Being A Pompous Asshole Doesn't Make You A Good Writer

Some people in the world have a horrible habit of being insufferable assholes. It’s just a way of the world. Sometimes an event will happen that on the surface is not divisive at all. When these events happen you can always count on the assholes to scream the loudest in the hopes that attention will be paid to them. Late last week the son of Adrian Peterson was brutally beaten to death. An unimaginable tragedy that makes you want to just weep and your heart break for Peterson and the child’s mother.

"Professional Asshole"

Enter professional asshole Phil Mushnick. In the immediate aftermath he wrote an insensitive, borderline racist piece of garbage that made it past his editors somehow. 

“Being a great player doesn’t make Peterson a great guy,” he spouts. Bringing up a speeding charge from 2009, claiming it was a sign of trouble since his brother was killed by a reckless driver. He brings up how Peterson was arrested for resisting arrest…despite the obvious fact he had not been arrested. Wrap your brain around that for a second. Those charges were dismissed.

But his biggest qualm came with Peterson’s decision to play. Claiming that “I’d be fighting for breath, my knees weak with grief, demanding to know why, who, how. Then, I suspect, I’d seethe with rage, swearing retribution. I even think I’d take off a day or two from work. Maybe a week.” This appears to be taken directly from Mystic River for one but the bigger point is Mushnick now claims to know the proper methods of grieving for everyone? Some people work to keep their minds off unthinkable sadness. When the Puma’s beloved aunt passed away after a long battle with cancer I knew if I stayed home a pit of unmovable depression would be my next stop. I worked like a mad man to keep my sanity. Not everyone is blood thirsty revenge hounds like you.

But my biggest qualm was how he changed the story to fit his personal narrative of how Peterson is a bad father and a bad person or at least he is no Phil Mushnick. “With his resources, how could Peterson, the NFL’s MVP, have allowed his son to remain in such an environment? Did he not know, or not care? Or not care to know? Or not know to care?” That’s cute Phil, except Peterson did not know about the child until a few months ago, acknowledged the child could be his, and made plans to meet him during the bye week of the current season. What Mushnick has done is make the villain of this heart breaking tale Adrian Peterson and his corrupted moral compass and not the man who actually beat a child to death.

Here's the thing Philly, this is not a normal situation. You can't claim what you would do because no one knows what they'd do in this extraordinary situation. I would hope that given your platform I wouldn't kick a man when he is down. But then again I am not a pompous asshole.*

*Opinions may vary.