Black civil rights leaders spent this year pleading with poor people (of all racial backgrounds) to get the Covid vaccine to save their lives. Unfortunately, celebrity worship in America is such that Aaron Rodgers wields more influence among those poor people than all of those Black civil rights leaders … combined.
So bear that in mind as you read the following – courtesy of Saturday’s edition of USA Today:
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Aaron Rodgers made his first public comments Friday on the “Pat McAfee Show” after testing positive for COVID-19, and the Green Bay Packers quarterback did not hold back on his thoughts regarding the vaccine and his belief in “bodily autonomy.”
During his appearance, Rodgers quoted Martin Luther King Jr. in an attempt to justify his criticism of the league’s protocols for unvaccinated players and of the COVID-19 vaccine itself. Unvaccinated players are required to wear a mask inside team facilities.
‘There have been conversations with it,’ Rodgers said when asked about communication with the NFL over not wearing a mask during media availability. ‘I would add this to the mix as an aside, but the great MLK said you have a moral obligation to object to unjust rules and rules that make no sense.’
Rodgers will not play Sunday and won’t be allowed at the team facility for the next 10 days, according to NFL protocols, which were negotiated with the NFLPA.
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Of course, it’s irresponsible enough that Rodgers had no compunction about lounging on a couch and zooming with his nodding Beavis and Butt-Head buddies on that show about quack Covid remedies. After all, even that notorious peddler of quack remedies, former President Donald Trump, got vaccinated as soon as he could. What’s more, he’s even encouraging his MAGA supporters to get vaccinated these days – admittedly in typically half-assed fashion.
But Rodgers compounded his irresponsible behavior with the gratuitous insult inherent in implying that he, and not those Black civil rights leaders, is the one honoring the spirit of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. by refusing to get vaccinated.
And Jeopardy thought it dodged a bullet by firing Mike Richards. Imagine this arrogant, gaslighting schmuck being the face of that show. And, by the way, think what you will of Kyrie Irving, at least he was man enough to own up to his vaccine status, and responsible enough not to fraternize with so many players on opposing teams under false pretenses.
Regular readers know what little regard I have for celebrity worship – as commentaries like “Celebrity-obsessed world has made actors and rock stars the statesmen of our times,” May 23, 2005. But I was a fan. That’s why I was genuinely disappointed to see Rodgers playing the victim and attempting to gaslight people for calling him out for such a brazenly irresponsible lie.
Unsurprisingly, most players want the NFL to punish him for the way he endangered so many of them by flouting Covid protocols so imperiously. But, ironically, I gather the NFLPA’s own collective bargaining rules prevent the NFL from suspending or even fining Rodgers.
According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, multiple coaches and executives have complained that Rodgers flouted guidelines for unvaccinated players that their teams followed. That includes the Green Bay quarterback not wearing a mask during preseason games.
‘That’s B.S,’ an anonymous executive told ESPN. ‘… What’s going on in Green Bay, that’s not what our teams were told by the NFL. Our players wore masks all the time. We made our guys that weren’t playing wear masks.’
(The New York Post, November 7, 2021)
But here’s to other sponsors following Prevea Health’s lead by dropping him like a bad rash. Perhaps then, since he wants out of Green Bay anyway, he’d feel liberated to complete his aping of Trump by pledging to launch a football league of unvaccinated players to entertain unvaccinated Americans – the vast majority of whom are hopelessly misguided MAGA devotees.
Finally, I suspect many of us can personally attest that there are many sides to family feuds. This is why we should know better than to take sides when things fall apart in other people’s families and the saga plays out in public.
But, given the delusional yet arrogant and self-righteous way Rodgers is behaving in this case, it’s all too easy to see why everyone in his family has cast him as the villain in their very public family feud.
By the way, is Tom Brady vaccinated? Or is he just ivermectinized … too?
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celebrity obsessed… Trump hydroxy and bleach…