Minnesota Vikings and anyone else under attack: Stop Apologizing and Just Do It

Adrian Peterson, running back for the Minnesota Vikings, apparently used a tree branch to discipline his 4-year-old son and hit him pretty hard, and was arrested in Texas under charges of child endangerment.

Peterson says he did nothing more than discipline his son the way he had been disciplined.

The courts say he went to far.

Now, I'm not saying that Peterson wasn't out of line to hit his son with a "switch" or "tree branch" - but who can trust courts these days?  Parents can't discipline their kids by just spanking them, either, which is why there are a lot of awful kids out there.

So just because a court says it was child abuse, I don't know if the guy needs to be arrested and go to trial for it. Just tell him - look, you can't use a switch on your kid, so don't do it again.

But here's the thing that's got me riled up.

The Vikings deactivated Peterson for one week.

I thought it was stupid - let the legal process play out first. It's not like he punched a woman so hard he knocked her unconscious, or went driving while drunk where he could have killed somebody.

But they did it.

Then, they reactivated him and said they'd let the legal process play itself out.

Did they not expect the firestorm that would erupt?  Why not stand by your guns and defend your position.

Instead they fold, again, and now have deactivated him again.

Did they really not think that people would be upset if they reactivated him?  Were they really unprepared for that "firestorm"?

Are they really going to let "the mob" dictate to them how they're going to run their business and who their on-field personnel are going to be?

Why not just let Peterson play one week... and if half the stadium was empty on Sunday then they'd know they'd have to deactivate him again...

But I would have been very surprised if the staidum hadn't been sold out.

Although perhaps people who wanted to go to the game would have had to wade through protesters...

It is getting scary, though, how businesses are spineless these days.

And clueless.

Again, I'm not condoning what Peterson did, but it's not as if he beat the kid into a coma or anything of that nature. Surely the guy just made a mistake and can be told, "Don't do it again." Making a court case out of it is ridiculous.

But at least people today can't say that other people care more about dogs than little children (ie the firestorm that erupted when Michael Vick was let back into football after serving his time.)