Hence, they have ultimately become irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. A "boy cried wolf" syndrome, if you will.
Help me out folks, what are SJWs?
No one here is saying that the media attention and condemnation of Rice and Peterson is undeserved. The problem is that in the days since the Peterson revelations, it seems the reports are coming fast and furious, and, especially in the case of Bush, what exactly he has even done, if anything at all, isn't clear. My contention is that the constant barrage of reports, when even the slightest of hints of misbehavior are being reported and included in the sweep, is causing this to become noise.
I bolded as appropriate. If it's not clear but learnable, and it involves "harsh discipline" of an infant, maybe the authorities should try to find out - with the cooperation of the NFL. Best case, it's nothing and they find nothing. He just yelled at a kid who was doing something dangerous. Worst case, "hey what's this ER record from this summer..."
Now, he didn't beat up a baby to our knowledge. Benefit of the doubt. But he's giving the league "cops" reason to look. He's defending a guy who beats up children, and he's saying "I have done something vaguely similar myself, leave him alone."
The intended effect seems to be "Oh well if you beat up your baby, it's okay." The actual effect is "Wait you did things vaguely similar to this? You're defending the guy who beat up babies by saying you do it too? What exactly did you do?"
In the intel community, it's called "dazzling". All of the ******** reports are obscuring the serious reports from being scrutinized properly.
So we have this one report where you believe Reggie Bush might be "dazzling" the authorities, by giving them an unprovable lead?
How many others have there been? I don't think additional scrutiny of this one unfortunate self-accusation will be overwhelming to either the league or the authorities.
If you mean "On a fan football board, we call this a distraction from our enjoyment of the game," that's something different. If there are a dozen cases and it's making it less fun, that's a different idea from "We can't possibly track down all these leads," or in this case, "all this lead."
And because the general public doesn't have a mission to get to the bottom of this, they're just going to ignore it before long. It's too much.
I don't see how that's unreasonable.
Okay then, let me tell you how - not that the public should be the body that tries any of them.
If there is a rush of incidents, all among the same group, all of whom are highly paid celebrities, you will naturally see attention to those incidents. If you find at least two star players with this issue without looking, how many would you find if you looked?
There will even be attention to something like Reggie's self-accusation, whether or not it goes anywhere.
The "general public" will do what they d
o. However, what the general public should "reasonably" do is question this league and demand that it follow up on what it knows already. Even moreso, the general public should demand independent law-enforcement investigation (even in non-celebrity cases as well.)
Let's look at the question another way: Reggie Bush is telling us that what Adrian Peterson did, beating a young child with a tree branch until he had open wounds, is not unusual, that has to change. It has to change among NFL running backs, it needs to change among other positions (why is it all running backs?), and it needs to change throughout society.
I think these incidents should be the leading edge of a "stop abuse" sentiment/movement. If nothing else, it's getting awareness out there - it's
not normal for a grown ass man to beat a child bloody or beat his wife unconscious.
Remember when "everybody did it" with steroids? I like to think the incidence of use is down since those days. The camel's nose under the tent was a sports scandal.
So yeah that's why the general public should care (and at present, does care.)
Remember when baseball was a "major sport" comparable to the NFL?
A lot went into the decline. We long ago have lost the idea that sports figures should be Captain America types. We don't care if they get high on their own time (although the league does.) But I think the sport goes into the toilet if we effectively say "By and large, it's normal for them to beat women and children."
Yeah we'll all be right here if one of the Pats get tainted by this one... but a bunch of kids playing soccer, told they'll get brain damage playing football, will take one look at a league full of abusers and put two and two together. At what point do they all just give up on the NFL?
