Words have meaning. This man was responsible for his son. Because of his negligence he was forced to decide between his son or his car. He chose well, but that does not make him a hero.
An analogy would be a man out for a walk with his 5-year-old son. The man jaywalks across a busy boulevard with his son trailing several feet behind him. At the last second he realizes that a car is about to strike his son and snatches his son out of the way. In both cases the man could have chosen to fulfill his responsibility as a parent but failed to do so. In this case, he could have held his son’s hand and crossed at the light. In the actual case, he could have kept the kid in the car until it was properly parked. In neither case is he a hero. He did not “save” his son, rather he managed to avoid getting his his son killed though his negligence.
It’s really quite simple but emotion seems to trump reality for a lot of folks.
You analogy fails. Jaywalking is illegal (in most places in the U.S. of which I am aware).
Parking a car is not.
He looks for a safe place to park the car, Junior is excited about the outing and pops out of the car eagerly, and Daddy quickly realizes that Junior has chosen to make a beeline for the cliff’s edge.
Kids do unpredictable things. No parent can 100% predict 100% of the time what dangerous activity their kid will decide “sounds like a good idea” at that moment.
He realized his kid was in danger. He saved his son. He rectified a bad situation.
That’s what men do. That’s what fathers do. If they make a mistake / bad judgment, they FIX it.
That’s what he did. He realize he miscalculated what his son WOULD do in that instance and protected his son from the consequences of a deadly application of the Law of Gravity.
The question remains: why don’t you have compassion or empathy on this man, an imperfect father, just like you?
Why are you determined to tear him down? Do you suppose that in doing so, you build yourself up?