outrage

sports commentators often get into outrage wars. they're in one now over ray rice, and if you watch pti or around the horn etc, they compete to recommend ever-harsher penalties, call for everybody's resignations, and so on. one frequent function of public outrage, i believe, is to insulate the person talking form the imputation that he might do something like that. surely no one expressing that degree of outrage could also be an abuser, um. whether one ever has committed acts of abuse or not, what one is really saying is: i would never do that. it's a disavowal, perhaps particularly relevant for the jocks, because people are associating their culture with abuse.