RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, the commissioner, Roger Goodell… The media is in love again today. The media can barely contain themselves because Goodell claimed he was wrong, and there’s nothing — nothing — that makes the media more orgasmic than when a powerful figure admits he made a mistake.

Well, they don’t get excited when Obama admits he made a mistake. A, that doesn’t happen. B, they wouldn’t want him to make that kind of admission. For everybody else, it’s big, and what Goodell said is (summarized), “You know what? I heard. I’ve been listening and I hear you, and a two-game suspension for Ray Rice was not nearly enough. So I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do.

“The new NFL policy is, in the case of wife abuse, spouse abuse, six games the first time you are found guilty of it. The second time, you are gonna be suspended for a year with no guarantee that you’re gonna be reinstated.” So a two-game suspension wasn’t enough. It’s now a six-game suspension for spousal abuse the first time, and now the Drive-Bys in sports are asking, “Well, now, will the Ravens do the right thing and suspend Rice for four more games for a total of six?

“Because, you know, that would be the right thing to do. Goodell suspended him for two games, but Goodell admitted today that that was a mistake, and so the Ravens, are they gonna be good NFL citizens? Are the Ravens gonna do the right thing, and are they gonna kick Ray Rice to the sidelines for six games?” That’s what the media wants to know now. ‘And if the Ravens don’t do it, will the commissioner do it? Will Goodell call the Ravens say and say, ‘You know what? Two games is not enough. I was wrong. It’s six games now. Ray Rice out for six’?”

The media’s hoping one of those two things happens. We have a call about this, in fact.

Julie in San Antonio, Texas. I’m glad you called. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. A long, long, long time listener. I got through one other time but was too late to get on the air, so.

RUSH: Well, I’m glad you made it on today early.

CALLER: I was talking to Snerdley. Actually, I was talking to my husband last night about this domestic violence rule, these new rules, and I was really surprised about the lifetime ban for the second offense.

RUSH: No, no. It’s not lifetime. I think it’s one season.

CALLER: Oh, I thought it was lifetime. Either way, it’s just pretty severe the second offense.

RUSH: Well, wait a minute. Now that you mention it… You know, now that you mention this, I think I’ve seen both. I think I did see yesterday lifetime, and then today I read one year with no guarantee of reinstatement.

CALLER: (Unintelligible) Well, either way, I said that to my husband last night, and he said, “You need to call Rush and see.” We always want to know what you think especially on sports and NFL. We were really disappointed when that deal with the NFL didn’t work out for you years ago, because we loved seeing you on there. But my comment to my husband was I’m a woman… I’m a strong woman, I have a graduate degree, I’m a professional. I consider myself a pretty strong woman.

RUSH: You know, you sound like a woman who can take care of herself. You just do.

CALLER: Yeah!

RUSH: You sound that way to me.

CALLER: I think I am but I still would think if I were in that position and my husband had already maybe, you know, we had a few drinks and he smacked me and his first offense was done and now he’s in this probationary area and something happens and he beats up on me again, I’m gonna be really hesitant to report it if he’s gonna have a lifetime ban, and here I am living in this million-dollar mansion with all this stuff. I think that a woman. I think it puts women in a really tough position almost to where you’re gonna have these closet domestic violence situations.

RUSH: Do you realize, Julie, what you are saying here? You are saying that some of these sports wives will do a comparison, and they will decide in favor of the lifestyle over justice for an abusive husband and will suffer the abuse in order to maintain the lifestyle. I know your point. You think the punishment for a second offense is way too severe; it’s never gonna get reported.

CALLER: I just think it puts the burden on the wife more than the guy. I just think it puts a heavy burden on the wife. I mean, Goodell made this decision in an average of what, a day? He realized, “Oh, I made a big mistake!” Did he go and talk to, you know, professionals in this area, in this… You know, I don’t want to say “industry,” but, you know what I mean.

RUSH: It is an industry.

CALLER: You know, did he go talk to your best friends over at NOW or whoever, these feminazis, and say, “What should I do to these big, bad football players when they beat up on their wives?”

RUSH: Wait, you were cutting out there. Were you asking me a question?

CALLER: I just said, you know, who did he consult with to make this decision?

RUSH: Oh, who did he consult? Oh. Well, I don’t know but it’s clear, Julie. It’s reactive. He announces a two-game suspension. Remember at the time the NFL didn’t have a policy for spousal abuse. They had a policy for suspensions for performance-enhancing drugs and for recreational drugs, substance abuse and alcoholism and any number of other things. DUI. But they didn’t have one for spouse abuse.

So they said they were flying blind. There was no policy. There was nothing, so they had to just make it up. So Goodell makes it up, two games, and there was an outcry from the media. There was an outcry from the sports media, and it was ongoing and relentless. The league is making a big push for female fans. That’s what pink October is all about. Wait’ll you hear this. I’ve got a story here about how the NFL is promoting fantasy football for women.

(chuckling) It’s hilarious.

They are asking women to play fantasy football and imagine, and rate the players as husband quality, date quality, one-night stand quality. I’m not kidding. They are. They are using a relationship dynamic, an imaginary relationship with the players to entice women to play fantasy football. It’s all part of the push. So clearly I don’t know who Goodell talked to, but it doesn’t matter. Whoever he’s gonna talk to about this is gonna be somebody on the left politically.

It’s all PR. It’s all reactive buzz and PR. So now it’s six days. Julie, I think you’ve got a good point. If the second suspension is lifetime, a woman who likes the life may not report it. If it’s a full year without pay, the wife may not report it. You know the amazing details about abusive relationships… You know, we’ve had movies about women that put up with it for whatever psychological reasons.

(interruption)

Well, that there’s that side of it, too. “Women who want to get revenge would go ahead and turn a guy in and maybe make it up — claiming that such-and-such a player abused me, when it didn’t happen — to get revenge, ruin his career, and get out of the relationship, obviously.” Well, she’d have to have some evidence, or maybe not. See, as reactive as the league is being, I don’t know. I told you, this is new, talking about this kind of stuff.

Here we are basically six days from the opening game of the NFL season, and we’re talking about suspensions for spouse abuse and how the commissioner’s two-game suspension wasn’t enough, the media demanded more, and now it’s six games first offense. And the big question in sports media today is, “Will the Ravens do the right thing and suspend Ray Rice for six games now instead of two?” (interruption) Oh, it is. That’s the question in the media today.

That’s the question in the media, is: Will the Ravens now do the right thing? I kid you not. I’m not making that up. Julie, thanks for the call. I appreciate it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Open Line Friday, Rush Limbaugh, serving humanity simply by showing up. Back to the phones.

Nancy in Jacksonville, Florida. It’s great to have you. Hello.

CALLER: Hello. Thanks for having me.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: Rush, my comment is twofold. First of all, Julie is exactly right. Domestic abuse is already incredibly underreported for the very reason she mentioned. Whether you’re wealthy or poor, you don’t want the main breadwinner losing his job. So this NFL decision makes it probably harder. I guarantee you that people are not gonna report it in legitimate cases.

RUSH: Okay, let me refresh. For people just waking up — you know, welfare recipients just joining show today at this time — the NFL has revised its policy on suspensions of players guilty of wife beating. They have changed it, now. It used to be two games. Now it’s six games for the first offense, and a full year the second offense, with no guarantee of reinstatement.

We had a caller say, “That’s not gonna work, Rush, because woman is not gonna… She likes the mansion. She likes the lifestyle. She’s not gonna get her breadwinner thrown out of the game with no paycheck; so it’s not gonna get reported. There’s gonna be more of it going on than anybody knows about because these women aren’t gonna report it,” and Nancy here’s calling to agree.

CALLER: Yes, sir. Also, I think that the other side of the coin is it’s gonna get abused by the really hot, crazy chicks who, you know, will threaten their boyfriends with this kind of thing. Because, if you’re familiar with the Hot-Crazy Matrix, the better looking they are, generally the crazier they are. And they might, you know, use it like that lady did who said her husband was downloading porn to try to get him in trouble, but he wasn’t even living in the house.

RUSH: Wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait. The Hot-Crazy Matrix?

CALLER: Yeah. (giggles) It’s kind of a thing on the Internet. This guy comes out and explains the hotter the girl is, the crazier she is — and, you know, these are zones where it’s safe to date a good-looking girl, you know?

RUSH: Oh, it’s a new take on an age-old philosophy.

CALLER: Exactly. (giggles) Yeah.

RUSH: Yeah, okay. The hotter she is, the crazier. … Okay, folks, stand by. Do you know what the equivalent of that was 20 years ago, 30 years ago? “For every hot, sexy chick you see out there, there is a guy tired of her.”

CALLER: (chuckles)

RUSH: That’s the equivalent 20 or 30 years ago of what you’re saying now. A hot, crazy chick goes nuts, and it isn’t what anybody thinks, and she goes crazy. The hotter she is, the crazier and the more threatening she becomes and so forth. So that’s all over the Internet now, huh?

CALLER: Yeah, it’s actually really funny. You should see it. But, yeah, I just think the decision is a lose-lose. In legitimate cases of abuse, they’re not gonna say anything, and then in cases where you’ve just got somebody —

RUSH: It doesn’t matter.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: It doesn’t matter ’cause that’s not what really is at stake here. What’s at stake here is appearances, and image and PR. I mean, it’s real simple to see what happened. The league doesn’t know what to do. They’ve got a videotape of a player dragging his fiancee out of an elevator at a casino after he knocked her out, and the media starts going bonkers. It’s Ray Rice of the Baltimore Ravens, and the media goes bonkers ’cause there’s no immediate suspension announced.

And then it’s learned there’s not even a policy for spousal abuse. So the league says their hands are tied. “Our hands are tied. They don’t know what to do because there’s no manual. There’s no owner’s manual, there’s no guidance manual here.” So finally, after media pressure and feminazi pressure and so forth, the commissioner announces a two-game suspension, and the media screams, “That’s not enough. That’s outrageous! How dare he!”

And the feminist groups say, “It’s outrageous! How dare he! How can he be so out of touch? Only two games for knocking your wife out and dragging her out of an elevator on videotape? How dare he! How dare he!” So the commissioner says, “Can’t have this. Six games.” It’s clearly reactionary. And it’s designed to appease critics. It’s not… As you guys point out, it really isn’t well thought out in terms of dealing with the problem of players who beat their wives up.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So here we are. We are six days from the opening of the NFL season — the Seattle Seahawks and the Green Bay Packers at Seattle next Thursday night — and what is everybody talking about? “Wife beater suspensions and Goodell being praised today by the media for admitting that he was wrong in the original announcement of two games as a suspension! He admitted he was wrong. He admitted it. That’s what we wanted.

“Now he’s changed it to six games. He’s back to being a great commissioner now, ’cause he listened to us.” Okay, here is the story from Adweek, actually, about the NFL. By the way, I want to point out we’ve had two callers on NFL football today. Both have been women, and both have been brilliant. Both have been right on the money on the subject.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let’s go to audio sound bites 22 and 23. This is Gayle King on CBS This Morning. I just want to illustrate that what I’ve been telling you today is accurate. The Drive-Bys love Roger Goodell, now. They love nothing more than when now high-powered official admits a mistake.

Ohhhh! They like it when a public person admits they were wrong. They just love it!

KING: Many people say he should be applauded for even admitting, “Listen I got it wrong, and I want to change it.”

TRASK: Absolutely. That’s how businesses improve. They look at what they’ve done poorly, they fix it, and they get better.

RUSH: That last voice is Amy Trask, the former CEO of the Oakland Raiders who is now part of CBS website pregame coverage on game day Sunday in the NFL. Here is Jim Gray this morning on America’s Newsroom on the Fox News Channel.

GRAY: Yes, they have. Uh, Roger Goodell heard the outrage of the public, of the fans, of women across the country, of men, of everybody who coalesced and came together and let ’em know they didn’t like the decision that he had made on Ray Rice. It’s been often said, “A wise man will change his mind; a fool never will.” Roger Goodell is a wise man; he listened. We can only hope that some of the people in Washington are listening. He didn’t dig in. He’s gotten it right now by saying he didn’t get it right.

RUSH: So, “We can only hope that some of the people Washington…” I don’t know if that means Redskins or if that means politicians. “We can only hope that some of the people in Washington are listening.” It’s gotta be the Redskins. It has to mean Dan Snyder. “We only hope Dan Snyder could be next and admit that he has made a mistake — and we will love him, too, if he will just admit that he made a mistake,” is the implication.