Take a deep breath. Think. OK, type blog post about Cowboys website defending Greg Hardy.

In the wake of today’s dump of Greg Hardy domestic abuse photos on Deadspin, @CowboysNation, a blog that blindly bows at the altar of Jerry, encourages readers to just, meh, root for Hardy anyway. Here’s an aggregation of a succession of ridiculous Tweets, all sic’d:

All along, my stance has been “I don’t know what happened that night, and neither do you.” While the release of pictures gives us a better idea of what has happened that night, it doesn’t paint a different picture than what could have been reasonably expected to have been the case. Whatever happened, happened to and between Holder and Hardy. Nothing happened to YOU. I say this specifically because I maintain my stance that Hardy owes us nothing. He doesn’t owe us an apology. My stance still remains that Hardy is a football player who clearly was responsible for a very bad situation in his past.

As @KDDrummondNFL has said, Hardy is an entertainer. Do you avoid certain TV shows and movies because certain cast members have situations from their past that were bad/horrible? Have you spent as much time being upset about Adrian Peterson? Much like Vick and many others, Hardy went thru the legal process. If you’re mad that he isn’t in prison than be mad at the people responsible for the case. The Cowboys/NFL have no control over the legal process. Speaking on behalf of the people behind this account, while we have favorite or least favorite players we root for the Star. As mentioned 2 weeks ago, we will continue to focus more on on-field topics, because that is the entire point to what we do. Feel free to make whatever decisions you want that work for you personally on this matter. I have zero interest in arguing about it.”

Firstly, my apologies to Kyle who will have to read/edit this for the torrent of language and guttural noises I’m going to try to put down here. Here we go: STOP CALLING IT A “BAD SITUATION.” It is not a “bad situation.” It was Greg Hardy beating the ever-living shit out of someone and threatening – and by reading the details, trying – to end her life. That is not a bad situation. A “bad situation” is a shart, but like, you’re (usually) at home when it happens, so it’s not a huge deal. This is a fucking crime that should have been punished, in my opinion, by YEARS in prison. But Hardy used his power to abuse Holder, and then he used a different kind of power to get a scared, weakened, and vulnerable victim to take hush money so he could stay out of jail. That, in and of itself, is abuse.

Also, “nothing happened to YOU”? Is there no such thing as a domestic abuse survivor who also likes football or, I don’t know, reading things on the internet. To all of those victims, their friends, and their sympathizers, this happened to them.

“As @KDDrummondNFL has said, Hardy is an entertainer. Do you avoid certain tv shows and movies because certain cast members have situations from their past that were bad/horrible?” YES. A RESOUNDING YES. NO ONE IS WATCHING COSBY RERUNS. Also, in those cases, most times domestic abusers lose those jobs, unless Chuck Lorre is their boss.

“Much like Vick and many others, Hardy went thru the legal process.” Well, yes. Michael Vick was sentenced to 18 months in prison and served his term, so yeah, there’s a difference. And yes, I am mostly mad at the system and the situations that led to Hardy not being in prison right now, but that doesn’t mean I have to reserve my anger for ONE thing. I can ALSO be mad at the NFL and the Dallas Cowboys for employing and standing behind Greg Hardy, in the same was I was mad at the NFL and the Baltimore Ravens for employing and standing behind Ray Rice. We contain multitudes, and so can our anger. [Editor’s note: No idea what that last line means, but it came from a place of passion. So we’ll go with it.]

And those last few sentences, from “we root for the Star” on? That’s simply a cop-out to say “Hey, the Cowboys employ some shitty and shady people, but instead of talking about it, we’re just going to ignore it.” Saying you’re not reporting on off-the-field issues just makes you the Wizard of Jerry World, telling everyone to pay no attention to the asshole behind the star. And that’s the problem that leads us to where we are today. We can’t help that, as people, images click with our hearts in the same way words click with our minds. We knew this happened, but by nature the images made it more real and immediate. To say “we’re just going to talk about what’s on the field and ignore the off-the-field stuff”? Turning a blind eye like that is what allows people like Rice and Hardy and, shit, Suggs, to continue to act the way they act with zero repercussions. And that is a problem.