Michele Tafoya exhumes the Colin Kaepernick horse with her horsepucky statements
When I write about Kaepernick, I get a ton of handy solutions from audience who urge me to cease beating a useless horse. Quite a few deliver along the hilarious cartoon meme of a man flogging a dead horse. Never fails to get a chuckle!
Perfectly, sorry, useless-horsers, Kaepernick has been revived as a sizzling subject matter by your own ilk — Michele Tafoya and other right-wing alt-truthers.
Tafoya, who lately retired as a Television set sideline soccer reporter (i.e., microphone holder) for NBC and jumped into politics, is boasting that Kaepernick blackballed himself.
On “The Megyn Kelly Show” on Sirius Radio, Tafoya claimed, “You can’t have every thing your way in this life. You perform your way all-around and through the hurdles. If he seriously, really preferred … the a single factor he required, Megyn, in this lifestyle was to be a starting up quarterback in the NFL, he’d be one particular suitable now, given that he experienced the expertise.
“But he made some business enterprise selections, and I think he knew what he was jeopardizing, and I think that there are respectable problems about race in the NFL and everywhere else in America, but that is not why Colin Kaepernick is not in the NFL.”
Oops! In Tafoya’s initial foray into talking her political head, she fired a couple of photographs into her have foot.
Shot No. 1: Tafoya said that Kaepernick has the talent to be a commencing NFL quarterback, suitable now. The key argument of Kap-haters is that he does not have an NFL career mainly because he’s a lousy quarterback. Tafoya will be getting a stern memo from the committee.
Shot No. 2: Tafoya told Kelly “there are legitimate grievances about race in the NFL and in all places else in The usa.” This would seem to contradict what she not long ago informed Fox News’ malodorous Tucker Carlson: “It breaks my coronary heart that my kids are becoming taught that pores and skin shade matters.”
By the way, skin shade does subject to Kelly, who the moment said that Santa Claus can be only white.
Tafoya’s views on Kaepernick just can’t be dismissed as simply 1 person’s impression. Though she deviated from the far right’s scripted conversing details on Kaepernick, she did nail dwelling one particular important — and laughable — argument of the Kap-haters.
Which is this: Kaepernick does not have a career mainly because football is not essential to him. He’d instead do other things, like sue the league, and make Nike commercials, and hold free camps for inner-city young children. He doesn’t have time for football, at least not the form of time motivation demanded of an NFL quarterback.
This kind of alternate info do stand up to scrutiny, as prolonged as the scrutinizers are your Tucker Carlsons and your Megyn Kellys.
The factly truth is that nevertheless NFL quarterbacking does require enormous examine and prep, most NFL quarterbacks also have lives. Quite a few of them even have young children, a telltale sign that they took at least a few minutes away from video analyze. Many NFL quarterbacks are avid golfers, a pastime necessitating roughly the similar amount of money of time as earning a doctorate in nuclear physics.
But in Tafoya’s earth, Kaepernick has built “business decisions” to set soccer on some distant again burner whilst he sells sneakers and whines about nonexistent racism.
This much is accurate: Kaepernick does not commit much time finding out the outdated playbook these times, since he does not have a person. But I have it on reliable authority that he carries on to operate out on his possess, football-style exercise routines, with the similar commitment he had when he was utilized. He is wholesome and prepared to roll, and would entertain any legit NFL provides.
In 2013, I wrote a column about Kaepernick’s do the job patterns. I staked out the 49ers’ parking good deal, watched Kaepernick roll in at 6 a.m., head straight to an outdoor exercise routine pen in the darkish and start out pounding a StairMaster.
I talked to two safety guards at the players’ entrance.
“He was right here early each individual early morning even on times when the other gamers weren’t right here,” one of the guards explained.
The other guard stated, “He’ll be out there executing mad things. Functioning sprints in the dark. Pulling a weighted sled. Have you witnessed his ab muscles?”
Tafoya did not explain what the hell she intended by “business choices,” since when you’re getting grilled by Kelly, dangerous and irresponsibly obscure bullcorn receives passed together straight to the listening audience with out demand from customers for clarification.
Probably by “business conclusions,” Tafoya was referring to Kaepernick and basic safety Eric Reid suing the NFL for collusion, and profitable a settlement.
That would be overlooking the factly simple fact that Kaepernick was blackballed ahead of he sued the NFL. Which is what the lawsuit was about.
This substantially is apparent: Tafoya is adamant that Kaepernick’s protests and his political activism value him his NFL job.
If only he experienced stored his yap shut is the implied message of Tafoya, who told Kelly, “I wake up every single single morning, each individual morning, and there is a tug at my upper body, and the tug is telling me, ‘Michelle, you have to assist, someway you gotta support.’ … A single issue that I have acquired is that you cannot fret and think and complain, unless of course you are eager to do a little something about it.”
What Tafoya is accomplishing about it is lending her athletics cred to the simple fact-free of charge discussion remaining waged by the shut-up-and-dribble group.
In the veracity-challenged Breitbart news outlet, Dylan Gwinn wrote, “Tafoya draws the left’s ire since she speaks the fact: The NFL was generally there for Kaepernick if he desired it. He just didn’t want it all that poorly.”
Is that a reality? Neigh!
Scott Ostler is a columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @scottostler