Former Marine Devastates Kaepernick 'Legacy'
“Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”
That’s the ad copy that has everyone furious with Nike. In just nine words, the company attempted to take a man whose self-designed martyrdom (and the fact that he wasn’t a terribly good player) got him out of the NFL and turn him into some sort of hero.
There are a lot of people who won’t be buying Nike for quite a while after this, if ever. One of them will almost certainly be Jesse Kelly.
Kelly is a former U.S. Marine. You know, an actual hero. He’s also the host of “The Jesse Kelly Show” on Houston’s KPRC-AM, and in an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, Kelly eviscerated the former NFL quarterback.
“You are right, Colin Kaepernick is just a guy,” Kelly said.
“He’s an employee who violated the one rule of every employee in the country and that’s make sure your talent outweighs your baggage and he didn’t. He declared America to be racist. When you add in the fact that he reads defenses like Helen Keller, he is out of the NFL.”
“That’s pretty funny,” Carlson said.
“But wait, I don’t think you are giving him his due. Nike told us he is the bravest person in human history — certainly American history. You served the United States Marine Corps in combat. Did you ever meet anyone as brave as Colin Kaepernick?”
“I’ll tell you — all the brothers in arms that I serve with, none of them had the bravery to make thirty-nine million dollars in the NFL and then move on to get paid by one of the biggest shoe brands in the world,” Kelly noted.
“I have to tell you, I think he should get some sort of Medal of Honor, whatever civilians can make.”
As funny as Kelly is, he has a few very good points.
First, the reason Kaepernick is not in the NFL isn’t just because he sat out and/or knelt during the national anthem. It’s because he supported a whole panoply of despicable causes — like cop-killer Assata Shakur and dictator Fidel Castro — all while playing abysmally. And the thing is, with the way sports works, it likely had more to do with the fact that he was playing abysmally.
Second, there isn’t actually any bravery in doing any of that. Kaepernick’s martyrdom couldn’t have been more self-evidently designed from the start.
When he was about to sign with an NFL team, his girlfriend tweeted out a picture depicting the team’s best player and owner as slave and slave master. So much for that, right?
Way to go, Nike. If there was a medal of stupidity, you’d get it.
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