Whoopi Goldberg Defends Stephen A Smith
SMH. The media has yet to learn how to talk about domestic violence. Earlier this week, Stephen A. Smith, host of “First Take,” made this comment:
“We keep talking about the guys. We know you have no business putting your hands on a woman…But what I’ve tried to employ the female members of my family…and this what, I’ve done this all my life, ‘Let’s make sure we don’t do anything to provoke wrong actions.'”
The comment struck a cord with the public, prompting an array of responses from celebrities, including Whoopi Goldberg who said:
“If you make the choice as a woman who’s four foot three and you decide to hit a guy who’s six feet tall and you’re the last thing he wants to deal with that day and he hits you back, you cannot be surprised!”
As passionate as Whoopi is about her perspective, we beg to differ. First of all, domestic violence isn’t about who hit who first. It is about control. In fact, domestic violence survivors don’t actually need to do anything to their batterers to evoke physical or verbal retaliation.
Former video vixen Melyssa Ford also chimed in on the conversation, saying:
“While I was shaking my hand in his face, I smashed him in the face with the CD walkman. He didn’t even blink and punched me right in my face. Lip exploded. It was like *gasp*. Then I wilded out some more and he was like, ‘Oh my God! I gotta get her out of here,’ because we’re in the car in the street.[…] I’m sure there’s a whole lot going through his head.”
“We got back to the house, it’s kind of like a blur but all I know is for the next like, day, every time he looked at my face he burst into tears. He was devastated he had reacted that way because he’s not that kind of guy. I just think that there’s some guys who have problems with beating women. They just do. Then there’s circumstances where he was a human being who was backed into a corner and he reacted without even thinking.
What do you all think?
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