The US news satirist Jon Stewart devoted a segment to the National Football League—or as he calls it, “The League of Exculpatory Gentlemen”—Wednesday night, filling 10 minutes with the American football league’s latest attempts to address the domestic violence allegations against its players; most recently Ravens running back Ray Rice and Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson.
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Stewart focuses first on Rice, and the NFL’s announcement that four women—three new to the NFL—will now help shape the league’s policies and treatment of social issues such as domestic violence. One of the new advisors, Lisa Friel, led the sex crimes prosecution unit in the New York County District Attorney’s Office.
“You know your business model is in rough shape when you need to appoint your own in-house special victims unit,” Stewart says in the video.
He also addresses the Vikings’ original one-game suspension of Peterson after the player was indicted on a charge of beating his 4-year-old son with a switch made from a tree branch.
It took a message from the major NFL sponsor Anheuser-Busch denouncing the league’s responses to the incidents for the teams to take stronger action: Rice and Peterson have now both been suspended indefinitely.
“So the NFL succumbed to beer pressure?” Stewart says.“How crazy is this? A company that sells alcohol is the moral touchstone of the NFL.”