Saturday Night Live recently lampooned the NFL scandal featuring Raiders coach Jon Gruden’s emails. In a rather unfunny skit typical of the show these days, SNL hit all the politically correct notes but missed an opportunity to tackle (pun intended) the elephant in the room: the double standard by which the woke elite select victims to sacrifice on the altar of cancel culture.
Imagine this skit instead: A faux NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stands at the podium, apologizing for Gruden’s racism and misogyny and expressing the NFL’s zero-tolerance policy when it comes to such issues, while Dr. Dre and Eminem rehearse for their 2022 Super Bowl halftime show performances, featuring lyrics that encourage race-based violence against white people and glorify violence against women.
Or a skit featuring a game between two NFL teams the rosters of which are made up entirely of players who have battered women but who only received proverbial slaps on the wrist and continue to play in the league. The players all wear helmet decals that read “Inspire Change” on a field painted with the slogan “Stop Hate,” and former NFL player Randy Moss cries crocodile tears of joy on the pregame show in celebration of Gruden’s professional exile.
Of course, we’ll never see those skits on national TV. And we won’t hear anyone outside of conservative circles talk about the real problems plaguing the NFL and our culture writ large, such as the breakdown of the family and a culture that mistakes filth for art.
Let’s be frank. Football stadiums are arenas for violence. Football fields are full of profanity and aggression. Locker rooms and stadiums blare rap music that glorifies racist language, violence against women, and drug use. Players have rap sheets that rival their stat sheets.
Now, I’m not here to defend the language he used, but what Gruden wrote in emails nearly a decade old is tame in comparison to the real issues that exist in the NFL. Yet, the league turns a blind eye to the one and cracks down on the other, even going so far as to remove Gruden’s image from a video game and replace him with a “generic likeness” — eerily similar to the tactics Josef Stalin used to purge his enemies from history.
Why the double standard?
The answer is because wokeness is not really about addressing social issues and improving lives; wokeness is about narcissism and political power. The more offended and marginalized you claim to be, the more impervious you are to criticism of your own shortcomings and the greater your ability to bludgeon others with theirs. And by signaling your virtue on the liberal outrage du jour, you get to display a set of “luxury beliefs” — the latest collector’s item for the rich and powerful. The poor do not weigh in on such meaningless drama because they don’t have time for it. Wokeness does nothing to improve their lives or the lives of anyone else, for that matter.
Sadly, the spread of wokeness into the NFL reflects the increasing politicization of pretty much everything in America. And in the woke religion, there are certain sins you talk about and others you don’t. Leftist politics dictate what those are.
Let’s walk through some examples.
Mascot names that offend white liberals more than Native Americans? Canceled. Players who strangle their pregnant girlfriends? No problem.
Expressing one’s opinion that kneeling during our national anthem is disrespectful? Grovel for forgiveness. Approvingly posting a quote by Hitler on social media that “white Jews” will “blackmail America”? Let’s not jump to conclusions.
And if you think the NFL is the only place where this double standard exists, think again. As a white player in the NBA, use a slur on a video game streaming platform against no one in particular, and you’ll be cut from the league immediately. But use a racial slur to insult your white or Asian competitor to his face? Shrug.
It goes without saying that the same hypocrisy exists in the realm of politics, in which President Joe Biden has survived numerous racist remarks that would have ended the career of any Republican politician long ago.
The truth is that cancel culture thrives on this double standard. It demonstrates the raw power of the movement, as it need not pass any test of logic, rationality, or consistency. If woke activists paused for one second to look in the mirror and applied the same scrutiny to their own conduct as they do to the world, the movement, and with it, their grasp on power, would collapse on itself.
But under the rules of cancel culture, woke icons are off-limits, protected by an invisible bubble. And if you dare to try and penetrate the bubble, you are declared a racist, a bigot, and every other “ist” under the sun.
Criticize Black Lives Matter for its profound antisemitism? That’s racist. Decry the push to allow biological males to play on women’s sports teams? That’s transphobic.
Cancel culture is an evil force on the march, motivated by anti-white, anti-male, and anti-Western animus, and it will continue gaining ground and claiming scalps like Gruden’s until people rise up and put an end to it. Cancel culture does not care who or what it tramples in its path. And as viral videos that claim jobs in mere seconds prove, it’s not just about famous people. You or someone close to you could be next.
Patrick J. Witt is a conservative, Republican candidate for Congress in Georgia’s 10th Congressional District. Patrick was a three-year starting quarterback at Yale and played briefly with the New Orleans Saints. He was a senior official in the Trump administration and served as a member of former President Donald Trump’s post-election legal team.
