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Media trying pretty hard to get Super Bowl players to denounce Trump



It appears football players are much wiser than journalists. That probably comes as no surprise to most of you. Instead of football players I could have said "prison inmates" or "derelicts" or "mollusks," and most of you would have considered it obvious that they are wiser than journalists. Maybe not more book-smart, mind you, but it's one thing to be in possession of a lot of information. It's another thing to be able to exercise good judgment in what you do with it. You'd think the football aspect of the Super Bowl would provide more than enough angles for journalists to keep themselves busy as they cover the run-up to Sunday's game between the Patriots and the Falcons. But that assumes they'd be satisfied to simply cover the game. That's clearly not how things work at the moment. The media are on a collective mission to destroy Donald Trump, and one of the methods they hope to employ is the harnessing of cultural figures in unified denunciation of the president. They've been trying this for some time now with Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, whom we're told has to explain himself to the media for supporting Trump.
But that's not enough. Now they're getting in the faces of all players from both teams, demanding that they hold forth on Trump's immigration order and whatever else. USA Today has been particularly obsessed with this idiotic line of reporting, and must be frustrated to be coming up completely empty:
When asked about President Trump and his controversial action on immigration, players from each team punted. “Well, I’ve been doing a lot of reading on it and I don’t think it really matters what I think,’’ said Nate Solder, an offensive tackle for the Patriots who was referring to Trump’s executive order that severely restricts immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries. “I think that there are a lot of tough things going on in our world right now that are a lot tougher than football, but I am still a football player so I stay focused on what I can control.’’ Dwight Freeney, a defensive end for the Falcons, pleaded ignorance. “You have to follow it to know it,’’ he said of Trump’s executive order that also temporarily halts U.S. refugee programs. “I don’t know enough about it and I haven’t followed it enough to know.

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“I do know that, yeah, there’s some things that I wish wasn’t happening and I wish those families weren’t being separated and all that. But that’s all I can really answer on that question because I don’t know the facts and I really haven’t dug deep in those types of things.’’
So let me see if I have this straight: Sportswriters for USA Today go up to football players and ask them their positions on a political issue. Football players say they don't really want to talk about it and don't see why it matters what they think. USA Today then takes this gigantic nothingburger and writes a story about it anyway? Kudos the players for not falling into this trap. No matter how they answer it, the media will use it to further its own agenda. If the players denounce Trump, the story is easy: Super Bowl participants denounce Trump!

If they support Trump, then the headline becomes: Such and such player under fire for controversial support of Trump! They'll shift the focus from what the player said to negative reaction on social media or wherever. They'll go up to coaches, ownership and league officials and ask if they are "concerned" about the player's statements, and whether there will be any discipline or sensitivity training. Either way, once you let them bait you into commenting, you're screwed. Someone who is PR savvy obviously explained to the players that this might be coming, and that they'd be better off just refusing to get into it. Well done by both teams. And if the media can't understand why they are held in such low esteem by the public, all they have to do is realize how imbecilic it is to write stories like this.
Dan's new novel, BACKSTOP, is a story of spiritual warfare and baseball. Download it from Amazon here


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Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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