Aaron Rodgers Loses Safe Space For Sharing Feelings, Will Have To Start Journaling
It may not be permanent. :(
Brief postscript to the saga of Aaron Rodgers and Jimmy Kimmel! (Which we hope to never speak of again, unless Jimmy sues the bejesus out of Football McBrainWorms for his comments and insinuations about Jimmy and the Epstein client list, in which case we guess we’ll talk about it again.)
Tuesday, Pat McAfee, the ESPN host whose show Rodgers clearly views as a safe space for all his hottest takes on life, love and vaccines, seemed really keen to make all this controversy go away, and really seemed to want Rodgers to just please apologize to Jimmy Kimmel and shut up. It felt like maybe lawyers for Disney — which owns both ESPN (McAfee) and ABC (Kimmel) — might have been emailing back and forth like HEY TELL THE FOOTBALL PLAYER WITH THE BROKEN BRAIN TO GO PLAY IN A CLOTHES DRYER AND ZIP IT.
So it was interesting yesterday afternoon when McAfee announced that, at least for now, Concussion The Clown’s appearances on his podcast show were done.
HuffPost reported last night:
[T]he move may not be permanent since McAfee said during Wednesday’s show that “‘Aaron Rodgers Tuesday’ Season 4 is done,” seemingly implying that the NFL quarterback and COVID conspiracy theorist could return next season.
We’ll see. But:
“There will be a lot of people who are happy with that, myself included. The way it ended, it got real loud,” McAfee added.
Ouch. Himself included.
“Aaron Rodgers is a Hall of Famer, he is a four-time MVP, he is a massive part of the NFL story whenever you go back and tell it,” McAfee said.
Note he doesn’t say which massive part of the story.
“We are very lucky to get a chance to chat with him and learn from him. Some of his thoughts and opinions, though, do piss off a lot of people.”
But maybe Pat McAfee is just saying all this stuff and he really does love Aaron Rodgers and … ?
After routinely dealing with the backlash, McAfee said, he is “pumped that that is no longer going to be every single Wednesday of my life.”
Aw damn.
Below, you may watch the full video of McAfee’s announcement and play armchair psychologist reading between the lines, should you so wish.
That is a lot of talking! Mostly it seems like he’s saying he really wants to talk about “sports” and Not Aaron Rodgers’s Babbling.
Later on, McAfee tweeted one of those really long Twitter messages that’s now de rigueur with blue checkmarks on Elon’s Twitter. We are going to try to cut out all the parts you won’t want to read, which means we’ll be cutting about a thousand words:
A lot of you are talking very wild about me and our progrum.. […]
I haven’t polled our crowd but I’m rather certain that nobody’s wanting to come hangout with us to hear us talk about politics. I think it’s probably a massive reason for our success actually… so all of this has been a good reminder of what we’re good for, and who we’re good for. Some day, I’ll try and build up enough of a brain to dive into the politics world but that time is nowhere near now.. Also.. Our fans know that ART [Aaron Rodgers Tuesday] ends shortly after Aaron’s team’s season ends.. that’s how it’s been. He’ll make random surprise welcomed pop ins during big events or offseason adventures but, it’s always been a season thing. I never said he’ll never be on the show again. I hope he chooses to still chat with us. […]
I certainly don’t love that I’ve found myself in political wars and public beefs because of something that a guest has said on our show or something that my dumbass has said..
ETC.
Point is, he doesn’t want to be in the middle of this political shit anymore. Rodgers isn’t banned forever, and it sounds like McAfee doesn’t want to have to apologize for him personally, but …
Yeah.
Sorry about your safe space, Mr. Rodgers! Your very important intellectual contributions won’t be necessary for a while.
[HuffPost / vid via Pat McAfee]
PREVIOUSLY IN AARON RODGERS’S SAD BRAIN!
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I disagree with calling folks like Aaron “vaccine skeptics”.
It implies that their doubts are based on facts, logic and reason. It isn’t. Their doubts are based on lies, disinformation and conspiracy theories.
“Vaccine denier” is more accurate.
I'm sure it's been said in the 228 non-comments below, but this has NOTHING to do with "politics." It is a matter of personal decency.
And as Jimmy Kimmel said on his show, if you're hanging out with a group that thinks it's okay to accuse someone of being a pedophile because they don't agree with that person, then you should probably think about whether you want to still be a member of that group.