ChippingIn, I referred to the exact lines I quoted in my earlier post, not to anything else. I do not see this incident as one where a parent showed himself to be unafraid to actually be a parent. And you have no reason to believe this particular child thinks the world revolves around him.
This wasn't about parenting in general and how the world is going to hell in a handcart because parents are afraid to lay down the law. The two of them got into an unseemly argument about a remote. There was a scene that could have been avoided in the first place, and didn't have to progress the way it did. It was a scene where the child led and the parent followed, right up to the moment when the parent pulled rank and size. So not an unafraid parent, not a parent at his best. I'm all for parents being parents. I do not think children should run a home, and it doesn't happen in my house.
Getting into an argument in the first place was where this particular dad lost. Allowing it to escalate further diminished his authority -- here, he was not being a 'parent in charge'. And stopping the argument with a humiliating slapping session was at the same level, imo. You are not the parent in charge when you argue with your child, when you allow an argument to escalate, and when you resort to spanking after a shaky start like that, it is too late to try to reassert your authority.
The child was taught nothing valuable by the experience of losing an argument with his father merely because he is not tall enough or strong enough (yet) to face off against his old man.
(And I still think this wouldn't have gone the way it did if control of the remote wasn't involved. Neither of them would have cared as much about something else.)