Rashee Rice's Lawyer Kindly Requests That We All Stop Talking About How His Client Abandoned Injured People on a Highway and Focus on the GOOD He's Done
There comes a time in this world where you've got no choice but to give credit where credit is due. Where it's incumbent upon all of us to tip our caps and congratulate someone for a job well done.
Take Rashee Rice for example. Sure, he could've argued that wasn't him making an SUV sandwich with his Lamborghini and his friend's Corvette as the bread. He could've denied he was there. He simply could've dared us to prove he one of the guys caught on video noping away from the scene of the six-car pileup they created. And in these days of AI and deepfakes and face-swap technology, who could argue his point?
But nope. He stepped up and did the right thing. After five days. And in the face of overwhelming evidence:
Rice stood up in front of the cameras. Looked America in the eye. And took full responsibility. By which I mean, he got his lawyer to to do those things:
… while he himself opted to release a carefully worded statement expressing his regret on Instagram. Which I guess is sort of the 2024 version of stoically laying your neck onto the guillotine and taking your punishment.
But Attorney West added another statement which I think is an important one. It was directed specifically at the media, but it's something we should all heed in the days and weeks to come:
"Why don't you do a story of who he is, as opposed to what occurred? Because it seems as though what you're saying is based on this one incident, you're going to define him based on this incident, as opposed to his entire body of work.
"I would say each and every one of you, if all of us had to be defined by one incident, that would be ridiculous, as opposed to our entire body. So I'd ask that you as the media, look at his entire body of work before saying exactly who he is. That will be better."
That's a decent point. You know that part in Batman Begins where Rachel Dawes admonishes Bruce Wayne with, "It's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you"? And Batman repeats that to her later as he races off to save Gotham? This is just like that. Except the exact opposite.
It truly wouldn't be fair to judge Rashee Rice just on this one incident. We have to look at his entire body of work. What about all the times he drove a Lambo up a highway without racing another muscle car like a lunatic? He didn't get any publicity for that, did he?
Where was the media during all the times he didn't slam into vehicles filled with moms and babies in booster seats? Wouldn't it have been nice to turn on SportsCenter and hear, "Today Kansas City Chiefs star Rashee Rice drove home without incident, and without injuring several other motorists"?
Wouldn't it be nice to see cellphone video of him doing something nice? Like someone motioning to him to pull out of a parking lot in front of them, and so Rice does the right thing and gives them the little "Thank you" wave, which is fast becoming a lost art in this country? It sure would.
I don't think it's too much to ask that the rest of us focus on all those times Rashee didn't abandon his insanely expensive hypo in the middle of the highway without calling 911, talking to the police, or bothering to check on the people he ended up sending to the hospital. And not just fixate on the one time he did.
Sure, it would mean reporting on 7 billion people who didn't do anything newsworthy, every single day, forever. But like his lawyer says, it would be better. For Rashee Rice, at least. But I doubt the crash victims who are getting lawyers of their own plan to cooperate.