Oh my, I think fondly of the days when the great game of football was the main talking point in and around the NFL. For over a week now, the games have been secondary at best. The games are so far down the priority list for the media right now that they might as well not even play them at all. And the media is loving it. Their self-righteous view of just about everything is carrying the day. It's a feeding frenzy.
I seriously believe that the sporting media would rather report bad news or sad news than anything nice. The media would rather thrash and judge a player than report any of the positive things that he or she does every day. On Wednesday the Minnesota Vikings moved running back Adrian Peterson from "active" status to an "exempt list." This move will keep him away from the football field for a while as he sorts through his legal tangles. This news was reported about a half dozen times on the local morning newscast of my sleepy little town. A sleepy little town that is about 1600 miles from Minneapolis. The vast majority of the people in this sleepy little town likely hadn't even heard of Peterson this time last week. Everyone knows him now. Peterson is attracting all of this attention because his manner of disciplining his children is considered by many to be abuse. He took a switch to his 4-year old son. Something that would have been applauded as recently as a couple of decades ago. Some probably applaud it still. Peterson knows that his discipline in question went too far. He admitted it immediately to the boy's mother. He let the authorities know the moment it became a legal issue. The fact that he realizes that his punishment went too far is pretty clear proof that he doesn't see disciplining a child as anything other than disciplining a child. He's using the method of discipline that he knew as a child. A method that his father knew as a child. And so on. That doesn't make any of this right. It also doesn't make all of it wrong. I'd consider no discipline at all to be a greater form of abuse. Discipline to one person will always be seen as abuse to another. Some might consider a slap on the wrist abuse. Some might even consider a "timeout" abuse. I consider having to listen to the media honk on about all that is wrong with the NFL to be abuse. Hell, Yahoo has a picture on the front of it's news feed of a family placing a baby on the edge of a cliff in Norway so that they can snap a picture. The horror of it all is the absence of a railing. Are you kidding me? The horror is the thought that a family, with forethought, placed their baby at the edge of a cliff. In my opinion, this is a whole lot closer to abuse, certainly child endangerment, than taking a switch to a kid for fighting with another kid over a video game.
The media likely screams victory in the move by the Vikings to deactivate Peterson. The running back was deactivated for last week's game. He was activated on Monday and it was announced that he would remain active as he worked through his legal issues. This move was met with criticism from politicians, fans, team sponsors, and of course the media. Late Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning, the Vikings reversed that decision and placed Peterson on the "exempt list." Now, the media is saying that the Vikings bungled the entire process. The Vikings tried to do the right thing every step of the way. They did the right thing last Friday when they deactivated Peterson for Sunday's game on the heels of the arrest warrant. They tried to do the right thing for the team and Peterson by reactivating him on Monday. Peterson has been a tremendous player and community figure in Minnesota for seven years. He's not a criminal. He's never given anyone any reason to doubt his intentions. The Vikings decided that there was no harm in allowing him to return to the team. A large gang of people thought otherwise. The media, in a feeding frenzy, chief among them. So, the Vikings reversed their decision. The Vikings did what their critics thought was right. Instead of being applauded for landing on what their most vocal critics feel is the right decision, the Vikings are considered fools for not coming to the decision soon enough. Throughout it all the Vikings were simply doing what they felt was best for the team. Which is exactly what is expected of those employed to make decisions for the team.
The same self-righteous criticism is being thrown at the NFL. Since when is the NFL supposed to be the judge, jury, and executioner of the legal system in this country. The league is under media fire for the handling of the Ray Rice domestic abuse case. First they were criticized for suspending Rice for only two games for knocking out his fiancee in an elevator. If the two-game suspension was seen as a mere slap on the wrist then the punishment handed out by the court of law was far less than that. It wasn't much more than a stern gaze. And the NFL is under fire? That's pretty selective criticism. The NFL finally landed on the appropriate punishment for Rice. The legal punishment remains extremely lenient but they don't have the media watch dogs after them.
I really do believe that the media wants people to fail, especially celebrities, so that they can all gather around and point at the fallen. So that they can sit around, with self-righteous glee, and judge those that stumble. The media doesn't really answer to anyone. If they can't find some drama to exploit, they simply create some drama. There was zero reason for some in the media to release photos of the injuries to a four-year old child. There was zero reason for the TMZ idiots to release the video of Rice knocking out his fiancee. Everyone knew what had happened in that elevator. The victim of the incident definitely didn't need to see the video circulating the globe. I've heard and seen interviews and press conferences of coaches and players and the media reports covering those interviews and press conferences are closer to fiction than fact. How do they get away with it? They sure as shit don't ever apologize for going with fiction over fact. Unfortunately, the last few weeks the media hacks have had far more source material than even they could ever have imagined. Hopefully, that comes to an end soon. I really do miss the football games.
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