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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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I love how social and mainstream media pearlclutching over Butker has pretty much catapulted him to being the third most famous Chief via the Streisand effect. I’d never heard of him before this.

I still have no interest in listening to his speech, looking into his opinions (they’re probably kind of stupid), or watching him or the NFL in general, but he’s making the usual insufferables seethe so I like him. I’ll just donate my ki from afar like he’s Goku charging up a Spirit Bomb.

It helps that most of his fellow NFL players have greater idpol protections and hold views that are even more politically incorrect about women and 2SLGBTQIA+ (views that are sometimes physically expressed to the former in a fiery, but mostly peaceful manner). However, they just don’t have the desire or ability to introspect on a worldview and go around giving speeches. So Butker likely enjoys some low-key solidarity.

The Chiefs as Superbowl champions in an OT victory and the biggest hotbed of off-field drama, gossip, and lolcowery? Maybe the NFL is indeed fixed like boxing, instead of real like pro-wrestling.

Yeah, what is it with Chiefs-related news lately? They're also the team for whom a Deadspin reporter went to a game and decided to defame a 9-year-old in team colors bodypaint, and got Deadspin sued as a result. All these things happening all at once, and centered around people and events conspicuously connected to this one team ... would be an interesting coincidence.

Butker was already the third most famous chief, albeit by more distance; he scored the OT points for two superbowl victories and had been in the news for some feel-good society pages stories.

It’s like the inverse of the Mitch Hedberg joke. “I’m now the third most famous player on the Chiefs. I already was before, but I still am now, too.”