Comments Elsewhere

Consider_This:

Actually Rad Geek, and everyone else, according to this report: he didn’t actually hit her intentionally.

So please don’t toss around terms like beat until bruised.

You ought to look up what “RTFA” stands for. The article, which I did read, is not the same article as the one you linked below, and it does not specify how the bruises came about. But since Mr. Steinberg was charged with “domestic battery,” the likely cause was not hard to infer. If that inference was mistaken, and a different article that was not linked from here reveals this, then you’re right to point that out, but you’ll have to find a new phrase for the purposes of rhetorical jabs.

That said, here’s what the news report you linked to on the topic says:

At about 9 p.m., “she decided to call the police, at which time he either attempted to get the phone out of her hand or strike her, and he knocked the phone and hit her in the head with the phone,” Matheny said. “Then he took the connector out of the wall so she couldn’t call the police.”

You need to read this article more carefully yourself if you think that it states “he didn’t actually hit her intentionally.” Matheny suggests two different possibilities: (1) Steinberg tried to grab the phone out of her hand, bashed the phone into her head in the process, and then yanked the phone out of the wall; (2) Steinberg tried to hit her with his hand, bashed the phone into her head in the process, and then yanked the phone out of the wall.

If (1) is the case, it might be appropriate to say that “he didn’t actually hit her intentionally;” the blow was the unintentional result of an intentional assault of a different kind (ripping the phone out of her hand). If (2) is the case then of course he did hit her intentionally, since he bloody well intended to strike her and that’s what he did, although he ended up striking something else that ended up striking her. In the former case it might not be appropriate to say that he “beat” her, since that suggests that the blow was intentional. In the latter case it certainly is appropriate to say that he “beat” her, since that’s what you call it when you intentionally sock somebody in the head. In either case he was intentionally assaulting her and she ended up struck and bruised as a result. I’m not sure what impact, if any, you think that any of this is supposed to have on the debate, except to allow you to issue sleazy dismissals implying that it was all some kind of big accident — a position that not even Steinberg himself takes.