The Vax, Football, and the Left

They see an opportunity to assert vaccine absolutism AND attack a game they hate...

In the wake of the Damar Hamlin medical scare, the Leftists see an opening to score political points and simultaneously pursue two goals they relish: insist on vaccine conformity and disparage football. In fact, such conjoined opportunities rarely arise in one incident. So, thinking Americans better be prepared to push back -- to maintain vaccine skepticism, and to defend our cherished national game.

Hamlin collapsed into cardiac arrest on national television during Monday Night Football after making a tackle that involved a seemingly regular collision, at least by elite football standards. After a harrowing brush with death, Hamlin received superb medical care and thankfully appears headed toward a robust recovery.

But the sight of such a young and supremely fit athlete rendered helpless and lifeless before a giant TV audience naturally led to questions about the true cause of the alarming episode. The NFL has joined most of corporate America in not only aggressively pushing the Covid mRNA treatments for the general public, but also establishing punishing protocols making life extremely difficult for unvaccinated employees.

So, given the near uniform vaccination rate for the league, plus intense recent speculation about vax cardiovascular side effects for young men, questions immediately surfaced about the Big Pharma shots causing Hamlin’s emergency.

In fact, not pursuing that line of inquiry would be nonsensical and totally prejudicial. But conservative activist and talk show host Charlie Kirk met the online Leftist outrage mob for simply posting this observation: “This is a tragic and all too familiar sight right now: Athletes dropping suddenly.”

Liberal New Republic columnist Matt Ford responded to Kirk that “your grandchildren will be ashamed of you someday.” Outgoing Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, an alleged “conservative,” assailed Kirk as “the biggest piece of human garbage that can possibly exist right now.”

The prevailing acceptable narrative asserted quickly following the on-field tragedy…no one was allowed to even discuss the vaccine regarding this case. The legacy media went to great lengths to talk about every possible angle of the Hamlin story except for the vaccine’s possible role.

In fact, in rare instances when the vaccine actually was discussed by a mainstream platform, it was only to accuse conservatives of so-called “misinformation.” For example, Salon magazine published a story headlined “’Sick disgusting human beings’: Right-wingers use NFL player’s collapse to push anti-vax conspiracy.”

To be clear, no current evidence connects the experimental Big Pharma treatments to Hamlin’s ailments.

But the idea of shutting down any inquiry? Since when does a responsible media denigrate the asking of relevant questions?

Without a doubt overall national excess death counts rise in recent months, even accounting for Covid. Moreover, the public naturally worries about cases of seemingly top-conditioned athletes dropping. So, was Hamlin’s case just a tragic anomaly? Or, does it fit the pattern of the “died suddenly” skeptics?

The truth is we do not know – but the larger truth for society is that we damn well better be allowed to ask!

Dr. Anthony Fauci chimed in on the matter, of course. Even though Fauci has neither treated nor examined Hamlin, he definitively declared to CBS that it is “clear” from the video that the football tackle “clearly can cause a traumatic injury to the heart.” Given Fauci’s miserable track record of continual lies and self-aggrandizing, thinking people will naturally tend to believe the opposite of whatever this media darling charlatan claims on television.

But in addition to dismissing any vaccine skepticism, the Leftists also exploited the Hamlin tragedy to belittle and besmirch the sport of football. I wrote previously for American Greatness about the importance of football to America:

“As a people, we have long embraced an exceptional view of our place in the world and our national potential. Even the games we play exemplify our exceptionalism – none quite so much as football.

More than just a game, football forms a key pilar of our national culture and consciousness. For generations, football has helped transform American boys into men, all the while providing scintillating entertainment for fans who cannot get enough of gridiron action.”

But to the Left, football encapsulates so much of what they despise: masculinity and meritocracy, for starters. In addition, the game is uniquely American. Adding to liberal angst, the game even employs attractive women cheerleaders to excite the atmosphere. Manliness, nationalism, heterosexuality. This game puts it all on the field, literally!

So, rather than even consider any role for vaccines in the Hamlin event, the corporate media rushed to blame football for the tragedy. The Washington Post dismissed football as “violence…wrapped up in machismo, militarism, swagger, and patriotism.”  Scientific American threw the race card into the mix as well, with a headline bemoaning the “violence black men experience in football.”

Apparently the biggest hits on the gridiron are reserved for the black guys, which would be news to Joe Theismann. Joy Behar of the View, described by radio host Clay Travis as “the dumbest woman on TV” noted on the all-female show The View, that football fans tended to be “heterosexual” and even…aghast…”conservative.”

In addition, the unwarranted hysteria over Covid elevated a cult of “safetyism” into the guiding principle of much of American life. Under the guise of public health, we disregarded any semblance of appropriate risk/reward balance and opted in nearly every case for the seemingly maximalist “safe” course of action. Such a worldview has little room for a volatile sport of controlled violence like football.

Make no mistake, the Leftists hate football -- and they see an opening here. They can concurrently defend vaccine absolutism while also denigrating a game and culture that they despise.

Our job on the Right is to push back on both fronts.