Given the utterly depressing nature of this election, you’d think people would relish any politics-free respite they could find. You would be wrong.
A few weeks ago, Jimmy Fallon’s softball interview with Donald Trump inspired all-to-predictable outrage from sites ranging from The Huffington Post and The Advocate to The Atlantic and Newsweek. More distressingly, the urge to politicize our most sacrosanct places has infiltrated my most cherished safe space: the New England Patriots football team. Pro Football Talk’s Darin Gantt recently scolded greatest living American Tom Brady for refusing to comment on the presidential race, specifically referring to Trump’s “grab them by the [wherever]” remark. Enduring endless interrogations regarding Roger Goodell’s phony vendetta Deflategate is one thing, but now the Patriot’s pressroom must be soiled with politics? Is nothing sacred?
This constant need to politicize evermore aspects of American life must stop. Our sports and entertainment stars owe us absolutely nothing.
Save your rants and tantrums. Jimmy Fallon is a comedian paid to make us laugh. Tom Brady is a quarterback paid to win games — and perhaps usher in the rapture. To the extent they have any social responsibilities, those duties hardly amount to more than not committing felonies; they don’t include validating or denigrating any political beliefs. This applies equally to stars such as Colin Kaepernick. The guilt trips attempted from some on the right — “his protest is disrespecting our country so he must stand!” and so forth — are equally pathetic. No one side has a monopoly on infantile whining. But the recent complaints regarding Fallon and Brady seem particularly shrill.
For instance, The Huffington Post, publishing the Platonic ideal of the anti-Fallon thinkpiece, insists Fallon should not “be let off the hook for humanizing a well-documented xenophobic, racist and misogynistic serial liar.” After all, “at their best, late-night hosts have been able to to a difficult line between comedy and responsibility.” The Huffington Post offers up David Letterman as an exemplary model, noting his shtick “was entertaining, but it was also important, and Letterman knew how to be both simultaneously.”
The idea that Fallon deserves flack because he has a responsibility to press Trump on his politics is nonsense, and the idea that we should want our comedians to shoulder such a responsibility is nonsense on stilts. There is a reasonable argument that Trump is such a unique threat to our democracy that heretofore politically neutral people must be recruited to the cause of rebuking Trump, but the effort to expand this enlistment process to the entertainment sphere seems misguided. Indeed, I’d argue this unnecessary blending of entertainment and politics is one among a multitude of reasons this nation is unfortunate enough to have a buffoonish reality TV star as a presidential contender. A country that relies on its late night TV hosts to provide political education is not civically healthy, and the solution to this problem is not to attempt to turn comedians into Cronkites; it’s to convince people they shouldn’t tune in to grown up class clowns for any sort of informative or reflective political commentary. The responsibility to challenge Trump on his rhetoric and proposals lies with the voters and political media, not the entertainment industry.
It’d be one thing if this competition to see who can hector or condemn Trump hardest were contained to late night TV — already a liberal echo chamber. But unfortunately that isn’t the case. After answering numerous football related questions, a reporter asked Brady: “Tom, you have kids of your own. How would you respond if your kids heard Donald Trump’s version of locker room talk?” To which Brady smiled, thanked the reporters and ended his press conference. A normal person would chalk Brady’s answer up to simply not wanting to answer any politics-related questions. Instead, PFT’s Darin Gantt insists by not responding to this off-topic question with discomfort or indignation, “Brady has tacitly implied that it wasn’t a big deal to him.” CSNNE’s Patriots beat reporter Tom Curran piled on, stating: “it’s unfathomable that Brady thinks for a nanosecond Trump’s comments aren’t a big deal,” and Brady “really ought to say so.”
No, he really ought not. The questions will not stop there, and the headlines will cause a distraction to the team. First it’s “Tom, you have kids, what do they think of Trump’s words about this.” Then, “Tom, you have Muslim friends, how about the ban?” Or, “Tom, would you call your Mexican friends rapists?” Then the inevitable headline: “Tom Brady Rebukes Trump,” which Trump would inevitably mention at a televised rally. One seemingly harmless question thus becomes a team-wide distraction. A blanket ban on discussing politics is the best and only way of not slipping down this slope. Athletes shouldn’t be scolded for this strategy, and to insist their silence implies approval is spiteful and uncharitable.
Ross Douthat, invoking George Orwell’s 1984, described the current entertainment media culture as one of “institutionalized political correctness and John Oliver explaining the news to you, forever.” The athletes and vanishing minority of late night hosts who don’t wish to toe this party line don’t need to be celebrated with breathless Facebook shares like their Trump-bashing counterparts (“Watch Trevor Noah EVISCERATE This Straw Man”). But nor should they be sent off to the Room 101 that is our culture’s outrage-click industry.
Matt Winesett is a Senior Associate Editor for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at m.winesett@cavalierdaily.com.
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