Showing posts with label Chiefs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chiefs. Show all posts

Sunday, May 26, 2024

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

(Image from Today show)
Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Harrison Butker gave the commencement address at Benedictine College, a private Catholic college in Atchison, Kansas, on May 11th. He espoused traditional Catholic values in a way that offended America's dominant secular culture. For example, [bold added]
For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.
Thousands called for his firing by the Chiefs from other statements:
Bad policies and poor leadership have negatively impacted major life issues. Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values in media, all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder.

Our own nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith, but at the same time is delusional enough to make the Sign of the Cross during a pro-abortion rally. He has been so vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies that I'm sure to many people it appears that you can be both Catholic and pro-choice.
Some commentators cited the NFL's apparent hypocrisy in not firing Harrison Butker while it blackballed Colin Kaepernick for kneeling when the National Anthem was being played. For the record, I supported the former 49ers quarterback then, but there is a clear difference between the two: CK expressed his views in full uniform while millions had to watch, but HB was speaking as a private citizen on his own time to a Catholic audience. Most Americans agree that employers have the right to fire employees for workplace behavior that could damage customer relationships.

(To be fair, there were liberal celebrities, like Bill Maher and Whoopi Goldberg, who came to HB's defense while disagreeing with the content of his speech.)

To this humble blogger, what was most interesting about the speech was the importance he placed on the traditional Latin mass:
I've been very vocal in my love and devotion to the TLM and its necessity for our lives. But what I think gets misunderstood is that people who attend the TLM do so out of pride or preference. I can speak to my own experience, but for most people I have come across within these communities this simply is not true. I do not attend the TLM because I think I am better than others, or for the smells and bells, or even for the love of Latin. I attend the TLM because I believe, just as the God of the Old Testament was pretty particular in how he wanted to be worshipped, the same holds true for us today. It is through the TLM that I encountered order, and began to pursue it in my own life. Aside from the TLM itself, too many of our sacred traditions have been relegated to things of the past, when in my parish, things such as ember days, days when we fast and pray for vocations and for our priests, are still adhered to. The TLM is so essential that I would challenge each of you to pick a place to move where it is readily available.
Three years ago Pope Francis gave local bishops the authority to ban the Latin mass. Even this non-Catholic sees the benefit of a tradition that has great meaning to some, so why not keep it optional? Is Pope Francis on "the other side" in the culture wars?

After the break is the text of Harrison Butker's speech from the National Catholic Register:



Wednesday, January 31, 2024

That Conspiracy Theory is Crazy....or is it?

Chiefs tight-end Travis Kelce and friend
It sounds like such an outlandish conspiracy theory that one may well suspect that it's a "false flag" planted by Democrats posing as Republicans to make the latter look ridiculous.

The theory, as stated by Scott Ostler of the Chronicle:
Thanks to a host of right-wing news sources with a wide collective audience, everyone with half a brain (but no more) is convinced that the Democratic Party and the NFL have joined in a conspiracy to assure that the Chiefs beat the 49ers.

Major right-wing media influencers, and even a one-time presidential hopeful, are uniting to spread the word of this devious plot, the purpose of which is to provide Swift an even greater platform from which to rock the 2024 vote in favor of Joe Biden.
Even the Wall Street Journal editorial page saw fit to make some remarks:
The story is that the Super Bowl on Feb. 11 will be rigged so that the Chiefs win in a dramatic fashion. Ms. Swift and Mr. Kelce will get engaged. That way they’ll be at peak influence to cut a joint October ad for Mr. Biden.

This is either lunacy or it’s theater. Our guess is the latter. Many of its purveyors well know they’re putting on an act, but there’s fame and notoriety and money to be had from spinning conspiracy theories, the crazier the better.

Yet the paranoia on the right about a romance between the most popular singer in the world and an NFL player does make Republicans seem, frankly, weird.
Frankly, these analysts should look deeper. This could really be a plot by the San Francisco 49ers to get the conservative half of the country to root for them. San Francisco's homelessness, drugs, crime, and filth have threatened to taint the 49ers by their association with the City.

Come aboard the 49ers bandwagon, MAGAns. Don't give Kelce-Swift or Swift-Kelce a platform at the Super Bowl! (Hey, that sounds like a ticket that has greater appeal than the choice this year, and, get this, both will turn 35 by the end of this year.)

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Winning by Losing

QB's Mahomes and Garoppolo after the game (Chron photo)
When the 49ers lost the Super Bowl to the Chiefs on February 2nd, Bay Area fans were, of course, disappointed.

But not too badly.
  • The 49ers had far outperformed expectations for the season.
  • It was a terrific game that wasn't decided until the final minutes.
  • The 49ers have a good, young team that should make them contenders for years.

    2017 Warriors parade, Oakland (WSJ photo)
    Now comes the report that many lives were possibly saved because the 49ers did not have a victory parade:
    It’s impossible to know precisely how many people would have packed the streets to fete quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, coach Kyle Shanahan and the rest of the 49ers. But it’s possible to offer a rough estimate: a lot of people.

    When the Golden State Warriors won their three recent championships, the parades in Oakland attracted reported crowds of between 500,000 to 1.5 million fans.
    But wasn't San Francisco's gain Kansas City's loss? Not this time.
    ...the Chiefs winning the Super Bowl turned out to be a public health savior. Kansas City happened to be one of the last NFL cities to report its first case of the virus, and the hundreds of thousands of long-suffering fans who celebrated on Feb. 5 were about six weeks behind San Francisco. Not until March 18 did Kansas City report its first case. Bay Area residents had been ordered to shelter-in-place by then.
    San Francisco fans lamented that Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes was perhaps the only player in the league who could have overcome a 10-point lead against the 49er defense in the fourth quarter.

    Thank God he was there, as both cities won.
  • Monday, February 03, 2020

    Super Bowl LIV: Chiefs 31, 49ers 20

    QB's Mahomes and Garoppolo after the game (Chron photo)
    The local team didn't win, but it was a pretty good Super Bowl. The lead changed hands several times, and the game wasn't resolved until the 49ers had to give up the ball on downs on a must-score drive in the 4th quarter. (I suppose a "great" Super Bowl is one that features spectacular plays and a game-winning TD in the final minute.)

    Also making it good: there were no questionable calls, and the losers, who were the better team for the first 54 minutes, have no one to blame but themselves for allowing the Chiefs to score the last 21 points in the game.

    Also, I was happy to see good-guy Andy Reid, 61, win a Super Bowl after 22 years of being a head coach in the NFL.

    The 49ers have a young team, with only a few at risk for leaving next year, and a brilliant young head coach in Kyle Shanahan. They should be contenders for years.

    Wait till next year....