Posted on 11/16/2021 3:04:00 PM PST by Ennis85
NOT all our heroes end up disappointing us. Just look at Shane Duffy last Thursday. But many do. It has been a long time since The Stranglers sang about Leon Trotsky and an ice pick but perhaps it needs to be re-released. On some weeks, looking at the sporting landscape, it does feel like there are no more heroes any more.
It was so easy to buy into the Aaron Rodgers narrative. The 37-year-old was considered the most erudite and cerebral of all quarterbacks, the most cerebral and important position on an American football field.
He guest-presented Jeopardy! He was a tad unconventional. His biggest brownie points were the fact he played for the Green Bay Packers, the team that’s owned by its fans in the ultra-capitalist, multi-billion-dollar environment of the NFL, and that he spoke up for Colin Kaepernick when he was black-balled by the league.
There is something a little too clean-cut, too typical of the white America that voted for Trump, to get behind Tom Brady. Rodgers was different. He seemed to belong to the part of the States that is responsible for South Park and Bernie Sanders. And then he caught Covid despite being ‘immunised’ and we discovered he’s not who we thought. We were fooled by his image. In a remarkable interview on the Pat McAfee show, Rodgers came across as nearly a full-blown conspiracy theorist, suggesting his good friend and voice for the idiocracy, Joe Rogan, knew more about Covid than scientists. He even managed to misquote Martin Luther King.
‘The great MLK said: “You have a moral obligation to object to unjust rules and rules that make no sense”.’ Rodgers said, misusing one of American history’s greatest figures to justify his stance.
The actual quote reads ‘One has not only a legal, but moral responsibility to obey just laws; conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.’
Rodgers, a multi-millionaire, was slapped with a $14,560 fine for violating Covid-19 protocols. He will soon be back on the field for Green Bay Packers, throwing touchdown passes and might even lead the team all the way to next February’s Superbowl. He is one of the all-time greats. In some eyes, he may even regain some of his heroism.
Meanwhile, someone much more deserving of that rarefied status continues to be on the outside, looking in when it comes to the NFL. Colin Kaepernick’s life story dropped on Netflix a couple of weeks ago and it should be watched by everyone, even Rodgers.
Kaepernick was one of the best quarterbacks in the league for the first half of the last decade. His excellence led a fairly average San Francisco 49ers to a Superbowl appearance. Everyone knows what happened next. In September 2016, he started kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice. As acclaimed sportswriter Dave Zirin shows in his excellent new book, The Kaepernick Effect, this gesture has spurred a movement across all sports.
The Irish and Portuguese players who took a knee in Aviva Stadium last Thursday were paying homage to Kaepernick. Marcus Rashford’s wonderful stand against the cruelty of the Tory government in lockdown was inspired by the quarterback who has been shunned by his own sport.
It’s not an exaggeration to say Kaepernick may become one of the most influential athletes in history, and this Netflix series may play an important part in his story. It is part documentary, part polemic and part teen drama, where we see the young Kaepernick growing up in a predominantly white Californian town as an African-American adopted by a white couple.
Nick Offerman and Mary-Louise Parker play his parents, who try hard to be supportive but can’t understand the parts of his own identity that their son is trying to embrace, such as cornrows. ‘They make you look like a thug,’ his mystified mother declares, which leads to the present-day Kaepernick delving into an explanation of the origins of the word ‘thug’, so beloved of certain news networks in the US when discussing athletes of colour.
Kaepernick has teamed up with talented film-maker Ava DuVernay for this series. If you haven’t watched her documentary, ‘13th’, which dissects the racial bias in America’s prison system, do.
The Oscar-nominated ‘Selma’ is also essential viewing, while she made the exceptional mini-series, ‘When They See Us’, on the five black and Latino youths wrongly convicted of assault and rape in Central Park in 1989.
If Kaepernick’s fame shines a light on DuVernay’s wonderful work, it will be a good thing. But the filmmaker shows her talent by capturing the American footballer in all his complexity. Splicing what Kaepernick now stands for with how he grew up seems the ideal way to tell his story.
There are times when Kaepernick is being deliberately provocative, especially in the opening episode when he likens the NFL draft and combine system to slavery. But there is a point being made here. The NFL is the only thing that unites a divided America, it is the closest thing that they can have to a national conversation. America’s most popular sport may be the only thing that Democrats and Republicans can talk about any more. And, yet, 31 of the 32 team owners – the Packers are owned by their people, remember – are white.
As Kaepernick points out, 70
“Kaepernick is still on the outside, looking in”
“Less than a handful of coaches in the NFL are black”
percent of the players in the NFL are black. Less than a handful of the coaches are black. And only a third of the quarterbacks are. And, as Kaepernick acerbically points out, that is a record!
The thing is that the two most exciting quarterbacks in the league are now African-American. Patrick Mahomes hasn’t been having a great season, but it is impossible to take your eyes off him in case he does something special. And then, there’s Lamar Jackson, who has been electrifying for Baltimore Ravens.
Will either of them get away with the dishonesty and hypocrisy that Aaron Rodgers has displayed? We all know the answer to that. But maybe they are more worthy of heroic status than the Green Bay Packers quarterback.
Or perhaps it is time for a sport that believes it is all about heroism to take a step back and accept it is time to truly honour the one person who deserves that status.
All up in the face about the evils of America while accepting big bucks from a company that utilizes slave labor and produces products in a country committing genocide.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.