Cards’ giant new burger, with a side of stupidity

We fell for it.

We often fall for it.

We in the media did news articles and television features about the Cardinals this year selling a 7-pound, $75 “Gridiron Burger” that has stacked onto a 10-inch bun five 1⁄3-pound burger patties, five all-beef hot dogs, five bratwursts, 20 slices of American cheese, eight slices of bacon, eight chicken tenders, 12 ounces of fries, lettuce, pickles and “tanker sauce” (a mixture of barbecue sauce and mayonnaise). Blech.

The accompanying “challenge” issued by the team is that any person who can eat this gastrointestinal atrocity in less an hour will receive a Cardinals jersey and a photo (before or after?) on the stadium scoreboard.

Journalists here and across the country ate it up.

We fall for this kind of thing all the time, and on this occasion, we portrayed this latest addition to Cardinals stadium fare as cute and quirky instead of what it actually, and obviously, and perhaps even intentionally, is: Gross.

Obnoxious.

Dumb.

We might have pointed out how ironic that is, given that for the longest time now, owners in the National Football League, at the urging of President Donald Trump, have been vilifying players who take a moment during the playing of the national anthem to demonstrate their concern for what they believe to be social injustice.

Whether you agree with them or not, the commitment shown by players to such an ideal in the face of certain ridicule represents one of the most important virtues of the American character.

It celebrates our willingness — or what should be our willingness — to encourage free expression.

And for that, the players get disparaged.

Meantime, the Cardinals organization gives us a 7-pound, heart-clogging monstrosity that celebrates — by my rough count — at least five of the seven deadly sins.

(I’m going with gluttony, sloth, greed, pride and envy.)

Americans do a lot of dumb stuff just for fun. I get that. I’ve been there. It’s human nature. It’s a way of blowing off steam, of not taking ourselves too seriously.

But the NFL (bowing to Trump’s pressure) has been doing just the opposite of that.

The owners seem to want to project a (literally) Trumped-up image of their institution as the paragon of American ideals and patriotism. Really? Like the Gridiron Burger?

Everything about professional football has more to do with money than

with patriotism. We understand that. Or should.

But while not recognizing or acknowledging the American ideal that protesting players represent, a team like the Cardinals instead stages an idiotic, cardiac-arrest-inducing stunt like the Gridiron Burger — a physical representation of our worst traits — and we in the media swallow it whole.

It’s enough to give a person an upset stomach.

In one. more ways all than