Current Trends by Natasha Sapp

Yes and we should be happy about the one positive thing to come out of the turmoil currently surrounding the National Football League, the one shred of silver lining that this has come on the heels of the Ray Rice domestic violence case; because, what Adrian Peterson did to his 4 year old son is the last unchallenged form of domestic violence and it is time, long past time that inalienable fact was recognized by both society and a court of law. Unfortunately society is not as quick to come to that conclusion; even with the downright gruesome details being released to the public via the police report obtained by media, chilling pictures obtained then disseminated to all media outlets covering the story clearly showing what Peterson did was no spanking, was no form of discipline allowed by law, as far back as 1950, where people’s minds automatically go, amazing is how many defend him still. Multiple teammates, fellow football players and those from other sports are coming forward saying that’s how they were disciplined as children, having to go get their own switch from a tree, Charles Barkley remarking that’s how parents in the south discipline their children and that every parent there would have to be put in jail if what Peterson did to his son is suddenly against the law. Members of the public echoing supporters with comments like: “One just needs to read headlines today to see where this ‘no discipline’ mentality is getting us. Discipline can go too far, but sorry, being your kids friend, or putting them on timeout teaches them nothing,” invoking the corporal punishment or chaos fallacy used by many every time a case makes headlines. Others employing more fallacies saying that’s just discipline, how they were raised and they turned out alright; exceedingly calling it preferable to the spoiled, bratty, lazy, entitled, no manners, no respect kids today, touting they hold a job and are not in jail. Peterson himself saying, in defense of his actions, beyond detailing how he was disciplined as a child saying that type of discipline gave him the tools, the focus to be in the NLF after supposedly contritely releasing a statement expressing how sorry he was for the hurt he caused his son, saying he is not as perfect son, a perfect parent, a perfect husband, but he is not a child abuser. As for the NFL, they benched Peterson weekend before last originally allowing him to play this weekend, choosing to let the legal process play out. While those opposing Peterson, opposing corporal punishment, no matter the degree, remember another little boy from this year Demicio Powell wondering how many of these graphic videos, horrifying pictures we have to see before there ceases to be a debate about spanking, whooping, physical discipline and we start calling it what it is, child abuse.        

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/adrian-peterson-indicted-in-texas-on-child-abuse-charges/

Whooping, switch, discipline people may be wondering exactly what those terms mean to  media, police, public making comment, wondering what it is that Adrian Peterson did to his 4-year old and why; initially thinking perhaps what he did wasn’t so bad, he was given whacks with an object on his behind for doing something wrong. Possibly viewing it as a “liberal, left” overreaction, thinking it was elevated to the level of news because the boy’s father is famous, well known. However, according to police documents and accompanying pictures, interviews with the little boy there are numerous lacerations bruises and welts on the child’s legs, back, buttocks including scabs that look to have drawn blood also on the front of his legs, possibly even his arms, odd for a spanking. Adding to the potential reasons for indictment, proof positive, assuming the account is accurate, this went beyond discipline and crossed clear lines to abuse are descriptions of bleeding genitals, switch marks on the child’s scrotum, testimony leaves were shoved into his mouth during his ordeal, remarks “daddy Peterson” hit him on the face, that he feared being punched in the face if he told authorities what happened, comments about being hit with a belt before and numerous belts seen in the home. So what you may ask did this, remembering too he’s 4, year old boy do to incur such a harsh punishment, according to news sources, he pushed another Peterson child off of, or over, a video game. A 4 year old guilty of shoving a sibling deserves that; not very likely. Note there are no reports of said sibling receiving a head injury because they hit their head when shoved, they needed stitches for similar reasons, had a tooth knocked out as a result of the 4-year-old’s actions; meaning there had to be a better way to handle the situation. Belying his perceived act of contrition, his public statements admitting his imperfections, his fallibility is him smiling, smirking in his mug shot; indicating he either isn’t taking the accusation, the indictment seriously, thinks this is another press junket or he really doesn’t think he did anything wrong. Some believe there is hope for Peterson amid reports post his arrest he has met with a psychologist coming to the understanding there are better, different ways to discipline his son and the psychological effect his preferred method might have on his offspring vs. abusers who don’t see what they did as wrong, don’t see themselves as such, maintain they are doing no harm. If only we could believe him, aside from these reports coming from Peterson himself, it smacks too much of what celebrities, prominent public figures do to mitigate public scorn in the presence of scandal; go to rehab, get help has become the default way to essentially get the public off your back. It is entirely too reminiscent of Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic rants, rage filled voicemails that kept happening, it smacks too much of  Isaiah Washington going to rehab after his anti-gay slurs to then Grey’s Anatomy co-star T.R. Knight. No one bought it and Washington eventually left the show; Alec Baldwin’s well publicized run-ins with photographers showing obvious anger management issues. Not to mention his nasty divorce, horrible things said to and about his wife and daughter, losing his latest gig, like Washington, to anti-gay comments uttered on air. We likewise shouldn’t be too quick to buy Peterson’s potential reformation, because unfortunately physical child abusers are like wife beaters and child molesters, there really isn’t any rehabilitating that. Yes people who need and seek help for substance abuse, alcoholism, mental health conditions should get it and receive support while doing so, but it shouldn’t be a scapegoat to avoid, hide, shy away from reasonable scrutiny, justifiable judgment deeming your behavior morally, socially unacceptable.        

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/crisis-nfl-now-child-abuse-charges-25524930

http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/exclusive-details-from-peterson-police-report-328761923649

NFL pic 1

 

NFL pic 2

 

http://www.msnbc.com/politicsnation/watch/adrian-peterson-case-sparks-national-debate-329488963597

And now surfacing is a 2013 allegation he abused another of his children where child protective services chose not to press charges stemming from a scar over the child’s eye when he was returned to his mother after a visit. What is chilling is the obvious pattern displayed via alleged text messages then compared to his comments about current charges. In those messages he expresses how bad he felt for giving his son a “whooping in the car but he did it to his self.” Forget a spanking doesn’t involve a child’s face or head nor should any discipline enacted on a child, he admits to causing the injury, blames the child for the injury being inflicted, refusing to answer a direct question: “what did you hit him with?” again expressing remorse after the fact, after someone dares ask what happened, dares confront him about what he did. Utterly shocking, or not so, if you believe Peterson to be an abuser rather than a strict father unafraid to lay down the law with his son, is the text reading in part: “sit still and take your whooping boy he would have saved himself the scar;” seriously, he’s saying that and CPS declined to prosecute? Put all that side by side statements made the following Monday, post indictment and arrest, booking going public stating in part, no one could understand the hurt he felt for his son and the harm he caused him; sound familiar, a little too familiar? If it was indeed just a spanking why did the mothers in both cases feel the need to contact child services; returning to the current case where charges have actually been filed, if it was just a spanking particularly in the south, in Texas housing a long tradition of same, why did the doctor even feel the need to report it? If it was just a spanking, just discipline doled out to a child who had done wrong, why were there leaves shoved into his mouth, why was the child saying he was hit in the face, feared being punched, why were you either so out of control or so inattentive you failed to notice you were hitting the child’s scrotum? Why, if it was just a spanking, just discipline is the evidence, especially on the child’s genitals, visible thus available for documentation up to a week later?  Worth shedding a light on too is, there remains no information stating either child was removed from their mother because they inflicted the injuries in a twisted revenge plot to get back at Peterson, either child was also removed from their mother due to abuse, neglect found in that home as well, removal of either child because it was determined they contributed to the abuse inflicted by Peterson, i.e. failure to report, willfully letting the child return to a probable dangerous environment with Peterson. Instead the exact opposite appears to be the case; once they discovered the abuse, once they saw the effect of what Peterson termed discipline, a whooping, another term for spanking their response was to have the children seen by doctors, to contact and cooperate with CPS, local DFS. Bringing us to, if it was a basic spanking common to the culture, common to the region, why did a grand jury take the step to indict; keeping in mind the charges were filed, not in Michigan where the child lives with his mother, but in Texas where Peterson has a home, where the incident took place? Factors piling up against Peterson, not only did a grand jury in Texas, the heart of good old fashion values, strict upbringings and yes corporal punishment choose to indict him, but indicted him for felony, the highest grade charge allotted, for negligible injury to a child?                  

 http://centurylink.net/tv/3/player/vendor/ESPN/player/fiveminute/asset/espn-report_peterson_facing_more_accusations-5min/source/Recommendations

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2014/09/17/peterson-bush-sot-discipline-earlystart.cnn.html

Though support is tangible nationally and throughout the black community, Peterson is not without his detractors, public personalities and citizens alike, NFL legend Cris Carter saying on a national sports show they, [parents] can’t beat a kid to make them do what they want, emotionally talking about the thousand things we have learned since this was a commonplace practice, openly stating emphatically he loves his mother but she was wrong, some of the things she taught him were wrong. People in droves coming forward to recount their negative experiences around spanking, corporal punishment tactics used in their homes; one person talking about being hit on the palm or the knuckles by catholic school nuns, profoundly confused years later when the nuns who left emotional, mental scars came up hugging them talking about how much they loved all their boys, students.  Goldie Taylor describing her experience for MSNBC including all the men in her family past a certain point didn’t reach old age, didn’t reach productivity because they succumbed to the streets regardless of the paddling’s, how after her uncle, responsible for the archaic discipline in her household, died her and her cousin went out and burned the large tree they were forced to obtain switches from, such was the depth of psychological trauma, emotional pain inflicted on them. How at his death they felt relief, not that he was dead but that they would never again be forced to obtain switches, never again have to endure that. Continuing Taylor talks about her mother and a phrase older people will recognize, being told “you better quit crying before I give you something to cry for;” telling MSNBC her mother wanted  her to align her emotional state to accept violence. Not a new concept, nor is sharing the pain it caused in order to shake people from devastating mindsets; Oprah has spoken repeatedly on her talk show and beyond about being spanked, being hit with a belt, other object and not even allowed to say it hurt. One person commenting on a YouTube video contrasting the good old days of the ‘50’s and ‘60’s to now compared themselves and their friend: “My parents hit me with a belt if I misbehaved, and I got into drugs as a kid and talked back all the time because I learned that authority was arbitrary and cruel. I was right to do it – my parents often did immature, dangerous things and talking back protected me and also taught me to stick up for myself. My best friend’s parents never laid a hand on her or even yelled at her, and she was the perfect model kid, because she didn’t want them to be disappointed in her. As an adult, I respect my parents because I know they did the best they could, and I want to make a good life for myself. I work hard and have a master’s degree. So does my best friend. But I do well *despite* the discipline. Everyone saying that kids would learn respect if they got smacked around more is a fool. Studies show it makes kids much more aggressive and anti-authority – maybe not every kid, but that’s the trend when the issue is studied. Modeling good behavior and giving kids non-violent consequences actually works much better. It sounds like this thread is full of awful parents who think you have to either neglect your kids and let them do anything they want, or hit them and yell at them. Why not just be reasonable, provide boundaries, and praise them when they live up to your expectations? No wonder we have problems with kids, judging from these comments.” Implication being they did well in spite of what was done to them while their friend did well owing to the love, support, reasonable approach to child rearing described in the latter half of their response. Returning to Taylor, she is simultaneously correct in starkly paralleling, had he [Peterson] done this to a 24 year old man he would be guilty, brought up on charges for aggravated assault; had he done this to a domestic partner, a woman, significant other, under NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s new policy he would have been banned from the NFL, eligible for appeal after one year. Had it been brought to court under anything other than laws pertaining to children he would have been considered a first time offender under domestic violence statutes most regarding him with the distain leveled at Ray Rice, but because it’s a child we deem it Peterson’s private, family business because it’s a child, we continue to engage a public debate where there should be no debate. Hitting your kids, like hitting your spouse, should be off limits.    

  http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/who-is-defending-adrian-peterson–329522755618

 http://www.hlntv.com/video/2014/09/15/vikings-adrian-peterson-child-abuse-nfl

 We need to let go of out attachment, our romanticizing of the 1950’s; part of the reason it, spanking, corporal punishment is so passé is because we know different, better ways to deal with children; droves of children have grown up sans ever being hit to be functional, productive successful people. Flying in the face of public perception, circa the 1950’s 4-year-old’s were allowed to be 4, swatted, spanked with a hand, switches, paddles exc. weren’t usually used on a child under 7 typically, unless it was at school beginning at age 6 in first grade, as there was no kindergarten, belts not introduced except for serious offenses until adolescence, teen years.   Even corporal punishment advocates today seeing the photos, hearing excerpts of the police report say this was too far for 4. Lining up with what other analysts, commenters have stated regarding the fallacy because we were raised a certain way we believe it to be the perfect, ideal, correct way to parent; pointing out, just because it was, was done, was accepted doesn’t mean it was right. Segregation was once upon a time socially acceptable, the law of the land, didn’t make it right; inter racial coupling, marriage was more than frowned upon, it was actually illegal to have sex, cohabitate or marry someone of a different ethnicity, doesn’t make it right. In the treasured 1950’s adults continue to harken back to as the pinnacle of American values, while women did work they were severely limited in their job choices, often paid less, none of which is right. Not far removed from needing a man’s permission to divorce, women seeking disillusion of marriage had to prove “fault” under certain guidelines abandonment, cruelty, adultery; still women were economically, socially kept in marriages, dangerous environments thanks to stigma, lacking job prospects to support self and children, utterly not right. Nevertheless always touted are the successes, statistics on the numbers of gainfully employed, not on drugs, not in jail persons; never heard about are the failures people who went on to be everything from alcoholics to psychopathic serial killers due to the type of “discipline” used on Peterson and that he in turn tried to use on his son. A critic of the popular psychologist turned author and newspaper columnist making headlines last year after his controversial column that got him in trouble for practicing without a state license said of his 2012 book“If youth were so perfect back then, who the heck was devouring “Catcher In the Rye”? Or, by the by, if parents were so capable and kids so compliant, why does he describe how he was “grounded for the entire summer between high school graduation and going off to college” because he’d “been arrested for disturbing the public peace”? And if children were so untroubled, then why does he remember spending “my first through twelfth grades in a state of almost perpetual test anxiety, grade anxiety, flunking anxiety, parent anxiety, teacher anxiety and principal anxiety… I was in grade school during the 1960s, too, and I lost a classmate to suicide. I knew students who, in retrospect, abused alcohol and had incapacitating emotional problems, though he is right, they were not “removed from school and placed in a treatment center” because parents were still looking the other way then and good programs did not yet exist. No, I don’t have personal memories of anorexia or cutting among my friends, at least not until college, but I certainly remember classrooms being disrupted by students who were then taken off and paddled — which didn’t work, because they came back and did it again. I’m betting one or two of them are among the wave of adults who are diagnosed with ADHD each year — and who wonder how life could have been different for them had they gotten that news years ago.” Simultaneously courts and mental health professionals have come to recognize psychological conditions like battered wife syndrome and its contribution to death, injury of an allegedly abusive spouse including marital rape, forcing your wife to have sex with you because she is your wife, not because she is willing. Thank god medicine has evolved to where we no longer need to set cleanly broken legs using pins, what was done as recently as the 1970’s, cancer is no longer a death sentence, organ transplant is the standard and so on. Contrary to popular belief, children were abused in the 1950’s, interventions were made to ensure safety; even as early as the 1960’s relating to the current debate surrounding parenting, “Problem children were seen as the product of poorly functioning families Parents were perceived as lacking skills and emotional resources to raise childrenBattered children were the product of emotionally immature, psychologically inadequate parents” [Sic] Fast forward to the 21st century, 2014 in light of the given prior information, child services did nothing in the 2013 case, Peterson seems to have upped the ante going from likely smacking a child’s head against a car seat to the full body, bloody beating over a shove.

NFL pic 3

Shocking: A 1950s clipping shows how attitudes to domestic violence have thankfully changed

Further, if we are going to have a conversation about work ethic in this country, about jobs, about social problems like gangs, about opportunities, particularly opportunities for minorities, young black men, let’s roll up our sleeves, dive all the way in and fully engage the subject. Whole emersion translating to meaningful discussions about gender bias in schools targeting boys, cultural bias effecting minorities where predominately black children are written off, alienated and left behind by teachers, administrators who willfully discriminate, ignore students from certain neighborhoods, make no effort to understand, relate to them as they do others, all pushing students out of schools before they can graduate. Completely addressing the topic means we must come to grips with the undeniable reality that jobs were far easier to get a-la 1950, 1960 because employers were willing to give employment to people down on their luck, needing a job, vs. the game playing going as far back as the 1970’s making getting a job about who you know rather than what, the plethora of honestly insane, downright illegal tactics employers use today to weed out job candidates. When the condition of your teeth, walking gate, whether or not you wear glasses, the cleanliness of your car, your credit score and answers to ridiculous personality questions about what alien you think you are is more important than actual qualifications, ability to adequately answer work based scenario questions, when the ethnicity of your name, sounding Latino, stereotyped as a probable illegal immigrant can stop you from getting a job, when your unique sounding, uniquely spelled name identifies you as probably black sealing your fate as unworthy of an interview, never mind the job, when the dreadlocks, corn rows or your street address in the ghetto, the “hood” disqualifies you for even minimum wage, means your application is destined for a trashcan, forget what we have learned in the last two years about the biased notions haunting women striving for leadership, we have a lot of nerve talking about laziness, entitlement or work ethic. When access to college is still scarcest those who need it most, when going to college, getting an “in demand degree” still holds no reasonable guarantee to employment because of employers refusal to practically train, to be forthcoming about how to get into fields, it is exactly what one commentator wrote in response to an article talking about our go nowhere generation, young people who refused to relocate for employment so much as get a driver’s license published in the New York Times 2012. In his counter argument on millennial work, life habits entitled “When Milinials Give Do They End up in Law School?” Elie Mystal said the following: “Umm… so you’re saying that Millennials have looked around and made an accurate calculation about how fame and money is generated in modern America? I mean, is there any doubt that in our reality TV, dot-com bubble, ringless King world that luck plays a huge role in whether somebody makes it or not? I think Millennials can be forgiven if they notice the “luck” that’s involved in turning “cat pictures with text” into a huge success, while “cat pictures with thought-bubbles” ends up on another successful venture that makes comedic use of the word FAIL. If only somebody had worked harder! You also can’t blame Millennials for not standing in awe of the “work-ethic” shown by those who had the supreme good luck of winning the birth lottery. Mitt Romney is a serious presidential candidate because his Daddy was president of American Motors, and Mitt was able to parlay every advantage in life into a billionaire dollar career in investment management? Random!” And we wonder why kids, people already fighting so hard to survive refuse to ride the rollercoaster we have made of life. Forget opening our eyes and recognizing in the post-recession world after 2008 everyone who was down sized, lost a job is at the mercy of a spasming economy; we have so many people working minimum wage because that’s where the jobs are, so many in their late 20’s to mid-30’s trying to raise families on wages earned at McDonald’s because the formula is well known, sans game playing and utter nonsense for any other field job. Rarely connected is all this spanking whooping, beating, discrimination, lack of opportunities with why young people choose to join a gang, whether it’s to feel they belong in a way the never did at home, seeking vengeance on the people who hurt them, seeking to never feel powerless again or having completely given up on legal means to achieve their goals. Yet according to news watchers, no it’s just they are all thugs, degenerates, no parents, no manners, no work ethic, time to change the channel. Prompting many to say move, taunt us with don’t we get tired of living in “victimhood;” for them it’s that easy, a new town, a new city means new job prospects. For us it means will we be subject to racial epithets at work; will we be able to get a solid job despite our stellar education, should we have it, if all they can see is our skin color. Because Don Lemon got another thing right too pointing to Ferguson, places like Chicago as the most racist areas, people unwilling to acknowledge they see blacks, especially black men differently. Suddenly explains the gangs, the hail of stray bullets there doesn’t it?                

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/02/jose-joe-job-discrimination_n_5753880.html

 One of the things regarded as why so many sections of the population are against extreme parents filling headlines today for their methods be it public shamming, corporal punishment or other out there tactics is thinking people applying a little logic, a little problem solving readily see alternatives. The problem with laptop shooting dad wasn’t just the eye-popping display of him angrily putting bullets into a computer and could that escalate to him possibly putting bullets into his daughter rather the, staring everyone in the face, simpler solution of take the computer away, considering his IT background, disable her access to Facebook. Issues surrounding the ballsy mom from down under who sold her lippy teen daughters One Direction tickets on e-bay are that instead of taking the tickets away because of lying, sneaking off with older guys, giving the tickets away to someone more deserving of the privilege since her daughter clearly didn’t appreciate them, or if the goal was simultaneously recoup some of the money spent by selling them, to place them online with a basic one or two sentences about why beside ticket info. This parent included a melodramatic entire page about what her daughter had done; to say nothing of failing to notice her daughter’s growing interest in boys, having those mother daughter talks as her child developed. The Texas judge who was seen in a YouTube video savagely hitting his 16-year-old daughter with a belt was promptly un-elected when the public was given the opportunity; now this could have been because the teen had cerebral palsy, though mild, it could have been his judicial posting to family court or it could have been because they asked themselves 2 rudimentary questions, why didn’t you take the computer away, if it was about illegally downloading something, did she know it was illegal and removal of the computer solves the problem whether she was still on it after being told to get off or committing a crime. Dissecting Peterson parenting, at 4 the child is an ideal candidate for time out, did he consider the child could be tired, and at 4, in need of a nap; scoffers and skeptics of the practice either don’t know how to do it effectively, do it incorrectly, claim it doesn’t work going back to physical discipline or willfully employ ignorance implying non-spankers use time out on 14-year-old’s for serious, criminal behavior, ludicrous. As opposed to “spanking” the child represented in the car seat case, likely by bashing the child’s forehead on said car seat, striking whatever he could reach while driving down the road, stop the car and say we aren’t going anywhere until you stop behavior X; if he chose to spank, for what was reported as cussing, pull the car over onto the side of the road at the next opportunity, getting out of the car, taking the child out of the seat and administering up to 5 swats to the child’s behind with your hand and putting him back in the seat, continuing to drive down the road. No one answering where the child learned the cussword he used; an older Peterson child, his mother’ home, or infinitely more probable, from daddy who isn’t watching what he says around an impressionable young child.   Our commenter in the opening paragraph highlighted the problem, no discipline; yet this too is older people’s doing creating traumatized people who refused to spank, don’t know what else to do therefore doing nothing. But that remains a small percentage of the problem; the rest lies in parents today putting spanking, physical discipline out there as the worst thing that can happen to a kid ignoring you can still have order, structure, rules and boundaries, consequences for negative, bad, wrong behavior, clear understanding adults are in charge absent ever laying a hand on your child, to hit spank, whoop them, resulting in the “entitled” you can’t hit me you can’t hurt me phenomenon readily pointed to as a need for corporal punishment. If you have to hit, you have to spank, you have to whoop, to keep that order, structure you are doing something wrong, if you are a parent who spanks your kid regularly once a month, once a week, daily for various offenses, if you spank because “you don’t have time/patients for other forms of discipline, think privilege removal makes you feel like a jailer” then you are probably abusing your child and should stop immediately. Neither is electing to parent without spanking, without ever hitting your child the same thing as trying to be your child’s friend. No, children don’t cone with instruction booklets, but do we honestly need to be told via a manual, via the law not to hit, strike, spank whoop them, really? 

Lastly confronting the NFL’s handling of the crisis, public perception Adrian Peterson should not be subject to a morals clause, should not lose his job over how he disciplines his son; those assertions might be true if said discipline hadn’t risen to the level of being strongly suspected of child abuse, accusations accompanied by unmistakable photos, if police had only arrested him in the course of responding to a call, while they ascertained what if anything illegal, criminal happened,  if a grand jury hadn’t already seen fit to indict.  Contrastingly Peterson was under investigation for months, continuing to practice, continuing to play, continuing to draw a paycheck, participate in endorsements as the grand jury made their decision and too, this is not a man with a job at a gas station like Goldie Taylor’s uncle; this is a man seen by multitudes of Americans as a role model particularly young black men growing up in poverty, looking for a way out, looking for people to emulate. Parents often allow their children to idolize sports stars because they carry little of the negativity associated with other celebrities, messages gleaned from raps stars, actors; oh how the mighty have fallen. Don’t lose sight of we impeached President Clinton as much for his sexual infidelity as for lying under oath; it all depends on your definition of sex. Bob Filner was eventually ousted from office after multiple allegations of sexual harassment going back decades was revealed; Herman Cane’s political career stopped in its tracks under similar conditions as woman after woman came forward to describe potentially inappropriate situations, proving at best poor judgment. Anthony Weiner was compelled to leave office after partially nude texts were sent to someone other than his wife along with other indications of extra marital affair were made public. Michael Richards once known for his iconic role on Seinfeld as Kramer has faded from public life after his infamous night club comedy routine included racial slurs against blacks. Before we start thinking this only happens to celebrities, sports stars; long time watchers of the reality show Wife Swap might remember the man who was dismissed from his day job at a nursing home for participating in a rock band in his own time; how about the teacher let go after participating in a local radio stations bikini contest, the bank employee told she dressed too sexy for the job in a basic pencil skirt fired despite drawing in customers, the man fired for wearing a Green Bay Packers tie to his used car dealership job. Doubtful too is that this case was only brought because of the famous name of the accused; national and local headlines are littered with these types of stories. Most companies, however asininely, employ morals clauses no matter the job to protect their interests, will fire someone arrested on serious charges namely because you can’t come to work sitting in jail. But also companies don’t want your legal problems tainting their image, don’t want to be associated with whatever stigma is attached to the charges filed against you, alleged details of your case. Peterson being the role model he is should be all the more subject to that morals clause in light of not just what he is accused of, the pictures and his admissions to inflicting what he did on his son; forget losing his job, he should be in jail pending trial like any other ordinary citizen booked on similar charges. We won’t know, this little boy won’t know, for years if he has been permanently damaged physically as a result of Peterson’s actions, if he has been rendered sterile, possibly impotent; had he been subjected to this type of punishment for another 14 years until the child turned 18 and left home, those chances for permanent damage become infinitely more likely. Spitting out into society an angry, frustrated, abused young man who may not join a gang but who may do god knows what else, but by all means let’s continue to term this only discipline, continue to spank out kids a-la Adrian Peterson. The NFL seems to have finally gotten the message, little more the bowing to public pressure benching Peterson indefinitely until such a time as his legal proceedings are resolved, none of the parties involved digesting the core indication; this was wrong. You don’t have to be a perfect person, a perfect parent to know you don’t spank, whoop, beat your child, to know that stuffing leaves in their mouth, hitting their genitals and striking their face is child abuse above and beyond the other 3 words used.                 

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