The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 98 - Colin Kaepernick Is No Hero

00:00:00.000 All right. So let's I want to say a few things about this Colin Kaepernick situation. As as you as you know, I'm sure Colin Kaepernick is the new face of Nike and their believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything campaign.

00:00:16.740 Very inspiring, very inspiring stuff. Wait, that is the tagline, right? Yeah, believe in something. Yeah, that's the tagline. The new commercial was unveiled. I believe it officially debuts today, as a matter of fact, but there was a sneak peek, a sneak peek of the commercial came out yesterday.

00:00:35.060 And so the commercial is is Kaepernick narrating over images of various athletes doing doing legitimately courageous things like there's one there's an athlete who's overcame a brain tumor, another who became a wrestler, even though he doesn't have legs.

00:00:55.880 And then the camera cuts back to Colin Kaepernick. And Kaepernick is actually smothering a bald eagle with a burning American flag. And so that was a little bit provocative, but not surprised. No, actually, Kaepernick, he just says a bunch of generically inspiring cliches about following your dreams and so forth.

00:01:18.460 And then the last, the last line of the commercial, it was the last line of the commercial is, so don't ask if your dreams are crazy. Ask if they're crazy enough, which is one of those lines that I mean, I guess it sounds inspiring. It doesn't mean anything. Ask if your dreams are crazy enough. Like that's, that's supposed to be your driving the philosophy that drives your life.

00:01:45.300 Like, no, that dream's not crazy enough. No, I need crazier dreams. Yeah. Is that what you would tell your kids? Your kid says to you, you know, I want to be a doctor. No, it's not crazy enough. You need to come back here with crazier dreams. Okay, I want really crazy dreams. Okay, I want to fly to Mars. There you go. That should be your goal, flying to Mars. No, that's a crazy dream. Go chase it. Anyway, it's all pretty, pretty innocuous. The commercial is innocuous.

00:02:10.920 And in fact, I find Kaepernick himself to be, in general, a pretty innocuous character. I'm just not, I am not naturally filled with the kind of blind rage about Colin Kaepernick that a lot of other conservatives seem to be filled with. I never have been.

00:02:29.420 I haven't been able to generate the anger, especially the sustained anger that so many conservatives have about Colin Kaepernick.

00:02:39.160 Three years later, they're still so angry at this guy. I couldn't, I mean, listen, and that tells you something,

00:02:47.500 because if I'm not able to stay angry about Colin Kaepernick, I don't know how anyone else can.

00:02:53.660 Um, because usually staying angry, it's one of the skills that I have. I do think it's kind of amazing

00:03:01.260 that we're still talking about this three years later. And it seems to be, um, it's part of this

00:03:07.420 trend that I've pointed out before, where both sides of the political divide, they seem to kind of pick

00:03:17.060 out stars, the stars and the spokesmen for the other side. So, um, the right made stars out of

00:03:27.060 David Hogg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Colin Kaepernick. Um, and then the left made a president

00:03:35.280 out of Donald Trump. And they both accomplished that for the other side by being utterly, completely

00:03:41.900 obsessed with these people. Like conservatives are obsessed with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I mean,

00:03:48.460 easily 90% of the coverage that I see and read about this woman comes from conservatives. The

00:03:54.880 same thing with David Hogg. And it's definitely the same thing with Colin Kaepernick. I mean,

00:03:59.040 conservatives are obsessed with these people. They can't, they just can't give them, get them out

00:04:02.400 of their head. And, uh, the same thing on the other end happened and it's happened with other things

00:04:06.620 with leftists, but obviously the biggest example is Donald Trump. Donald Trump came on the scene

00:04:11.500 and liberals just obsessed with a guy, liberal media obsessed with him and he became president.

00:04:17.340 Um, which I think is an interesting phenomenon and, uh, maybe not a good strategy, maybe a better

00:04:25.220 strategy. Like if you're on the right and there's somebody on the left who you think is really stupid, 0.99

00:04:31.500 ridiculous, shallow, inconsequential, irrelevant, all of these things, maybe the best thing is to 1.00

00:04:37.800 treat them that way and to ignore them. And then you'll, you'll stop hearing about them. 0.97

00:04:45.760 Maybe that, maybe that would be the best strategy. Um,

00:04:52.180 certainly with Colin Kaepernick, if conservatives had just ignored for the most part, this,

00:05:00.300 you know, his, his, uh, his protest of the national anthem, if they had just, I mean,

00:05:08.200 you know, maybe not completely ignore it, but when it first had happened, when it first happened, 0.99

00:05:13.200 if they had said, well, that I disagree with that, it's silly, it's stupid, it's disrespectful, 0.99

00:05:17.360 make your point and then move on. And if the guy decides he wants to sit for the rest of the season, 0.99

00:05:23.360 whatever it's, if he wants to do that, it's, it's just one guy. Right. And for so long with the,

00:05:31.260 with the national anthem protest, it was only, it was Colin Kaepernick. It was a few other guys.

00:05:35.760 It was just a few guys doing it. It only became this huge, enormous thing. And even then it was

00:05:41.960 only that for a few weeks where you had a lot of players doing it, but that only happened after

00:05:46.660 Donald Trump decided to purposely resurrect the issue, which had basically died. And then heading

00:05:53.200 into the 2017 season, he decided to, to bring it back up again. And that's when it turned into this

00:05:59.320 big thing. And even then it only lasted. It only, it only, it only was like that for a couple of weeks.

00:06:04.320 Um, if we had not done that and we had just treated the protest as the silly childish thing that it was,

00:06:13.400 then it would have, it would have died away in a few weeks. And here we'd be three years later,

00:06:19.080 nobody would be talking about Colin Kaepernick. No one would even remember him. And, uh, and everyone

00:06:24.620 would be better off. I think as for the boycott of, um, of Nike, which is going on right now,

00:06:34.000 you know, to me, the, the, I'm not a big fan of our boycott culture. And this Nike boycott seems to

00:06:42.100 kind of perfectly encapsulate the shallow virtue signaling character of our boycott culture.

00:06:50.180 And that isn't now, don't get me wrong. There are plenty of really legitimate, good reasons

00:06:54.400 to boycott Nike. Let's start with the fact, let's start with the, let's start with the, with the,

00:06:59.700 here's the reason why I have always boycotted them or have mostly boycotted them. I don't have,

00:07:05.240 like if I wanted to burn my, my, my Nike merchandise, which I wouldn't do anyway, 0.99

00:07:08.560 because that's completely stupid, um, and wasteful. And if you don't want to have your Nike 0.94

00:07:14.880 merchandise anymore, then what you could do is give it to a person who's poor and needs some clothing

00:07:19.580 rather than burning your $100 shoes, maybe give them to someone. I mean, you could go to pretty

00:07:24.980 much any city and find a homeless person on the street who doesn't have shoes, maybe give him the

00:07:29.500 shoes. Just a thought. Um, anyway, I don't really have any Nike merchandise to, to burn. And the reason

00:07:36.120 for that, I'll admit it's, it's because that stuff it's, it's ridiculously expensive. Like I'm not

00:07:41.000 going to pay a premium to have a little check mark on my shoes. I'm just not going to pay that.

00:07:46.940 Right. I could go, I mean, there's really, unless you're an athlete, there's no reason to spend more

00:07:52.680 than 30 or 40 bucks on a pair of sneakers. Uh, if you're going and spending $120 on, on sneakers,

00:07:58.560 because they have a check mark on them. I think that's pretty ridiculous. So I was boycotting 0.93

00:08:03.700 them for that reason. Uh, it's more of a kind of practical utilitarian reason. Another good reason

00:08:08.200 to boycott them is that they've used sweatshops. Um, they have manufactured this ridiculously overpriced

00:08:15.340 merchandise on the backs of child slaves. It's a pretty good reason not to purchase from them. 0.98

00:08:19.980 And that problem has not completely gone away. Um, there, there's a report recently last year

00:08:26.060 that the company's workers in some countries still are dealing with, um, the denial of wages,

00:08:33.860 sweltering heat, well over 90 degrees in the factories, um, unsafe conditions, physical abuse,

00:08:40.580 and other problems as well. So that, that's a, a very sound basis for a boycott. Anytime a country,

00:08:48.120 a company is doing something that actually hurts people, they deserve to be boycotted, right?

00:08:54.960 Yet knowing about Nike's history with sweatshops. And I, I, look, I I'm sorry. I don't buy. I know

00:09:05.160 there, I made this point a few days ago and some people said, well, I didn't know that Nike had

00:09:08.540 a history of sweatshops. Come on. So it's been common knowledge for decades. You really didn't

00:09:14.880 know that. I find that hard to believe. I think most of us understood that it had that history.

00:09:21.140 Right. We also understand that Nike sells its merchandise, um, you know, has an unjustifiably

00:09:28.700 high price for its merchandise. Yet knowing all that the current boycotters, if they really are

00:09:33.100 boycotters, that is people who have been consistent customers of Nike and now no longer will be,

00:09:40.320 that's what a boycott is. If you're boycotting Nike, but you're like me and you never really bought

00:09:44.400 Nike anyway, well, that's not a boycott. You're, you're just continuing along with what you were

00:09:48.620 already doing. Right. But if they really are boycotters, then that means that the boycotters

00:09:53.900 gave their support to Nike in spite of the sweatshop problem, in spite of the, of the fact that the

00:09:58.640 stuff is ridiculously high price, still gave their, um, support to Nike and now have only exploded in

00:10:04.500 fury and sworn off the company because they saw a marketing poster. They didn't like, uh, you know,

00:10:10.220 that would seem to raise a question about whether the boycott is really a campaign for seeking

00:10:17.300 justice or if it's just another, you know, virtue signaling kind of mob to join, just another

00:10:23.540 thing to do, uh, another outrage to be a part of, which, which, which I think are with so many

00:10:29.760 boycotts, that's really what it's all about. I don't think it's necessary or wise to boycott

00:10:36.440 every company that fails to perfectly represent our political and ideological views. Um, I don't think

00:10:44.300 we need to do that. I think we should boycott companies who do harmful things and evil things.

00:10:50.660 Companies like that should be boycotted. You could make a solid argument that Nike falls into that

00:10:55.060 category, but you could have made that argument for the last like 30 years. And if you never made

00:10:59.940 that argument before, and now you're suddenly making it, I think it's a fair question to ask

00:11:04.020 why, what changed? All that said, I'll tell you what does annoy me about, um, the Nike campaign

00:11:14.460 and in general, the reception that Kaepernick has gotten on the left. All right. So I've already told

00:11:20.820 you what annoys me about how the right has approached Kaepernick. So let me, let me go over to the left.

00:11:25.500 Now, what annoys me the most, um, is the cheapening of heroism, this attempt to make Kaepernick into some

00:11:38.560 kind of heroic figure, uh, some kind of martyr. It, I mean, it's, it's ridiculous because he isn't that

00:11:47.120 we're told now Nike's telling us he sacrificed everything, right? Sacrificed everything,

00:11:53.540 which is quite a statement. And if you're telling me he sacrificed everything that I,

00:12:01.400 we know he didn't sacrifice everything. So that's at least hyperbole. But if you're telling me that,

00:12:06.320 that I should be able to look at least one thing that he did sacrifice. He didn't sacrifice

00:12:10.800 everything. Did he at least sacrifice something? I don't think he did. I mean, let's, let's look at

00:12:17.840 this for a moment. He was a quarterback, um, who was, you know, had been on the, on the decline in

00:12:25.960 his career. Although his most re you know, the, the last season he played in the league, there was a,

00:12:31.020 he would, there's a little bit of an uptick in his production, but generally speaking, you know,

00:12:36.440 Kaepernick, there was about half of one season where Kaepernick was getting all this hype as he was the

00:12:40.540 next, he was the next big thing in the NFL. This, this, uh, transformational quarterback.

00:12:45.000 And all of that died off very quickly. And, um, he hit his peak and plummeted. That was his

00:12:53.320 trajectory and kind of was at his peak, went to the Superbowl, he lost and it plummeted from there.

00:12:59.600 Now, um, he was at best a second string quarterback talent. Once he left San Francisco,

00:13:09.380 after choosing to opt out of his contract, by the way, so he chose to opt out of his contract after

00:13:16.800 the whole protest thing, then, uh, he opted out of his contract. He decided to be a free agent.

00:13:23.340 Um, and then he didn't end up on any other teams. Now, if this protest had not happened,

00:13:28.680 he probably would have ended up on some team, probably on the bench somewhere,

00:13:33.520 or potentially vying for a starting job in like Buffalo or Cleveland or something like that.

00:13:39.160 And he would have made, he would have maybe gotten three or four years out of his career that way,

00:13:44.040 uh, in mediocrity, you know, either maybe three, four or five years of riding the bench

00:13:50.800 or of kind of being on the quarterback carousel in one of these markets like Buffalo or Cleveland.

00:13:55.740 And then he would have retired and, and, uh, he would have been basically, basically forgotten

00:14:00.660 instead. So that, that, that was the trajectory that he sacrificed instead though, he does this

00:14:10.040 protest. And now it's true that, um, almost certainly part of the reason why he couldn't

00:14:18.100 find another job in the NFL was because of the protest. He's not, he was not a top 10 quarterback

00:14:22.680 talent, but he was at least a top 30 or 35 talent, which means that all things being equal,

00:14:27.620 he would have found a job somewhere on a roster somewhere, but all things were not equal because

00:14:32.060 teams are just not willing to take on the distraction, the attention, the hysteria for

00:14:37.960 the sake of a second string quarterback. I mean, if, if you're going to, as, as an athlete,

00:14:43.840 if you're going to bring all of that hysteria to a team, you better have enough talent to compensate.

00:14:49.900 You got to have a lot of talent. You have, you have to be an absolute star to compensate

00:14:54.420 for that. And he's just not that he doesn't have an, he didn't have enough talent to compensate

00:14:58.460 for the distraction that he would bring. So, um, teams passed on him logically, which is,

00:15:06.360 it's not the first example of that happening. The same thing happened to Tim Tebow, Tim Tebow,

00:15:11.800 who never, I mean, although there were people who were offended by Tim Tebow for some ridiculous

00:15:16.540 reason there, there was never any reason to be offended by the guy. Yeah. Tim Tebow liked to

00:15:20.680 kneel also, but he didn't kneel during the Anthem, you know, kneel on the sideline, uh, or at

00:15:26.140 celebrating a, a, a, a touchdown or something like that. Tim Tebow's big, big sin was that he was a

00:15:33.320 devout Christian and he was known for his Christian faith. Um, but the bigger problem for teams with

00:15:39.020 Tim Tebow is just that he, you know, he became this, this star who kind of transcended the sport

00:15:46.540 itself and people loved him for reasons that had very little to do with, with football. So he just

00:15:52.260 had a ton of attention on him. Um, yet he didn't have the talent to necessarily be a starting quarterback

00:15:58.580 in the NFL consistently. So teams said to themselves, well, we're not, you know, we're going to bring

00:16:03.940 this guy in, put him on the bench and then we're going to have all this attention on this one guy

00:16:08.300 who's sitting on the bench and it's just a distraction. So team said, you know, we don't,

00:16:12.680 we don't want that. And, um, so that's why Tebow had trouble finding other jobs in, in the NFL.

00:16:18.760 There are plenty of examples that Des Bryan is a, you know, um, was one of the, one of the best wide

00:16:25.260 receivers in the game. He's on the decline right now. Uh, front, you know, after, after leaving the

00:16:30.360 Cowboys, he still hasn't found a job on, on another, on another team because of all the,

00:16:35.480 because now he's very different from team, Tim Tebow, but he's a divisive kind of diva-like

00:16:39.700 character. And, um, and there's a lot of just distraction and you get to, it's just a distraction

00:16:45.720 and teams are not willing. They don't want to have that distraction on their roster, especially for a

00:16:51.360 guy who can't compensate for the distraction by being an all-star talent. So that's, um,

00:16:59.060 that's what happened at Kaepernick. And in fact, there were reports that there were a couple of,

00:17:04.020 at least one team that was looking at Kaepernick as being possibly a second string quarterback.

00:17:07.520 He turned down that offer. He also turned down offers to play for the, uh, the CFL,

00:17:12.700 the Canadian football league. So this is not someone who's desperate to go and play football

00:17:18.200 somewhere. Comparing again to Tim Tebow, who he tried desperately to get on NFL, NFL roster and stay

00:17:23.960 on one. He couldn't. And so then he goes and plays baseball. I mean, this is a guy that just wants to

00:17:28.120 play a sport. He just wants to play ball. It's really what he wants to do. And so he'll, he'll,

00:17:32.600 he'll take any opportunity he can get. Kaepernick has not done that. It seems like Kaepernick is not,

00:17:37.420 it's just not a ball player. He's not interested in playing ball. He's more interested in, um,

00:17:42.020 in being a kind of, uh, you know, being this savior figure that he has turned himself into.

00:17:48.460 So he chose to sacrifice three or four years of bench warming or possibly starting for, um,

00:17:57.520 some mid-market team. And in exchange, he has international fame, accolades from the media,

00:18:07.360 a lucrative sponsorship deal and other things. And that's a heck of a, of a nice trade. I would say,

00:18:13.420 I mean, I would take that trade. Wouldn't you? And that's why this isn't martyrdom. Okay. This

00:18:19.040 isn't heroism. Kaepernick is neither a hero nor some sort of great historic villain. He's just a guy

00:18:26.700 who expressed his opinion and he was punished for it, but he was also massively rewarded for it.

00:18:32.700 And the reward, I think way outweighs the punishment. And so that's all, but that's not,

00:18:39.100 that's not sacrifice and that's not heroism. Um, that's a lot of different things. It's,

00:18:45.820 I think among other things, it's also a calculation on his part where he had to choose. Do I really

00:18:51.580 want to try to stay in the league and, and play football or do I want to go in and, you know,

00:18:56.540 make it and do this and have this be my, my brand and build on that brand as the socially conscious,

00:19:04.440 uh, you know, warrior for racial equality kind of thing. And he chose that, that path and it's paid 0.99

00:19:13.300 off for pretty well. It seems like our culture, you know, in our culture, we are just desperate for

00:19:21.720 heroes. Um, we're desperate for people to look up to. And so we select guys like Colin Kaepernick.

00:19:30.700 And on the other end, as part of this overall seeking of identity, we're also desperate for

00:19:38.940 easy villains that we can hate. And so we also select guys like Colin Kaepernick. So

00:19:44.200 I think that's where this comes from. That's why, even though Colin Kaepernick is, he's just some

00:19:49.620 quarterback who was on his way into relative NFL obscurity, yet he kneels for the anthem a couple

00:19:57.740 times. And he becomes this massive figure that we're talking about for three years. And why is

00:20:03.160 that? It's just because it became this really, he became this really easy, unchallenging kind of

00:20:11.920 mascot for both sides. So on one side, they were able to take him and turn him into some kind of

00:20:19.640 hero. On the other side, they could turn him into a villain and it's easy. It's unchallenging.

00:20:24.080 And on both ends, it's just ridiculous. Because he's neither of those things. He's a guy with an 0.89

00:20:30.260 opinion who made a decision and a calculation paid off well for him. That's all.

00:20:38.420 All right. And yet here I am talking about him as well. So I'm part of the problem. Never claimed

00:20:44.440 not to be so. Thanks for watching, everybody. Thanks for listening. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - September 06, 2018

Ep. 98 - Colin Kaepernick Is No Hero

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