IF MY SCHADENBONER LASTS MUCH LONGER I’M GOING TO NEED TO SEE A DOCTOR: CNN analyst Mark Geragos said to be Avenatti’s alleged co-conspirator.

UPDATE: From the comments:

Avenatti arrested. Smollett’s lawyer, a CNN mouthpiece, his alleged co-conspirator.
Mueller report exonerates Trump. Media and NeverTrumpers wail in anguish,
SPLC implodes.
Hollywood, not Trump, hauled off to jail by FBI, for bribing university officials.
University officials revealed as bunch of bribe-takers.

All in what, two weeks?

Good times!

For added fun, Geragos was Colin Kaepernick’s lawyer, too.

Plus, there’s always a tweet:

DISPATCHES FROM THE NATIONAL FISKING LEAGUE: If you loved James Lileks’ classic “Notes from the Olive Garden” 2003 fisking of a leftwing “Grauniad” columnist trying to explain — and mock — the modern American south to his fellow British lefties, you’ll enjoy his latest “Wednesday Review of Modern Thought,” a takedown of an American leftist writing in London’s New Statesman on an even more impenetrable subject to Brits than the 21st century American south — American football. It features this passage:

The Super Bowl should be pure, or as pure as any comically overblown brand extension devise can ever be. This is not a time to squabble over our differences. It should be a time to get together, eat a whole bucket of chicken, and punch your best friend in the stomach – like God intended.

So you know we’re off to a highly authentic, nuanced start, the Internet equivalent of Alistair Cooke’s Letters from America BBC radio series. As Lileks replies:

Okay, let’s look at some more . . . Trump Trump Trump and so on. Kapernick, whose kneeling showed that “America has a persistent problem with racial inequality that we seem to have no interest in reckoning with.” Nope, no discussion on that issue. You’d think it would come up in elections and political discussions, but it’s just not a big thing. Odd.

Despite the cavalcade of horrific news stories about the rise of white supremacy in the US that bolstered Kaepernick’s thesis – from Charlottesville to the latest tragedy involving Empire star Jussie Smollett –

We’ll just leave that one there, and skip ahead a bit.

The build-up to this year’s Super Bowl has been mercifully free of political squabbling and self-righteous posturing. As much as I’d like this to be a sign that we too can move past the last three years of perpetual in-fighting, this detente is guaranteed to be short-lived. Surely, another front will open up in this rhetorical pillow fight. Maybe halftime show performers Maroon 5 will unfurl a Palestinian flag during their set. Could Patriots quarterback Tom Brady remove his jersey to reveal a “Build the Wall” t-shirt? What if the Los Angeles Rams win the game and refuse to visit the White House, then donate their championship bonus to Kamala Harris?

Dave Schilling is a writer and humorist

I’m hardly the “stick to sports” guy conservative Americans are so fond of lashing out at,

Wait a minute. Hold on. Conservatives lash out at the guys who want sports to stick to sports?

but I also would like to enjoy my Bud Light commercials in peace.

And what prevents you from doing so?

Certainly nothing this year, as Anheuser-Busch’s latest round of Super Bowl ads were consistently designed to please elite American leftists and cop Clio awards from the advertising industry (but I repeat myself). This year the ads featured ill-conceived freakouts over corn syrup, a Leonard Nimoy-esque search for both Bob Dylan and wind turbines, and, plugging Anheuser-Busch-imported Stella Artois, an ad that co-starred that legendary blue collar lager lass, Sarah Jessica Parker.

Exit quote:

The one thing right-wing bloviators are correct about is that sport is meant to be an escape. I’ve grown tired of mixing my personal ideological convictions with the simple, binary pleasures of watching two teams compete in an athletic contest.

As Lileks replies, “So don’t. Or do. No one cares. Who politicized it in the first place?”

Read the whole thing.

TO LIVE AND DIE IN ATLA: While many online were joking that, “If I wanted to watch guys failing at scoring for three hours, I would have just taken my buddies to the bar,” I quite enjoyed the on-field portion of the Super Bowl last night. Unlike typical 21st century Super Bowls, in which the scoreboard looks like a pinball game, last night was a titanic defensive struggle reminiscent of the Super Bowls of the early-to-mid-1970s. That was the period best summed up by the January 1976 cover of the since long dead Sport magazine, whose headline implored, “Let’s Have A Super Bowl The Pregame Show Can Be Proud Of.” Certainly, Tony Romo and Jim Nanz, while occasionally getting punchy in the announcers’ booth, did their best to make the action watchable.

If the action on the gridiron was a throwback to the NFL’s past, the commercials and halftime show were a preview of America’s Weimar-esque future. What was Anheuser-Busch thinking, when it paid for ads that believed that light beer drinkers care whether or not their favorite beer has corn syrup in it? And that they wouldn’t get called on the number of beers that Anheuser-Busch brews that contain corn syrup. Or that they’d fail to remember what anybody who drinks light beer actually does care about:

(more…)

OBSESSED ABC FRETS OVER MORALITY OF PERFORMING AT SUPER BOWL:

ABC is still obsessed with potential boycotts at the Super Bowl and the treatment of Colin Kaepernick. The day after the NFL officially announced that Maroon 5 and others would be performing, Good Morning America offered a full report, hyping opposition by liberal actress Amy Schumer. In contrast, CBS allowed just 30 seconds on the topic and NBC focused simply on this past weekend’s results.

GMA reporter Janai Norman began, “Headlining the Super Bowl was thought to be a huge honor. But it’s been a tough spot to fill. Many artists distancing themselves from the big show in support of Colin Kaepernick and other players taking a knee to protest racial injustice.”

She underlined, “Maroon 5 had been the unofficial pick for months, but reportedly struggled to find guest performers partly due to backlash over the NFL’s handling of Colin Kaepernick and players’ right to protest.”

Norman reminded that far-left actress Schumer “[called] out Maroon 5 in an Instagram post saying, ‘I think it would be cool if Maroon 5 backed out of Super Bowl. Stand up for your brothers and sisters of color.’”

This is bordering on obsession for ABC.

But it has its limits: Norman isn’t chiding her bosses at Disney for continuing to air Monday Night Football on sister network ESPN in 2018, if she wanted to go all-in for her advocacy of America’s wokest former QB.

FUNNY, THAT WAS MY EXCUSE FOR NOT APPEARING IN ANY SUPER BOWL COMMERCIALS THIS YEAR: Amy Schumer won’t appear in any Super Bowl ads in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE:

Here are a couple of facts for you: only 20% of Americans have Twitter accounts.

Of the 20% who do have Twitter accounts, I would bet half of those people don’t interact very often on social media. That means 10% of Americans, and that’s being very generous, are active on Twitter. Probably 3% of Americans are highly active there.

So when the media or companies reference social media or use it to gauge the decisions they are making, how representative is Twitter of real life?

I think it’s not very representative at all.

Yet the media is addicted to using social media as a basis for a huge amount of their stories.

I think companies are too easy to reach now and I think, if anything, they are too reactive to what social media says or does.

Back in the day congressional offices used to get deluged with constituent mail. Much of it was produced by opinion content factories. That is, they could manufacture a huge mass of mail to make it look like their position was more popular than it actually was.

I think many have realized how to do the same thing on social media now.

Twitter is a funhouse mirror.

Related: On Tuesday, the day after Nike’s made Colin Kaepernick the face of the company, Scott Ott wrote at his satiric Scrappleface blog, “Nike to ‘Sacrifice Everything’ for Black Community,” Linking to it, I asked, “now that Nike has aligned itself with the SJW mob, how long will it be before the scorpion stings the swoosh?”

That didn’t take long: “On Friday’s MSNBC Live, as host Ali Velshi brought aboard Black Lives Matter leader Deray McKesson to discuss the controversial Nike ad featuring Colin Kaepernick, the MSNBC host actually hit his liberal guest from the left as he wondered if Nike was really doing enough to promote Kaepernick’s political agenda.”

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: 2018 NFL Kickoff Ratings Lower Than 2017’s (Which Were Lower than 2016’s) (Which Were Lower Than 2015’s) (Which Were Lower Than 2014’s).

Related: “And, by the way, the wildest thing about all of this is if you point out all of these ratings declines and say your hypothesis is it’s related to Kap’s politics, far left wingers lose their minds and refuse to accept it as a possibility at all. Maybe it’s all just a coincidence that ratings are down nearly 25% since Kaepernick started his protest, but doesn’t that seem incredibly coincidental?”

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? Nike’s Favorability Drops Double Digits Following New ‘Just Do It’ Campaign with Colin Kaepernick. A 34 point drop almost overnight. But wait, it gets worse: “Among younger generations, Nike users, African Americans, and other key demographics, Nike’s favorability declined rather than improved.”

Plus: “Before Kaepernick was revealed as the face of Nike’s campaign, only two percent of Americans reported hearing something negative about Nike. After the launch, that jumped to 33 percent.”

Get woke, go broke.

SCRAPPLEFACE: Nike to ‘Sacrifice Everything’ for Black Community.

On the heels of its new ad campaign with former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, Nike announced today it would “sacrifice everything” to benefit the urban Black community for which Kaepernick has become a champion.

When corporate officers saw the public response to the new ad slogan — “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.“— they decided to “Just Do It.”

Starting today, Nike will put its $36.3 billion in annual revenue, and its U.S. employees, to work on behalf of inner-city communities hit hard by income inequality, by institutional racism, and most tragically, by President Trump’s Tweets about NFL players who kneel during the National Anthem.

Yes, it’s satire, but now that Nike has aligned itself with the SJW mob, how long will it be before the scorpion stings the swoosh?

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS NO ONE IS ASKING:

● Shot:

Credibility figures to be the word of the day when Roger Goodell holds his annual state of the NFL news conference on Wednesday.

The issues are numerous: Ensuring that the league’s concussion protocol is followed, enforcing the spirit and letter of the law with the Rooney Rule designed to boost diversity in the head coaching and executive ranks, explaining just how in the world Colin Kaepernick still doesn’t have a job as the NFL conceivably supports the players’ right to protest, and knowing exactly what does or should constitute a catch. It all reinforces that Goodell’s NFL clearly needs an upgrade in the credibility department.

—“Roger Goodell and the NFL have a credibility problem”, Jarrett Bell, USA Today, Tuesday.

● Chaser: Kaepernick raises $20K in celebrity donations for group honoring convicted cop-killer. “Colin Kaepernick said Friday he has raised $20,000 for Assata’s Daughters, named after convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur, through matching donations from his celebrity friends as part of his Million Dollar Pledge.”

—The Washington Times, today.

BLESS THEIR HEARTS: The Nation Says Super Bowl Creates Militaristic Environment, Threatens Illegals, Sex Workers.

The far left have hated the NFL for decades for its militaristic symbolism; starting in 2016, Colin Kaepernick and Roger Goodell thoroughly alienated the American right, at a time when the NFL needs all the help it can get to avoid becoming dead sport walking. When its own Super Bowl halftime performer is telling the press he wouldn’t let his son play football, where does the league go from here?

THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF HISTORY:

One of the most cogent observations that Rush Limbaugh ever made is the axiom that “most people believe history began the day they were born.” As a nation, we have become more and more historically illiterate. The native-born voters that will be eligible to go to the polls for the first time ever this fall will be the first born in the 2000s and the 2020 election will see the ascension of the 21st-century voter. These people will vote with little understanding of their country’s history beyond the idea that it was racist, misogynistic and a backwater of religious nuttery.

* * * * * * *

And with their reliance on the electronic record, a non-permanent and easily changeable source, we will inch closer to the days of Orwell’s nightmare vision of The Ministry of Truth. History will be bent to serve whatever purpose the present requires. As a case in point take the new edition of The New Yorker. 

Its cover depicts Dr. Martin Luther King kneeling in protest with Michael Bennett and Colin Kaepernick. The work is by San Francisco artist Mark Ulriksen who asked, “…what would King be doing if he were around today?”

To me, talking for the dead in the context of modern politics is the worst kind of history. King was a Southern man of great Christian faith and much of modern progressive politics is opposed to that kind of thinking. It’s dicey enough for members of the King family to make that projection, how about a West Coast white man like Ulriksen who was all of 11 when Dr. King lost his life?

King become increasingly radical near the end of his far-too-short life. But I’d like to think he wouldn’t take a knee alongside one man whose fashion choices include cops-as-pigs socks and pro-Castro T-shirts when he was still playing for the ‘Niners, and another who falsely claimed racism when questioned by the police after sneaking away during an active shooter incident in a Las Vegas casino. But then, the gap between King’s dignified fight for civil rights, and the pre-game “Woke Olympics” antics of today multi-millionaire NFL athletes is gigantic.

Related: ‘Racist Traitor’! Donald Trump catches hate for honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

Worst. Nazi. Ever.

MARIN COUNTY POLITICIAN TAKES KNEE DURING PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE:

[San Anselmo’s Ford Greene] has been dropping to a knee during the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of council meetings since the October 10th meeting. Some council members assumed he was backing former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s Black Lives Matter protest.

Although supportive of the former 49er, Greene says he’s protesting something else.

“I can’t stand the destruction Donald Trump is wreaking on our country,” he said. “Eliminating net neutrality, his use of office of the Presidency for his own selfish business gain.”

I don’t know about his scrambling ability, but Greene’s throwing mechanics have to be better than Kaepernick’s. If he wanted to get himself noticed by the NFL – Mission Accomplished.

Also, talk about burying the lede – who knew they still read the Pledge of Allegiance in Marin County?

OH SURE, I GET THEM CONFUSED ALL THE TIME MYSELF: Washington Post Faults Trump for Not Equating NFL Protests to Rosa Parks.

Curiously, I’ve never read about Parks wearing items of clothing that equated policemen to pigs.

HARVEYWOOD BACKLASH SINKS GEORGE CLOONEY: Suburbicon Opens to Humiliating $3 Million.

Things are so bad, the 2017 year-to-date box office is trailing behind four of the last five years and barely ahead of the catastrophic year that was 2014.

The news, however, is especially bad for Clooney. Prior to Suburbicon, the director’s 2011 The Ides of March was his worst wide-opening ($10 million) as a director. This $3 million opening is also the worst opening ever (in over 2,000 theaters) for star Matt Damon.

Working against Clooney is his politically divisive personality and his track record. In this age of an ever empowered new media, the Hollywood bubble and mainstream media no longer have the power to con American moviegoers into believing he’s a modern-day Cary Grant and genius auteur. The movies he directs are just not very good. Fans of 2002’s Confession of a Dangerous Mind should be reminded that Clooney did not write that script.

Also working against Suburbicon is its Harveywood problem. Both Clooney and Damon got their start with Harvey Weinstein. Damon’s affiliation with the alleged serial-predator is so strong it is impossible to think of one without the other.

Although both men were close Weinstein colleagues at the height of his power during the golden age of Miramax, their protestations of knowing nothing were widely met with social media skepticism. Damon certainly did not help himself or Suburbicon with his conflicting statements.

As Hollywood journalist Richard Rushfield recently told Jonathan Last of Weekly Standard, “the studios are waking up to the fact that it’s getting harder to wrench people away from their Netflix and into the theaters, and somehow Hollywood seems to be forgetting how to do that.”

As with Colin Kaepernick beginning the NFL’s potential slow death march last year, the Harvey Weinstein story (and related stories of appalling behavior by other Hollywood tyrants) arrives at the worst possible time for the industry that John Nolte dubs “Harveywood.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): All is proceeding as I have foreseen.

OOF: Texans owner Bob McNair on anthem protests: ‘We can’t have the inmates running the prison.’

Historically, the phrase has always been “we can’t have the inmates running the asylum,” which is much less racially loaded, and in this case, would have suggested the NFL as America’s collective funny farm rather than its penal colony. It’s the difference between North Dallas Forty and American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson.

Of course, referring to “the inmates running the asylum” would have likely triggered the SJW crowd nearly as much. But hey, not my job to defend McNair; the NFL worked very hard to alienate guys like me who want to keep politics out of sports. They’re now fully in bed with the side of the aisle that believes the teams who don’t hire Colin Kaepernick are led by plantation owners, have Bletchley Park-level grievance detectors and continually update the Newspeak Dictionary. The “fun” will be increasing exponentially from here on in, Roger Goodell & company.

ROLL LEFT AND DIE: Roger Goodell Killed the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg.

In the 1960s, American culture was fracturing along a fault line, with the common man on one side and scorn against his mores and values on the other. The league’s commissioner at the time, Pete Rozelle, chose to take the side of ordinary Americans in the raging culture war, because they were his natural audience. The league sent star players to visit troops in Vietnam and issued rules requiring players to stand upright during the playing of the National Anthem.

In 1967, the NFL produced a film that combined sideline and game footage titled, “They Call It Pro Football.” The film was unapologetically hokey. It was crew cuts and high tops and lots of chain smoking into sideline telephones. With a non-rock, non-folk, non-“what’s happening now” soundtrack, heavy on trumpets and kettle drums. John Facenda, who would come to be called “The Voice of God” for his work with NFL Films, provided the vaulting narration. The production began with the words, “It starts with a whistle and ends with a gun.” There was nothing Radical Chic about it.

The NFL surpassed baseball as America’s pastime with careful branding that conformed to the tastes and sensibilities of middle-class Americans – Nixon’s silent majority. A half century later, Roger Goodell would kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

In August 2016, America was experiencing a polarizing presidential election. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat during the playing of the national anthem, to protest injustice. It was a politically divisive act directed at fans who regard the national anthem as something sacred. The league did not lift a finger to stop him.

Most employers don’t let their workers make controversial political statements to their customers. It is why you do not know your UPS driver’s views on the expansion of NATO. The Constitution does not prohibit private businesses from regulating speech during work.

A savvier commissioner would have reminded Kaepernick that he is being paid millions to wear the logo of the NFL, and the league does not permit players to use its brand to flaunt their personal politics. Instead, Roger Goodell permitted the pregame ceremonies to become the focus of intense political scrutiny, as the media lined up to catalog whether players stood, sat or knelt during the national anthem.

I suppose this is now mandatory:

PENCE DITCHES COLTS GAME AFTER 49ERS PLAYERS KNEEL DURING ANTHEM:

Vice President Pence walked out of the Indianapolis Colts game on Sunday when ​some ​players from the San Francisco 49ers took a knee during the national anthem.

“I left today’s Colts game because @POTUS and I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem​,” Pence posted on Twitter. ​

Sure, it was a stunt – Pence had to know that the Niners would kneel, just as they’ve done since Kap first blew-up the NFL last year, and at each game so far this season. But Pence’s message is the correct one – protest your causes all you want during your own free time, not during the national anthem.

In addition to rallying Trump’s base, this will of course ensure that the protests continue, which will further hurt the NFL’s image, alienate fans who just want to watch a game and spend a few hours away from the culture wars, and likely drive ratings further downward.

Or as Ace wrote a few weeks ago: The National Nervous Breakdown, and How to Exploit it Ruthlessly.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): AP: BREAKING: Quarterback Colin Kaepernick tells CBS he’ll stand during national anthem if given chance to play football in NFL again.

MORE (From Ed): AP and CBS walk back this report, with CBS sports journalist Jason La Canfora oddly now claiming that he was going by past statements by Kaepernick, and never discussed the issue with him, despite apparently spending several hours interviewing him. Also, Kaepernick’s girlfriend denies the claim. Much more here.

WALTER WILLIAMS: Blacks versus Police.

According to “The Washington Post,” 737 people have been shot and killed by police this year in the United States. Of that number, there were 329 whites, 165 blacks, 112 Hispanics, 24 members of other races and 107 people whose race was unknown. In Illinois, home to one of our most dangerous cities — Chicago — 18 people have been shot and killed by police this year. In the city itself, police have shot and killed ten people and shot and wounded ten others. Somebody should ask the kneeling black NFL players why they are protesting this kind of killing in the Windy City and ignoring other sources of black death.

Here are the Chicago numbers for the ignored deaths. So far in 2017, there have been 533 murders and 2,880 shootings. On average, a person is shot every two hours and 17 minutes and murdered every 12 1/2 hours. In 2016, when Colin Kaepernick started taking a knee, Chicago witnessed 806 murders and 4,379 shootings. It turns out that most of the murder victims are black. Adding to the tragedy is the fact that Chicago has a 12.7 percent murder clearance rate. That means that when a black person is murdered, his perpetrator is found and charged with his murder less than 13 percent of the time.

Similar statistics regarding police killing blacks versus blacks killing blacks apply to many of our predominantly black urban centers, such as Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, St. Louis and Oakland. Many Americans, including me, see the black NFL player protest of police brutality as pathetic, useless showboating. Seeing as these players have made no open protest against the thousands of blacks being murdered and maimed by blacks, they must view it as trivial in comparison with the police killings. Most of the police killings fit into the category of justified homicide.

But that’s different because shut up.

THE NORMALS WEIGH IN: Byron York: On game day, new polls show what Americans think about NFL protests, Trump.

Whenever President Trump sets off a new controversy, there’s always a period of hair-on-fire commentary, usually conducted in the absence of polls or other evidence of public opinion. It’s happened again and again, the latest example being the president, the NFL, and the national anthem.

Trump set things off September 22 during a speech in Alabama. Now, after more than a week, there are five new polls with information on the underlying issue — NFL players protesting during the national anthem — and Trump’s treatment of it.

On the protests, the short version is, the public, which disapproved when Colin Kaepernick first refused to stand for the anthem last year, still disapproves.

A new CBS poll asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of football players protesting by kneeling during the national anthem?” Fifty-two percent said they strongly or somewhat disapprove, while 38 percent said they strongly or somewhat approve, and nine percent said they haven’t heard enough to say.

The disapprove-approve numbers were 51-39 in a new ESPN poll.

Fox News asked, “In general, do you think kneeling during the national anthem is an appropriate — or inappropriate — form of protest?” Fifty-five percent said inappropriate, while 41 percent said appropriate, and five percent didn’t know.

CNN asked the question in a slightly roundabout way, asking “Do you think athletes who protest by kneeling during the national anthem are doing the right thing or the wrong thing to express their political opinion? Forty-nine percent said the wrong thing, 43 percent said the right thing, and eight percent didn’t know.

Finally, the Huffington Post found a lot of indecisive respondents when it asked, “Do you think it’s appropriate or inappropriate for NFL players to kneel in protest during the national anthem?” Forty-eight percent said inappropriate, 36 percent said appropriate, and a full 16 percent said they weren’t sure.

The CBS poll shed some additional light on the public’s attitude toward the demonstrations when it asked, “Do you think professional athletes should or should not use their position and fame to talk politics or raise issues, if they want to?” The poll gave respondents three choices: “Yes, whenever they want to,” “Yes, but only on their own time,” and “No, they should not.”

A decisive 68 percent said athletes either should get political on their own time or not at all. . . .

Given the racial dimension of the controversy, the poll broke things down further by race. Forty-six percent of blacks said athletes should get political on their own time or not at all; 64 percent of Hispanics said the same; 58 percent of other races/ethnicities agreed; and 75 percent of whites agreed. Blacks were the only group that said, by a 54 percent majority, that athletes should get political whenever they want.

The bottom line is that in most polls, small majorities oppose the national anthem protests. But in a broader sense, a much larger majority opposes athletes using the field of competition to play politics.

Why is the majority generally opposing political activity on the field larger than the majority specifically opposing the anthem protests? Just a theory here — it could be that the former is a true measure of opinion on sports protests, while the latter is associated with Trump, which means measures of opinion about the anthem protests are comingled with respondents’ opinions about the president.

What doesn’t, these days?

BENNET OMALU, CONCUSSIONS, AND THE NFL: HOW ONE DOCTOR CHANGED FOOTBALL FOREVER.

On a foggy, steel gray Saturday in September 2002, Bennet Omalu arrived at the Allegheny County coroner’s office and got his assignment for the day: Perform an autopsy on the body of Mike Webster, a professional football player. Omalu did not, unlike most 34-year-old men living in a place like Pittsburgh, have an appreciation for American football. He was born in the jungles of Biafra during a Nigerian air raid, and certain aspects of American life puzzled him. From what he could tell, football was rather a pointless game, a lot of big fat guys bashing into each other. In fact, had he not been watching the news that morning, he may not have suspected anything unusual at all about the body on the slab.

The coverage that week had been bracing and disturbing and exciting. Dead at 50. Mike Webster! Nine-time Pro Bowler. Hall of Famer. “Iron Mike,” legendary Steelers center for fifteen seasons. His life after football had been mysterious and tragic, and on the news they were going on and on about it. What had happened to him? How does a guy go from four Super Bowl rings to…pissing in his own oven and squirting Super Glue on his rotting teeth? Mike Webster bought himself a Taser gun, used that on himself to treat his back pain, would zap himself into unconsciousness just to get some sleep. Mike Webster lost all his money, or maybe gave it away. He forgot. A lot of lawsuits. Mike Webster forgot how to eat, too. Soon Mike Webster was homeless, living in a truck, one of its windows replaced with a garbage bag and tape.

I say this exceedingly rarely about anything in GQ, but read the whole thing.

I found the above 2008 article last night after Glenn linked to the article by Webster’s son on his dad’s phenomenally tough training regimen.  I knew Webster’s life ended badly, but had no idea how nightmarish his last days truly were. But it is fascinating to see the DNC-MSM pivot from “OMG, we must disband the NFL right now – if it saves one player’s life, it’s worth it,” to “OMG, look at how brave the athletes are and what a wonderful platform the NFL provides them to speak out for social justice,” thanks to one speech from Trump. Or as Howie Carr wrote last Sunday in the Boston Herald, “The Liberal Media Hated the NFL – Until Yesterday.”

The GQ piece explicitly compares the NFL to the tobacco industry during the ‘60s and ‘70s, and as Michael Walsh wrote last week in a piece titled “Farewell to the NFL,” “Football, which is practically the state religion in Texas and across the South, used to be closely tied up with patriotism and love of country. The militaristic component of the sport, which was presented as akin to war, appealed especially to red-state dwellers. But sportscasters and sportswriters are overwhelmingly leftist in their outlook, and their eagerness to turn Kaepernick into a civil-rights icon has repelled a sizable section of football’s core audience — and one that, by the current evidence is growing.”

And Roger Goodell played along from the start — in an era when he’ll need as much support as possible from fans to keep his sport alive moving forward.

CRYING WOLF: SNL’s Michael Che calls Trump ‘bitch’ and a racial slur during triggered rant on PR.

Reminder: Saturday Night Live made its bones by going nuclear on the courtly and decent Gerald Ford – as one of its writers (who was then the spouse of its creator/producer Lorne Michaels, who still oversees the show) said when Ford’s press secretary was gullible enough to host an episode, “The president’s watching. let’s make him cringe and squirm.”

UPDATE: Jay Z Wears Colin Kaepernick Jersey on ‘Saturday Night Live.’

Related: Kaepernick donated $25,000 to group named after convicted cop killer and former Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur who broke out of jail and fled to Cuba.

Just NBC the radical chic!

CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE, ROGER: Bench the NFL. Pro football’s success is founded on shrewd lobbying and a federal favor. After a court forbade the NFL teams from jointly negotiating a TV deal, the league persuaded Congress in 1961 to grant a special exemption from antitrust laws. This perk has often has been criticized, but the efforts to remove it have never gone far in Congress. The NFL enjoyed bipartisan support because it seemed a national institution above politics. But now that the owners and players have so resolutely united against Republicans (and public opinion), Steve Malanga of City Journal wants Congress to reconsider:

The national anthem protest controversy offers a new perspective on the privileges that Congress has awarded to the NFL, particularly because the league’s team owners have allowed those protests to take place and even, last weekend, participated in them, in response to President Trump’s criticism of the players’ activism. Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft, for instance, said last Sunday, “I support [players’] right to peacefully affect social change and raise awareness in a manner that they feel is most impactful.” But while players have the right to engage in political speech free from government interference, their freedom does not extend by right to a private employer in its own workplace. The majority of companies in America would not, and do not, allow demonstrations at work by individual employees on political issues unrelated to their employment—just the sort of demonstrations begun last year by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, and carried on through this weekend by more than 200 players. That the owners have tolerated and lately even encouraged such protests over an issue—charges of police brutality—that divides many Americans is a business risk that they seem willing to take. But the league’s use of its platform—created by its federal antitrust exemption—to broadcast its message across the country is more than a simple business matter. It represents an improper use of resources made available to the NFL by special federal legislation. It’s past time to revoke the Sports Broadcasting Act.

The owners won’t be happy with this, but at least they’ll have something specific to protest in the pregame ceremony.

SO THESE IMAGES HAVE BEEN CIRCULATING ON SOCIAL MEDIA, but I was reluctant to post without confirmation even though I’ve heard about them from some West Point alumni I know. But apparently they’re genuine, as the West Point press office has now commented. Pretty disgraceful, but kind of in tune with the times, sadly.

Perhaps there’s some context that would make these merely an example of dreadful taste and judgment, rather than something more like sedition.

More here. Not really sure what the Kaepernick link is, though, beyond juvenile grandstanding. At least, I’m unaware of Kaepernick saying “Communism Will Win.”

STEPHEN MILLER: Does the left ever want to win elections again?

I don’t need to debate the merits or the wisdom behind Kaepernick’s actions.There’s been too much of that already. But what is up for debate is the wisdom of the political left throwing in with a gesture that still, to this day and despite what you see on cable news and social media, remains largely unpopular with the voting public. In 2016, a Quinnipac poll found that only 38 percent of those supported NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem. A Reuters poll found that 72 percent found the protest to be unpatriotic but also that 64 percent agreed there should be no punishment or fine.

Thanks to Trump’s reinvigoration of the debate, it didn’t take long for pundits on the left to start suggesting that taking a knee during the national anthem is now a direct protest of Trump himself. D.C. Bureau chief for Mother Jones, David Corn outright stated “The kneel will now become a sign of opposition to Trump,” effectively hijacking the gesture from black activists. Washington Post social justice reporter Wesley Lowery called on colleagues to demand a reasoning from players who chose not to kneel. No word yet if Lowery chose to ask Pittsburgh Steelers tackle and former Army Ranger and Bronze Star recipient Alejandro Villanueva why he chose to stand for the anthem in the tunnel, the only player from the team to do so. Villanueva’s jersey sales have now skyrocketed in only a day. Jon Schwarz from the left leaning site The Intercept wrote “The National Anthem is a Celebration of Slavery”

The left has chosen to make kneeling for the national anthem now a referendum on Trump himself. A larger problem for them, and the NFL in general, is they picked this fight on a day meant to honor Gold Star mothers.

Dumb.