That’s what the local news has turned it into…today they had a little feature on corporal punishment in schools, complete with pro- and con- comments from their Facebook page.
The crew on the Tom Joyner Morning Show was making light of the incident this morning, and a couple of talk channels on SiriusXM were spouting the “well, that’s how it was when we were kids!” crap. Then again, as Marley23 noted, the conversation has very quickly moved away from this one particular incident to corporal punishment in general – and, in my opinion, the two issues are completely separate.
I think that if the word “abuse” includes “a few quick swats to the clothed bottom of a young child to help very strongly reinforce something” then it just loses all meaning. Imagine going to a support group for survivors of childhood abuse, and one guy talks about how he was whipped until he was bleeding and was taken to the hospital, and another guy was locked in the closet for hours and hours and soiled himself, and another guy was raped by his uncle… and then you go up there and talk about how 3 or 4 times you were spanked on a clothed bottom a few times. The comparison is nonsensical.
He had pushed a child. Clearly, somewhere he had learned that physical force is the answer when someone doesn’t behave the way you want. Perhaps Adrian Peterson is a better instructor than we give him credit for?