Every month, we eagerly anticipate the arrival of our GQ magazine. There are few other places where The Scrapbook can glean instruction on how to wear capri-pants-for-men without our calves looking chunky. This month is no exception. For fresh out on newsstands—assuming there is still such a thing as a newsstand—is GQ’s 22nd annual “Man of the Year” issue, in which several men of the year are named, one of whom, in keeping with the times, is a woman. (Gal Gadot, “Wonder Woman of the Year.”)
But the man di tutti men is Colin Kaepernick—hero, unemployed NFL quarterback, chronic kneeler, and now GQ’s “Citizen of the Year.” While we’ve yet to receive our issue in the mail, a panting Yahoo! Sports writer assures us that in Kaepernick’s cover photo, “his afro is resplendent” and “his eyes look sad.” (Not unlike the sadness football fans feel at seeing their sport being turned into a tiresome Ta-Nehisi Coates lecture put on by roid-raging multimillionaires, which may explain the league’s cratering ratings.)
The message of the Kaepernick-inspired national-anthem protest has become a bit muddled over time. Is it about police brutality? General racial injustice? Donald Trump’s insensitivity? (By that measure, everyone from Mitch McConnell to Kim Jong-un should be taking a knee, as Trump just implied that the latter is “short and fat.”) Kaepernick, therefore, GQ informs us, “wants to reclaim the narrative of his protest,” redirecting the focus from the mixed messages back to where it belongs: on Colin Kaepernick.
Of course, it’s hard work tooting your own horn when you refuse to speak on the record, as Kaepernick did to GQ. For Kaepernick has “grown wise to the power of his silence,” the men’s fashion bible tells us. (He hasn’t been that silent. He did tweet that he was honored to be GQ’s Citizen of the Year. He re-tweeted out his own GQ cover no fewer than 15 times. Tweets, apparently, don’t count against the strong, silent types.)
Kaepernick did permit close friends to praise him to GQ, giving voice to the voiceless. Filmmaker Ava DuVernay said, “I see what he’s done as art.” Activist Linda Sarsour said, “I always tell Colin: You are an American hero. You may not feel like a hero right now.” (Just a guess: We suspect that he does.) For our part, The Scrapbook can’t wait for our hard copy to arrive, so we can clip the photos and tack Kaepernick’s sad-eyed mug to our wall right next to our old poster of Shaun Cassidy, who, you’ll remember, also took a knee—while singing his smash hit “Teen Dream” to impressionable youth.
