Revel claims one more job

Let's be clear: There's only one person to blame for Ray Rice's firing from the Baltimore Ravens and his suspension from the NFL -- and that's Rice and his violent, reprehensible violence toward his future wife. But you have to wonder if the abysmal state of Atlantic City -- and New Jersey's bass-ackwards "economic development" policies -- played a tiny role in triggering the chain of events that caused Rice to bump ISIS terrorists off America's tabloid front pages.

How so?

Well, one angle that's failed to get a lot of focus on this whole sordid matter is how did TMZ Sports (Really? That's a thing?) even get the video? And why now, and not during the initial media frenzy earlier this year over how Janay Rice came to be knocked unconscious in an AC elevator? We don't know -- there's always a possibility that someone in local law-enforcement who was disgusted with Rice's legal wrist-slap punishment leaked it, or maybe a whistle-blower within the NFL, although the NFL has denied six ways to Any Given Sunday that it saw the footage before it was on TMZ.

If not, that would leave...? A disgruntled or payday-seeking employee of the casino where Rice's punch took place? But that's the funny thing -- there are no employees of Revel casino. The glitzy two-year-old joint shut down just after Labor Day, on the leading edge of the great Atlantic City poverty rush of 2014. These days, websites like TMZ are always after celebrity footage or other private info, often waving around a large checkbook, and the only incentive for a low-paid worker not to give them what they want is that he or she might get fired from the only job that one can get in today's lame economy. But now Revel workers can't lose their job...they don't have one!

Coincidence?

There's a lot that can, and will, be said about the stunning collapse of what was supposed to be "Boardwalk Empire II" down the shore -- the empty casinos there are now a massive monument to human hubris and short-sightedness. The last emperor, of course, was Chris Christie -- who gave Revel a ton of tax breaks and then pleaded with Bruce Springsteen to come there. Instead, they got Ray Rice -- the only person who's unemployed from Atlantic City and who actually deserved that fate.