous line of inquiry for any couple if it weren’t so cut and dried. The wife looked at me, guessing, I guess.
“I’d get a divorce. Immediately.” Which seemed and sounded severe, based on my ear and her expression, but what’s the alternative?
There is none: Dana, like every single one of the rest of the world slapping back, needs a time out. Too bad no one who knows that who he works for has the balls to make it so.
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ANNOUNCEMENT: Apropos of assholishness in high places…TOMORROW, Monday, at 12:30 pm, PST, we debut the twice monthly, 30 minute podcast BAD BOSS BRIEF. Subscribe and spend lunch hour laughing at how any boss thought it made sense to deliver his acceptance letter to you in his underwear (true story).