L'affaire McNair

Steve McNair's passing, and the general media reaction have confounded me.

There seems to be two opposing viewpoints. One seems to be the straight, let's remember the on-field warrior, the man who literally, it seemed, could not be kept out of any game unless a limb was literally hanging off his body. This is a totally reasonable, especially as the actual facts of the case trickle out of Nashville, but does seem somewhat naive. The nature of the death, murder, by a 20-year-old woman he was having an affair with, seems like something that's going to stick in the public's memory, especially since McNair never had a crowning glory moment

The other tack, as exemplified here by Jason Whitlock, of condemning McNair as a bad guy for having an affair and not spending enough time with his kids, seems unduly harsh. He may have done wrong by his kids, and his wife, but there's something you need to remember:

This was a murder-suicide. And it was McNair, the older, larger more powerful person, who was the victim of murder. This was not Chris Benoit, where the lasting image of one of the finest technical wrestlers ever is completely tarnished because the only thing you remember is that he killed both his wife and his special needs son before hanging himself. Steve McNair was shot, it seems, in his sleep, defenseless. This wasn't self-defense gone wrong, McNair did not menace anyone. He was shot, to death, while he slept, by a woman who, it seems, was coming apart at the seams.

I don't care for adulterers. Maybe Steve McNair was going to get his for that particular sin, whether in a divorce proceeding or a public tarnishing of his image in Nashville, a la Kirby Puckett. But I sympathize with murder victims. I sympathize with a wife left without a husband and four sons left without a father. Steve McNair did not choose to leave those children behind. He did not abandon them. He was taken from them.