September 19, 2014

I think this is sad. I think it's sad whenever a man justifies his father beating him, and equating it with being loved. No wonder we have so many screwed-up people! From TPM:

On Fox News last night, Sean Hannity said he thinks that Adrian Peterson, the NFL player indicted on child injury charges, should not go to jail for hitting his child.

Hannity explained that he was hit by his father as a child, and he turned out just fine.

Man, I wish I had a dollar for every time some screwed-up guy told me this exact same thing. NO YOU'RE NOT FINE.

"I got hit with a strap. Bam, bam, bam. And I have never been to a shrink. I will tell you that I deserved it," he said.

No, Sean. You've never been to a shrink because being abused taught you to choke down pain and you think admitting it is weakness.

"I think he went far," Hannity then said about Peterson. "But I don’t want to see this guy get a felony, I don’t want to see this guy lose his job. He deserves parenting classes."

Hannity then took off his belt to demonstrate the technique.

He asked the panelists on his show if people should always be arrested if they use a switch, which Peterson allegedly used on his son. He then asked about his own father.

"So my father should have been arrested based on today’s standards?" he asked.

When two panelists said "yes" and "maybe," Hannity responded, "That's nuts."

“He went too far. But don’t put this guy in jail and ruin his career," Hannity said of Peterson. "I was not mentally bruised because my father hit me with a belt."

My father was an abused kid; my grandfather used to knock him to the ground and kick him in the head with his steel-toed work boots. He told me when he was twelve and his father died, "I was glad." But that didn't stop him from beating the crap out of one of my siblings, who was probably much like Hannity describes himself.

Fortunately for us as a family, my father changed as he got older. (For one thing, he no longer had the pressure of working four jobs.) He apologized to each of us for his behavior, and by the time we had kids of our own, he would counsel us to be more patient with them. "That other stuff doesn't work," he'd say. He was right. It doesn't.

One thing that people seem to have trouble understanding, though, is that most people who hit their kids believe they are being good parents. They really do. For whatever reason, there are still a lot of people who believe this. (No wonder we think bombing people is A-OK! "That'll teach them!")

But if we want to live in a country where parents don't abuse their kids, we have to put our money where our mouths are. We need support services, we need visiting nurses, and most of all, we need education. Telling people not to hit their kids, yet giving them no other methods for discipline, is not only stupid, it's cruel.

I'll agree with Hannity on this: We can't put every parent who hits their kid in jail. So if we want to stop abuse, we have to get serious.

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