The NFL "slave" comment that won't go away

Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson makes a crass remark -- can he live it down?

By Mary Elizabeth Williams
Salon.com

Adrian Peterson didn't really mean it when he compared his $10.72 million-a-year career with the NFL to "modern-day slavery," but don't let that stop one boneheaded remark from spurring outrage and haunting him for a long time to come.

In a Tuesday interview for Yahoo Sports with Doug Farrar, just fifteen minutes after the owners locked out players, the Minnesota Vikings running back may not have been his most quick-witted when he vented his frustration regarding the NFL's labor dispute with an unfortunate, over the top comparison. Peterson was already aware he was in danger of misspeaking when he told Farrar, "The players are getting robbed. They are. The owners are making so much money off of us to begin with. I don't know that I want to quote myself on that …" but he pressed on. "It's modern-day slavery, you know?" he said. "People kind of laugh at that, but there are people working at regular jobs who get treated the same way, too."

The notion of highly compensated athlete putting his professional dispute in the same league as slavery immediately set off a waves of disgust across the Internet. The story has already racked up well over 6,000 comments on Yahoo, many of which feature the words "jackass," "pompous jerk," and "@#$%." At a time when nearly nine percent of all Americans are unemployed, working class labor disputes are front page news and human trafficking is a real and horrifying epidemic, it's easy to see how Peterson's remark would seem not just spectacularly tone deaf but outright hurtful.

Even some of Peterson's peers were taken aback, responding quickly to distance themselves from the sentiment. Green Bay's Ryan Grant tweeted, "I have to totally disagree with Adrian Peterson's comparison to this situation being Modern day slavery..false.. Their is unfortunately actually still slavery existing in our world.. Literal modern day slavery... That was a very misinformed statement." [sic] And the Saints' Heath Evans tweeted to his followers, "I agree w/ most all of your comments on AP! We are all blessed to even strap a helmet on in this league!"

(More here.)

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