A Yahoo Sports piece declared Colin Kaepernick is the most influential athlete of the 21st century. It is, unfortunately, true, and it’s a damning indictment of our sports and media culture.
The piece by Jay Busbee is more sympathetic to Kaepernick than not, but it is still well worth the read. It acknowledges Kaepernick overstates the issue of police shootings of unarmed black people and gives a nod to fans who roll their eyes at obnoxious social justice displays during sporting events. And his central contention is correct: Kaepernick is indeed the most influential athlete (in the United States) of the 21st century.
But we are all worse off for it.
It isn’t just that Kaepernick overstates police shootings to make his case for “systemic racism.” Kaepernick opposes the police as an institution. It is an extremist position that basically no one shares outside of academia. He has compared modern police to slave patrols and called for them to be abolished.
Kaepernick was a mediocre quarterback who became famous when he started pushing a false narrative about racist police shootings. Then Nike gifted him a multimillion-dollar contract for his troubles.
Kaepernick has always been a fraud, and this has been clearer as time has gone by. His narrative of systemic racism extends to Iranian terrorists, as seen when he denounced the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani as a terrorist attack of all things.
There is nothing new about American terrorist attacks against Black and Brown people for the expansion of American imperialism.
— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) January 4, 2020
Meanwhile, Kaepernick made excuses for the dictatorial Cuban regime of Fidel Castro, despite Cuba’s own egregious racism issues and its flagrant use of torture and police brutality. If you are keeping score, Kaepernick holds Fidel Castro’s communist regime and Iran’s chief terrorist responsible for the deaths of over 600 U.S. soldiers, in higher regard than American police who protect (mostly non-white) people from thieves and violent human predators.
Kaepernick is little more than a parrot of the most dumb-downed Marxist talking points about America, and he’s rolling in dough as a result. Yet, our media and sports cultural figures have treated him as some kind of brave hero. Kaepernick sacrificed nothing but his weak, dying NFL career as a backup quarterback. In exchange, he gets millions more as a promoter of sports apparel for a billion-dollar company that gleefully helps violate human rights abroad.
Kaepernick’s influence over the sports world is undeniable. Now, athletes know it’s worth competing to see who else can launch the most pointless protest that gets media headlines. Kaepernick created a trend of performative social justice protests that athletes and celebrities are too quick to replicate and promote.
There are athletes taking real stands against tyrannical regimes. The fact we talk more about Kaepernick than about them is an embarrassment to our media and sports culture.
