A media-fueled attack at Levi's Stadium

In an otherwise forgettable game in which both teams’ starters played as if they hadn’t practiced all preseason, the principle story of last Monday Night Football’s second entrée between San Francisco and Minnesota was an altercation outside Levi’s Stadium, in which a man wearing an Adrian Peterson jersey was attacked and savagely beaten by 49er fans, three males and one female. While one may argue that such incidents are occasional but expected among rabid football fans, one may also may harbor the suspicion that this incident actually had nothing to do with excessive fan “spirit,” but was an all too “convenient” excuse to act out one’s natural aggression, with the Minnesota fan serving as a “stand-in” to convey a belief that this player “deserved” a beating, or so could be “rationalized.” But in its viewing, the attack went far beyond what was “necessary” to make such a “point.” 

As most of us know, Peterson was suspended most of last season by Roger Goodell after being charged with child abuse. Peterson is alleged to have taken a switch to the legs of his young son as punishment for some offense. Peterson entered a plea arrangement and avoided jail time. However, in the tug-of-war between black activists claiming racial profiling and white gender activists claiming set to take down the “patriarchy,” black athletes have invariably lost—especially when the accuser is a blonde white female. The media thus rent the Petersen all out of context, media advocacy completely out-of-whack. Fearful of following up one PR disaster with another, Goodell felt he had no “choice” but to ignore due process and the decision of the court, caving in to “pressure” from outside agitators who were less concerned about what Petersen had done, but salivating over an opportunity to toss brickbats at a male-dominated sport. 

The Viking fan was allegedly talking “smack” according to one of attackers (speaking anonymously on a Facebook page), but this was disputed by witnesses. It is more likely that the three men and one woman who participated the beating caught on video were probably thought it justifiable under any rationalization to “act out” on Peterson’s “stand in.”—that is “guilty by association.” Of course, thugs engaging in beating another under such a pretense probably should think before casting the first stone, since they likely were influenced by their own parents on the use of such “punishment.” After all, corporal punishment inflicted by a parent is legal in all fifty states, and in only one is it a crime to inflict “pain” upon a child. Naturally there is a line that one crosses into physical abuse, but for some of us, what we “felt” and what observers “saw” could be two entirely different things.

The question here is not whether corporal punishment of minors by their legal guardians should be outlawed altogether. The question is why people are beings hypocrites about this, making a black athlete the whipping boy for an activity that millions of parents engage in and feel perfectly within their rights to do to instill “discipline” and right from wrong; they are just not all useful targets like an NFL player is these days, with multiple levels of “uses” for advocates, particularly the misandrist type.  

To put it another way, it is certain that how one judges what is or isn’t child abuse can be arbitrarily applied—for example, a star football player, especially if he is black, is an easy mark for white media “advocacy” types looking for a “hot” story. Sociologists need to explain this phenomenon, this need of the white-controlled media to seek out and explode certain crimes and misdemeanors by minority males as if they are somehow far more egregious than similar—or worse—actions committed by whites. While the mass murder of black churchgoers by a racist white influenced by neo-Nazis and white supremacists who are supposedly not domestic terrorists operating right under the nose of law enforcement, waiting for their chance to start a “race war” was the object of “curiosity” for a mere week, manipulated information to advance a gender victim narrative for one particular incident (see Ray Rice) goes on for months and years at a time.  

The bottom line is that I blame the media and whoever is calling their shots for creating the atmosphere for such brutal attacks as occurred at Levi’s Stadium. The media gives the impression that such attacks are “justified” by the way they report and distort, how they manipulate to provide the worst possible images without resort to facts or context. It goes without saying that none of reports I’ve read about this incident even intimates the probability that the attack was the direct result of the media-fueled distortions of Peterson case, and its demonization of the man—much as George Zimmerman has been a “fair” target of anyone influenced by media’s demonizing and dehumanizing distortions and falsehoods regarding his case.