This New York Post Column About Adrian Peterson Is the Worst

Was there even a point?

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Have people really become this cynical?

Adrian Peterson taking the gridiron today against the Panthers was questionable to some, but a text he sent to Laura Okmin showed us this was both a coping mechanism and a tribute. "My brother [Chris Paris] passed the night before the combine and I decided to go through with it," he says in the text. "The same reason why I will play this week. You may ask why? God wants good to come from it...We mourn and grieve but heaven had the baddest welcoming party for my son. The knowledge gives me peace."

Football is just his way of life, and as the saying goes, to each his own. New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick (a.k.a. as the columnist who wrote the offensive Jay Z/Brookyn Nets article) hasn't lived the life Peterson has or went through what he went through this week with the loss of his 2-year-old son. Despite that fact, Mushnick felt it was right to judge and attempt to disgrace Peterson in his column entitled "Son's death doesn't make Adrian Peterson a great guy." This wasn't an assault on Peterson the player, but Peterson the human being, which is what reduces this column to bile. Each of us can sympathize with the type of hurt Peterson must have felt at the news. How would we react if our 2-year-old son suffered that fate? He's an iconic figure with very human wounds.

But what matters to Mushnick is if Adrian Peterson is a great guy. In his column, Mushnick calls us out for apparently misbelieving the great ones are good people

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As if that was ever really the point. Mushnick then goes on to break down why he isn't a good guy, as if he isn't worthy of the support. He mentions Peterson's arrest for speeding, when he was charged with resisting arrest, and even goes as far as questioning his abilities as a father after calling his decision to go back to the field "sickening."

The accused, Joseph Patterson, previously was hit with domestic assault and abuse charges.

You'd think since Mushnick has been in the game for years that he'd be able to at least fact check before attacking someone. Peterson had just found out he was the child's father. That mistake is even more deplorable given the fact that he implicitly blames Peterson for the death. The vitriol writes itself.

So the perfect-in-all-aspects-of-life Mushnick slanders Peterson for what? The crime of being a human being with the natural ability to fuck up sometimes and mourning differently? That's why Peterson and the rest of us are at fault? This story is about loss. The loss of a child who never had a chance to make mistakes. Not only is Muschnick's argument is pointless; it's misguided.

Maybe it's these times or Mushnick's age, but the constant cynicism leads many to seek falsity in all stories, even the most heartbreaking ones. But truth has to exist if there's falsity, and the truth is an evil has claimed an innocence. The aftermath isn't something that can be remedied by shaming or scapegoats. 

RELATED: Adrian Peterson Explains Why He's Playing Football This Sunday 

[via NY Post]

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