With all the drama that was surrounding the NFL because of the Ray Rice domestic violence situation, they somehow thought it was a good idea to not associate themselves with a celeb who was a domestic violence victim. Well at least for just that opening game.
Weeks prior to the NFL season starting the NFL announced that they would be using a pre recorded performance of Rihanna & Jay-Z’s “Run This Time” every week for the Thursday Night Football intro. Once the video of Ray Rice brutally beating up his wife on an elevator got out and rumors surfaced that the commissioner pretty much tried to sweep the whole situation under the rug, they dropped Rihanna’s performance. Instead they decided to have ‘NFL Today’ host James Brown speak about domestic violence. He said, “Two years ago, I challenged the NFL community and all men to seriously confront the problem of domestic violence, especially coming on the heels of the murder-suicide of Kansas City Chiefs player Jovan Belcher, and girlfriend Kasandra Perkins. Yet here we are again confronting the same issue of violence against women,”
Last night Rihanna finally decided it was time to blast the network for penalizing her for being a victim of domestic violence. She tweeted, “CBS you pulled my song last week, now you wanna slide it back in this Thursday? NO, F*ck you! Y’all are sad for penalizing me for this.” then later included “The audacity…”
Not only was it insensitive and a bad judgement call to pull Rihanna’s performance because she was a victim of domestic violence, but the NFL also showed that they really don’t give a damn about anything but their players.