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Red Team? Blue Team? Start Your Own Team.
Saturday afternoon, a shocking story shook the nation to its core. Not trivia about North Korean nukes, massive flooding in Puerto Rico, or the collapse of the US healthcare system. This was urgent.
Within minutes, millions across the country interrupted conversations with their kids, set aside their chores, and canceled their Saturday night plans. A battle is afoot and their nation needed them.
Remember when multimillionaire President Trump criticized a multimillionaire football player last night? Well today, a multimillionaire basketball player said he didn’t want to go to the White House no more. So, President Trump said the multimillionaire basketball player wasn’t welcome at the White House in the first place. And then a different multimillionaire basketball player tweeted something mean at President Trump.
Honestly, I’m just happy the Republic hasn’t collapsed.
A few million put on their Red Team uniforms and rushed to their computers. Another few million put on their Blue Team uniforms and grabbed their iPhones. To the barricades, citizens!
Then they wasted a beautiful Saturday afternoon tweeting at each other.
The sobering events that precipitated today’s meme battle are neither important nor interesting. They don’t matter and everyone knows they don’t matter. Just like whatever fight we had yesterday and the day before and the day before that.
“OMG!!! Trump acted like Trump!” the Blue Team shrieks.
“OMG!!! Celebrities are shallow!” the Red Team wails.
And on it goes until someone says a new dumb thing and the St. Vitus hoedown starts all over. Granted, the Troller-in-Chief has accelerated these cycles since Twitter is his favorite medium, but every dumb pro-Obama/anti-Obama statement had a similar, though slower, pattern.
As online friends and followers throw on their jerseys and rush into another keyboard tussle, they demand we join them.
“If you don’t denounce Trump, then you support racism!”
“If you don’t denounce the athlete, then you hate the troops!”
Ludicrous.
I’m not on the Blue Team. I’m not on the Red Team. I’m on my team.
Occasionally, I’ll exploit the Reds or Blues to advance my aims in, well, making America great again. But I refuse to surrender my individuality to be an extra in someone else’s movie. As the decades of DC failure have shown us time and again, none of these politicians consider themselves to be on my team. I’m just returning the favor.
Republican leaders will like me if I vote for them. Celebrities will like me if I buy tickets. But neither views me as an equal, just a pawn from which they extract money and power. Those days are long gone.
I look at it this way, in sports and in life: When I see the two teams battling on a football field, I’m not going to passively cheer them from the stands. Instead, I’ll head over to the basketball court to see if I can start my own game. And, to be honest, once the hoops scene gets too crowded, I’ll walk down to the baseball field and try starting a game there.
Politicians are just temp employees we hire to do our bidding. If they suck, we fire them. They aren’t gods we bow to or team owners issuing orders. We’re Americans, dammit.
Celebrities are court jesters we pay to amuse us. When they get too mouthy, we kick them out of the dining hall. That’s the beauty of capitalism.
So, if any of our so-called elites want me to join their team, no thanks. I simply have better things to do. Today I saw one of my daughters dominate a cross-country race and my other daughter played me a song on her guitar. I took them out for lunch, listened to a cool podcast, then decided to write for a while.
In other words, I left the football stadium and started my own pick-up game. If the Twitter warriors want to join me, cool. If not, that’s cool as well. I just hope they consider setting down the phone for a while and starting their own thing.
Note to Twitter: Be the guy enjoying his burger. pic.twitter.com/npvsyOD1l4
— jon gabriel (@exjon) May 10, 2017
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Published in General
Heaven forbid they twerk in the endzone following a well executed play.
You selfish bastard!
You’ll never get them back.
Better than hookers, maybe. I’m not sure about blackjack.
I’m with Bear Bryant on this one.
Baseball was exempted from antitrust laws sometime in the 70s, so I would guess that precedent would apply to the other professional sports leagues.
I see you addressed what I said in the comment above. Sorry I just woke up.
Once again something I love is going to be taken away from me by the endless politicization of everything. I’ve been an NFL fan, Packer fan my entire life. But I watch the game for sports, not politics ( I don’t care what they say or do off the field). If the NFL wants to jam politics in my face every game, I’ll pass. Like I pass on the comedians, tv shows, movies, video games even restaurants ( nothing goes with a meal like having “Hate” jammed in your face) that insist on mixing their politics with their products.
Shut up and play the game.
I was a Packers fan in the 60’s. I saw both of the two first Superbowls and the Ice Bowl. I’ve sort of drifted away since then. I couldn’t tell you who was in the last Superbowl.
Same here. After a personally difficult year, I’ve been enjoying more sane weekends, such as yesterday. Rooting my son’s baseball team (they lost) running chores, getting the house ready for guests, and then actual face-to-face time with old friends.
Other than @Iowahawk and a few others, Twitter merely adds more chaos than clarity. I’ve scrubbed a lot of the noisemakers from FB, so the SN ratio is better these days.
Atlanta and New England. New England won after a big comeback. Go Pack Go! (I’m down to #136 on the season ticket waiting list after 27 years. Totally psyched.)
I deliberately visit Twitter about once a month, to check on a couple family members who post occasionally. I follow links to Twitter when trusted sources link to the best after-action reviews of such twit-wars. It seems to me the best way to enjoy the few nuggets of gold from twitter without immersing myself in the flow of filth.
Grats. A cheesehead at the office has a framed share of the Packers.
Up until the 30’s, it mostly was.
What’s Twitter?
I have that too. Long, long time Packer fan. I grew up not far from Green Bay, where when you go to 11:00 mass, the priest begins his homily with “I promise, I’ll have you home in time for kickoff.”
Jon, great minds think alike.
This is a perfect example of how the left controls the narrative. It’s always easier, when it comes down to it and you have to choose, to run afoul of the right than the left. That’s why the owners of the teams are responding to this as they are, even though it may hurt them financially.
This is idiocy on the part of NFL owners. The Left hates football, and wants to destroy it. Meanwhile the natural supporters of the teams, get a thumb in the eye. Brilliant.
So far the National Hockey League has remained above the fray. I hope it stays that way because I played full contact, competitive ice hockey until my early thirties and I admire the work ethic in hockey. Maybe there are some more important things that professional athletes can do to display virtue, like this:
“But when it does…” There’s the scary part.
Cancel your cable. Follow your High Shool sports teams. Play in the yard with your children or grandchildren. Start a neighborhood football game on Saturdays. Sure, the local hospital will make some extra money, but they won’t be forcing their politics on you.
And buy local beer and used trucks and cars.
I’ve never been a hockey fan, probably just lack of exposure early, same with soccer. But it appears to me that pro hockey is not ethnically diverse, could explain why we don’t see any of what is going on in football and basketball. I’m watching the Latin Americans, African Americans, and Asian Americans in pro baseball. I’ll be surprised to see this kind of stuff there.
EDIT: I spoke too soon,got surprised, not sure about ethnicity. But it is Oakland and they have had serious inner-city crime and comparably serious police misbehavior in combating that crime, IIRC.
Fortunately, Knoxville has the Fanatic brewery, which makes a pretty good beer.
As we discuss football, I think it’s important to remind everyone that the last two words of the Star Spangled Banner are “play ball!”.
That’s the dream, Mitchell. That’s the political goal that drives half the people on the right.
Ironically, it doesn’t come easily. Just like your best chance for financial independence does not come from avoiding everything that looks like work, “The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
Politics is part of his job description.
Since we are talking tax reform. Is there a reason to treat tax local and state bonds used to finance stadiums should remain tax free?
Seems like the feds subsidizing the local governments subsidizing a wildly profitable business is just the kind of shenanigans that should be the first thing on the list of stuff to remove.