This Really Isn’t a High Enough Price

Crime doesn’t pay, but criminals do. They pay. They pay money. That’s how some of them pay for their sins. With money. That’s how they buy their way out of trouble. With money. That’s how they avoid getting off scot-free. They pay scot.

And this is the way sinners, too, pay for their sins. With money. A little green paint covers everything.

Nobody from the New England Patriots got suspended Tuesday over the female sportswriter incident. Nobody got hauled before a judge. Nobody got taken downtown for questioning. Some Ivy Leaguer came around and asked them if they had been good little boys or bad little boys, then told them to be good for goodness’ sake. Santa Claus is coming to town. OK, so they got away with it. They beat the rap. The quality of mercy wasn’t the teensiest bit strained.

You say $72,500 in fines is a pretty stiff price to pay for a non-criminal offense? Fine. Fines are fine. Just be aware that these Patriot people are laughing all the way to the bank. Just be aware that Zeke Mowatt’s $12,500 tab will be creatively accounted for in his next contract, or be covered by some team emergency fund, or be raised by some citizens’ committee that thinks the poor Zekester got a raw deal. They’ll rally like Amish farmers to help him rebuild his barn.

As for the little shaver himself, Victor Kiam, he has to ante up $25,000 in fines and $25,000 additional to supply material to NFL athletes instructing them on how to behave like upright human beings instead of like prehistoric cave people who walk on all fours.

They say this man who owns the Patriots and an electric-razor company has been up to his stubble in financial problems lately, so maybe this $50,000 fine couldn’t come at a worse time for him.

Good.

This is the price Kiam and the Patriots must pay to accept fully the realization that the bullying and physical, sexual and emotional harassment of innocent bystanders cannot be tolerated . . . not by the NFL, NHL, NBA, NBC, NCAA, NAACP, CPAs, CIA, TWA, PTA, PGA, FBI, IBM, IRS, NOW or USA.

For those who missed it--and continue and continue and continue to miss the point--Lisa Olson of the Boston Herald was only doing her job. She was in that Patriot locker room legally, properly and professionally. She wasn’t a trespasser. She wasn’t off-limits. She was working . If what happened to her had happened to a doctor, lawyer, waitress, homeless woman or any woman you happen to know, it would not have been any more or less forgivable.

Lisa Olson got mind-raped. These men affronted her and emotionally manhandled her, in an era and a setting wherein no woman should take even a man’s vaguest suggestions too lightly. Anybody who believes this behavior falls under the category of locker-room “hijinks” is either a fool or a male, which is often redundant.

What a world it is we live in when an adult woman doing her job, a trained journalist taking notes after a football practice, can be subjected to a frontal assault by amateur flashers and professional bullies and then become, in some eyes, not the victim but the villain , thereafter the object of public scorn and vile threats and hateful mail. How disgusting. How distressing. How borderline horrifying.

The woman went to a basketball game and had a full cup of beer hurled at her. For what? For being brutalized by football players? For having the audacity to be standing in a room? For believing that she was entitled to make a living and be treated with a little civilized common dignity?

All Olson wanted was two things: For the Patriots to acknowledge what they did, and for the NFL to acknowledge that there would be hell to pay should it ever happen again.

Well, there may not be that to pay, but there is money to pay. And that’s something, at least. Mowatt is $12,500 lighter today, and Michael Timpson and Robert Perryman have five grand apiece to fork over, and then there’s the $25,000 that will go toward pamphlets and instructional videos that NFL players will be obliged to watch like airline passengers being told how to buckle that seat belt and use that foam cushion for flotation.

Good.

It’s a start. Nobody is saying athletes should accommodate anyone and everyone who ventures into their locker rooms. They can dress, undress, talk, balk, yell, smell, scratch, spit, hurry, linger, heckle, howl or just sprinkle their stinky armpits with baby powder, whatever they want. It’s their room.

Just don’t abuse anybody. Any time. Any place.

No amount of money in the world can buy you respect.