The NFL and Domestic Violence: A Ginned Up Moral Panic

I had been reading less and less of Sports Illustrated for a while now, partially because of their increasing politicization (see Peter King, Gun Control Zealot), and partially because each redesign was worse than the last. The most recent one, the one with all the boxes that makes them look like http://www.zergnet.com/, pretty much made me swear it off and use Fox Sports instead.

But I wandered over there yesterday, only to find this list of linked stories on the front page of the NFL session:

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Of 15 stories, 12 deal with accusations of off-field player malfeasance in some way or another as opposed to actual play on the field. It’s as though talking about football games isn’t nearly satisfying enough for Sports Illustrated writers who want to push a “social justice” agenda instead.

Domestic violence is a real issue, but there is no indication that football players are more notably prone to domestic violence than players in other sports, or the population at large. What we’re seeing now is a moral panic ginned up by left-wing activists and their journalistic enablers. The left hates football in general, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for not bending to their politically correct will (see, for example, the fight over the Washington Redskins nickname).

America has a criminal justice system for a reason. Players accused of crimes have a right to be judged by a jury of their peers, not a high tech left-wing lynch mob who have already determined they’re guilty merely because they’ve been accused.

Noah Rothman has similar thoughts over at Hot Air.

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2014 at 8:47 AM and is filed under Crime, Media Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “The NFL and Domestic Violence: A Ginned Up Moral Panic”

  1. trogdor says:
    September 20, 2014 at 10:51 AM

    What we’re seeing is a very effective distraction, so that we spend less time talking about Scotland and considering / debating he appropriate roles and reach of our government.

    It’s a distraction so we spend less time talking about the correlation between the invasion of illegals and the new diseases cropping up across our shools.

    … and *nobody* is talking about the dozen airliners which went missing in Libya after al Qaeda took over that country’s major airports.

    And, wait, the NFL is tax-exempt?! Why could that be true? It’s no non-profit charity, it’s a massively successful busine$$, as in $billions. And yes, i know i’m kinda falling for the distraction…

  2. Lawrence Person says:
    September 20, 2014 at 11:03 AM

    Dwight, at Whipped Cream Difficulties, provides clarification of the “non-profit” talking point:

    The NFL is “tax-exempt” in the same categorization, and for the same reasons, as insurance assigned risk pools, chambers of commerce, and other legitimate organizations; it takes in money, pays expenses, and distributes what’s left over to the teams who do pay taxes on their income.

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