League that blackballed Kaepernick won’t touch Butker
We all know what happens now to Harrison Butker, right?
The Kansas City Chiefs’ placekicker gets fired. Isn’t that how the NFL works?
After Colin Kaepernick used his platform as an NFL quarterback in 2016 to push a political/ideological agenda that offended a lot of people, the president of the United States the next year told a rally audience what NFL team owners should say to Kaepernick and his ilk.
“Get that son of a bitch off the field right now!” Donald Trump thundered, mimicking a team owner. “Out! He’s fired! He’s fired!”
And so he was. The San Francisco 49ers told Kaepernick they would not pick up the team option on the final season of his contract. The 49ers had their football reasons, sort of. But the other 31 teams also fired Kaepernick, by ignoring him.
This year, Kaepernick will celebrate his eighth season on the NFL’s Fired List.
There’s no way to know how Kaepernick feels about Butker’s attack-dog commencement address earlier this month at Benedictine College, a private Catholic liberal arts school in Kansas.
Butker let ’er rip, demeaning women who, in his opinion, undermine America by allowing themselves to be duped into professional careers outside the home, characterizing LGBTQ folks as “dangerous,” stating that gun violence can be solved only by men being better dads, even misappropriating the words of a Taylor Swift song.
Kaepernick might be thinking: I’m the destructive one, the man making the NFL look bad, driving away fans?
We won’t know how Kaepernick feels about all this, because he doesn’t do public commentary, but let’s take a stab at guessing.
Kaepernick knows the Chiefs and the NFL almost surely will not “fire” Butker. No president or candidate for the office is going to call him a son of a bitch from the podium. His comments are much less likely to offend and frighten the heavily rightleaning billionaires in the NFL’s team ownership cabal than Kaepernick’s protest did.
Here’s another guess: Kaepernick would not advocate for Butker being fired. That free-speech thing works both ways.
But surely Kaepernick is shaking his head at the league’s likely hypocrisy.
I know I am, although as an opinion slinger who supported Kaepernick all the way, I can’t call for the head of some clown for expressing beliefs that seem absurd, even borderline dangerous.
By railing against the “dangerous gender ideologies” and proclaiming that gay “pride” is a sin, Butker is heaving some pretty hefty logs onto the hate bonfire that’s ablaze politically these days. It’s hard to see how NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the Chiefs won’t come down on Butker on that. A stern lecture, maybe. But a suspension seems unlikely.
In general, Goodell has to be appalled at the broad craziness of Butker’s address. Some highlights:
• In railing against Catholic priests who get caught up in “adulation,” Butker got personal. “As a teammate’s girlfriend says, ‘Familiarity breeds contempt,’ ” Butker said, referring to Travis Kelce’s girlfriend Swift, and her song “Bejeweled.”
Swift, you know, is considered an ally of liberals. Butker’s song reference was awkwardly shoehorned into the speech as a reach-out to the loonies who believe that Swift, Kelce and the NFL conspired to let the Chiefs win the Super Bowl so Swift could have a better platform from which to boost the campaign of Joe Biden. Makes sense.
• Butker shamed the women graduates as falling for the “diabolical lies” that caused them to waste their daddy’s money on a college education. Butker might as well have asked the “ladies” to march across the stage and drop their diplomas into a paper shredder. Or, for more dramatic effect, a wood-chipper.
• “As men, we set the tone of the culture,” Butker said. He urged the menfolk to “fight against the cultural emasculation of men.” Fellas, I guess that means if you visit your doctor for a stomach ailment and she advises castration, tell her you want a second opinion.
Meanwhile, Butker will keep kicking in the NFL, entering the final season of a five-year deal that pays him $20.275 million total. Unlike Kaepernick’s situation, Butker’s performance is not highly subjective. You can say he’s a jackass, but you can’t say he can’t kick.
So Butker won’t go away, and this situation won’t go away soon, either. Just as Kaepernick was determined to continue spreading his message, Butker clearly sees an opportunity for an ongoing crusade against his fellow Americans. He gave a similar commencement speech last year, and seems to be finding his voice.
He will be in great demand.