Peyton Manning Theory

The media has played a huge role in the positive image we have of Peyton Manning today. Until recently, the only articles you could find about Peyton Manning detailed how good of a person he was. As the article said, we see pictures of him receiving a kiss from Papa John after his super bowl win or helping people and being a gracious and considerate person. The media is how the general public forms opinions about people we don’t know. It controls what we think of them. If it shows Peyton Manning being a good person that’s what People will believe he is. The media has the power to publish or ignore whatever they like. It choose to ignore the sexual assault allegations and instead focus on his athletic achievements and perceived goodness. …show more content…
Tall, white, rich, successful athlete, form a family of successful athletes. From a sociological stand point he is everything people don’t discriminate against. He has every social advantage. He performed a deviant behavior, sexually assaulting a women, and suffered no consequences. This appears to be an example of conflict approach theory. Peyton Manning is a rich white male and he was protected because of it. The justice system and media favored him because it his race and social class, they protected their own. If a black man had be accused of the same crime by a white women, he would have been prosecuted without question. As we saw in the Frimprong case earlier in the quarter. In fact, the article stated the Manning’s tried to pin the crime on a black man so that he would be prosecuted quickly and Peyton would be off the hook. Furthermore, the Manning’s attempted to slander Naughright by saying that she slept with black team members. Clearly, race played a role in him getting away with the assault. Not only was he white he was rich, his father was able to hire the best lawyers and pay whoever whatever it took to get Peyton free of the allegations. Lastly, his status as an athlete in a society that reveries athletes as the best of the best helped him hugely. People in our society are willing to forgive almost any athlete because they are held in such high regard. We do not want to believe that one of our public figures is a bad person. He was constantly in the public eye and the public wants to believe that he is a good person. It came down to his word against Peyton’s and in a society where people perceive white males as above suspicion, she didn’t stand a chance. In the end, the fact that he was a upper-class white male athlete from a well know sports family makes it possible for him to get away with