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| Aaron and Tucker provide a "history lesson" |
The only thing more funny than Aaron Rodgers telling Tucker Carlson how unfairly Putin is being maligned in the media is a previously unknown placekicker telling graduating women at Benedectine College that they shouldn't feel ashamed to be homemakers. Needless to say both are feeling the heat from their controversial messages, but Harrison Butker moreso, as the nuns of the college have spoken out against him for so badly politicizing a commencement address. Yet, the Kansas City placekicker went from a virtual nobody to viral sensation and hero of the right wing. His football jersey is now one of the hottest selling jerseys in the NFL.
The NFL has been a slow motion trainwreck for decades long before black players chose to kneel for the national anthem in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. FTR, Rodgers supported his teammates at the time. He was widely lauded as one of the few white players to show any solidarity with his black teammates. I thought COVID or sitting out a year while his achilles tendons healed from a "speed bridge" surgery was why Rodgers had become a paranoid and often delusional man. As it turns out, he was always this way. Back in 2013, he questioned Sandy Hook during an interview with Pamela Brown at the Kentucky Derby. Seems like he was a big fan of Alex Jones.
I suppose many of these football players live in a bubble as they have committed their entire lives to this bone-jarring sport. The better ones are coddled from the Pee Wee leagues and groomed in high school and college by coaches who are for the most part tyrants that train these kids as if they were going through Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island. Many of these coaches use religion as a motivating force, further adding to an indoctrination that I imagine is pretty hard to shake. This would help explain a guy like Butker, who has since become a devout conservative Catholic who believes that everything from abortion to women's equality to gay marriage is a deadly sin. As far as he's concerned, a woman's place is in the kitchen. The irony is that his mother is a well regarded physicist, whom I imagine wasn't too happy about her son's commencement address.
Rodgers is a little different in that he graduated from the University of California and you figure received a more liberal education. He had been reputed to have a high intellect not just for the game but for the world around him. Until COVID broke out, he pretty much kept his thoughts to himself other than he advocated that his teammates had the right to express themselves as long as it didn't hurt the team. But, here he is today advocating all sorts of right wing paranoid fears on podcasts and interviews, making you wonder if he is suffering from long term COVID.
Promoting Putin seemed to come out of nowhere, but probably stems back in time much like his thoughts on Sandy Hook, which he has since tried to tamp down. For the record, Vlad had no problem seeing 186 children killed as his armed forces tried to free the teachers and students of Beslan school from Chechen separatists. More than 300 persons were killed in this siege, most of them children. Almost all of the 1100 persons held captive suffered injuries. Years afterward, the families of the victims spoke out against the brutal way in which Putin handled the situation but there was no accounting for his actions. Is this really the kind of man you want to praise?
Aaron Rodgers has become a major distraction not just for his team but the NFL. However, team owners and the NFL commissioner make no attempt to silence him the way they did Colin Kaepernick for supporting Black Lives Matter at the height of its campaign against police brutality. The reason is quite simple. Those running the game and those watching the game are for the most part conservative and they see nothing wrong with Rodgers mouthing off, as it plays to their viewing audience.
However, the owners of the Kansas City Chiefs might think differently, as their biggest draw last year was Taylor Swift, who obviously had no intention of being a homemaker. She boosted viewing audiences for Chiefs games, adding an estimated $330 million to the brand name of the Chiefs and the NFL. Travis Kelce jersey sales soared 400 percent. Having a guy like Butker around may have the opposite effect on their brand. Funny enough, Butker alluded to her in his commencement address.
This speaking out is not only confined to social views but to horses as well. Jason Kelce was having a jaunty conversation with his brother Travis about the Kentucky Derby on his podcast. Travis had gone with Taylor to Churchill Downs and Jason seemed a little bit jealous they didn't invite him. In the course of this free-flowing conversation Jason suggested that Secretariat was probably "juiced," as the famous thoroughbred still held the record for the fastest Kentucky Derby 50 years later. It would have been forgiven as a dumb mistake if Jason hadn't been so insistent, claiming that the 70s was the height of steroid use in athletics and he imagined it extended to horses as well. Everyone was looking for an edge. Well, the family of the famous race horse took offense, noting that the horse was unusual not for its steroid use but for its gigantic heart and pair of lungs that gave him far greater endurance than his rivals, setting records on all three race courses for the Triple Crown that still stand today. To Jason's credit, he apologized. Sort of anyway by saying he had no proof of his allegations.
You won't be hearing any apologies from Rodgers or Butker. The latter has become a media sensation, joined by Missouri Senator Josh Hawley who gushed he was "never more proud to call Harrison Butker his friend." Butker already seems to be planning his post NFL career as a Fox contributor. As for Rodgers, he appears to have missed his calling by not joining Bobby Kennedy Jr. on the campaign trail even if he still has two years left on his Jets' contract.
This isn't just a white guy thing. Lawrence Taylor and Ottis Anderson joined Trump at his unscripted New Jersey rally, which according to his press handlers attracted over 100,000 persons. Those numbers are of course disputed, but you have to wonder why LT would lend his name to this assclown. Unlike Herschel Walker, neither he nor Ottis had previous ties to Trump, but for whatever reason chose to cross over to the dark side in this Palpatine alternative reality. As such, they lend themselves to Trump's strategy of luring disgruntled young black male voters to his name.
It makes you wonder what is going on inside the NFL. Granted, players and coaches have chosen sides before in presidential elections, but when one of the candidates is so demonstrably crazy what do you gain by openly supporting him? Not even Tom Brady was willing to go that far even after he got caught with a MAGA cap red handed.
The NFL now appears to be so desperate not to lose its traditional fan base that it will allow its players to say whatever damn fool thing they want, knowing that their prime viewing audience are MAGA cap wearers. Ironic that a few short years ago the very same people, Trump included, said they would never watch an NFL game again with so many players kneeling for the national anthem. Many of these players found themselves blacklisted as a result. The most prominent being Colin Kaepernick.
Don't expect Rodgers or Butker to be blacklisted or even reprimanded, although the NFL will have a hard time reconciling these recalcitrant players with the Swifties they recently gained as a result of the highly publicized romance between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce that ended with a huge kiss after the Chiefs won their third Super Bowl in the last five years. Butker is already being trolled by Swifties.
As for Aaron, he might want to join Putin's Ministry of Sport that at one time attracted big names like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme. They have since renounced Putin over the war in Ukraine, leaving Aaron in the fine company of Steven Seagal, who recently attended Putin's inauguration. Is this really who you want to be associated with?
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