The NFL’s continuing efforts to
appease the victim advocacy crowd took a bizarre turn in the past week in the
Adrian Peterson child abuse case, which he claims was just punishment gone too
far. As in the Ray Rice case—where any honest examination of the whole video shows that Rice’s action was
a response to his fiancé’s own
violent aggression—“due process” simply doesn’t have a place when the wolves
are baying at the doors of the bastion of male testosterone. After all, wimpy
baseball has too many players to keep track of, and the NBA doesn’t tolerate
interference from outside agitators.
In the Peterson case, it appears
that on the advice of the players’ union, the Minnesota Vikings star running
back refused to attend yet another penalty “hearing”—after he had already been
under indefinite suspension pending the outcome of his court case. This
“hearing” was apparently to include those “outside agitators” who want to hang
every NFL player they can to make their political points, regardless of the
fact that due process by the civilian process had already been meted.
A clearly frustrated Peterson
said that "At this point, I've resolved my matter in the criminal court;
I've worked to make amends for what I've done; I've missed most of the season,
and I stand ready to be candid and forthcoming with Mr. Goodell about what
happened. However, I will not allow the NFL to impose a new process of
discipline on me, ignore the CBA, ignore the deal they agreed to with me, and
behave without fairness or accountability.”
A representative of the players’
union, the NFLPA, also released a statement:
"The league office seems
more focused on creating an arbitrary disciplinary process for Adrian instead
of honoring a signed agreement to remove him from the commissioner's list. They
are simply making stuff up as they go along. They should commit their efforts
to meeting us at the table to collectively bargain a new personal conduct
policy."
The league office also released a
statement in which it revealed that the “hearing” was held anyways without
Peterson’s or the union’s participation; if one’s suspicions are correct, the
“interested parties”—likely gender advocates—gave the commissioner a
self-righteous earful. The hypocrisy about all of this, of course, is that NFL
players are being held to a different standard than everyone else, largely for
political and propaganda reasons. Of course violence cannot be condoned, but
neither can double jeopardy—or double standards, for that matter; football
isn’t a public office where the officeholder is answerable to the voters—it is
just a “job” like other people have, and more brutal one on the body for the
“entertainment” of many millions.
And like domestic violence, in
child abuse—whether out of “punishment” or not—there always seems to be one
side that always escapes its proper notice; statistics reveal something we
should have already have known: That women are much more likely than men to
commit child abuse. I once knew a kid in school who showed up with welts
circling his neck. A concerned teacher asked him where he got them from; the
boy said that they came from a “whiplash” when riding the school bus that
morning. He was sent to the nurse, and then to a hospital with his mother for a
doctor to look at. He was provided with a neck brace, although he actually
didn’t need it. The truth of the matter was that before he arrived to school,
his mother tried to choke him for some infraction the substance of which was
mostly in her mind.
Why didn’t the boy tell the
truth? Was his mother “relieved” that there was another way to “rationalize”
the bruises on his neck? Whatever the reasons, we should dispense with
hypocrisy and admit that this kind of thing happens more frequently than is
“politically correct” to believe. The state of Texas is infamous for cases of
“mothers” drowning, stabbing, hanging and stoning to death their children—and
getting away with it, mostly through “reasons of insanity,” and usually the
“temporary” variety. There are a myriad of “excuses” and “syndromes” for women
who commit acts of violence, even against the most vulnerable. Just pick one,
and someone will believe it—just see what all the defenders of Jodi Arias have
to say.
As for men—they just do what
comes “natural” to them.
Yet despite all of this, women
are the “face” of child abuse victim advocacy, and they never see the abuser
when they look in the mirror. This is all just part of political strategy of
gender advocates to make themselves’ “relevant”—especially in that bastion of
male dominance, the NFL.
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