How’s everyone’s weekend going?
Thanks for spending a portion of your Sunday with the Six.
Let’s get right to it.
STUPIDITY REIGNS, BUT MERITOCRACY WINS
We are in the midst of graduation season and all of its silly splendor.
Remember the days when college commencement addresses were boring exercises to fill time until we got to the good stuff, like the tequila and cigars?
(Many life lessons from the movie “Billy Madison.” In our times, Adam Sandler’s short but sweet podium speech may be the most poignant.)
The Big I’s—identitarianism and the internet—have inflicted a mind virus over the country we can’t shake. This is a pandemic doing actual harm; the only solution total annihilation. But we’re not there yet and we’re left with another reminder this week of how far we have to go.
Harrison Butker is a professional place kicker. He happens to play for the Super Bowl winning Kansas City Chiefs. Outside the City of Kansas and kicking fraternities, Butker was leading a relatively anonymous life before last weekend.
Hired to be the graduation commencement speaker at Benedictine College in Atchinson, Kansas, Butker didn’t take the podium and spout cliched platitudes about taking the road less traveled or living an unordinary life.
Instead, he advised the assembled graduates to take the road most traveled, one foundational in Christian values.
Butker encouraged female graduates to embrace becoming mothers, wives and homemakers. He told men they "set the tone of the culture." He took shots at the overindulgence of Pride Month and President Joe Biden for his non-Catholic Catholicism.
Benedictine is a Midwestern, Catholic school. Butker understood his audience and delivered a message straight out of the nuclear family, conservative rural American playbook.
He did as a commencement speaker should do: share his life’s path, impart and pass down wisdom gained through life experience. The graduates can take what they want from it or leave it.
If only these things were that simple in the year 2024.
Once clips of Butker’s talk hit the internet and chopped up on social media platforms, all hell broke loose.
Butker, a white male, already brought a suspect background to the identitarian gatekeepers of the marketplace of ideas. For their perspective, the instant Butker opened his mouth and started talking about family values and Godly pursuits, well that’s enough of that! Let the Shame Games begin.
Members of mainstream sports media, some of the dumbest people on the planet, predictably painted Butker as a villain, a member of a lunatic “fringe.” The NFL felt the need to make a statement (from its DEI hack, no less) as if its fan base would buy less $20 beers at stadiums this fall if the league hadn’t publicly disassociated itself from a placekicker. There are reportedly multiple Change.org petitions with the sole purpose of getting Butker fired. The City of Kansas City basically doxxed Butker, going so far as to publish the city where he resides.
Judging by this reaction, Butker is now thrown in with all the other cretinous Klansman who say out loud what is statistically true, that humans are happier when they follow old fashioned bourgeois middle class values: graduate high school, get a job, get married, then have children.
We can bet this to be true—if Butker had taken his roughly 20-minute long speech and instead railed against Trump, advocated for abortion rights and gun control, these same people would be writing columns praising a professional athlete “for using his platform to make a difference.” But he dared to talk about choices, one of those having and raising kids. And he said it at a Catholic school on his own time! He didn’t address it in a postgame press conference or while representing the Chiefs. The degree of venom directed at Butker is mindblowing, gobsmackingly insane behavior. But fortunately, it won’t result in him losing his job.
Here’s what the thought police nincompoops don’t understand: professional sports is the ultimate meritocracy. Performance—not identity—matters.
Butker is arguably the best kicker in the NFL. Those players don’t grow on trees, especially for a team with annual Super Bowl aspirations.
Maybe Butker knew that before he said what he said last week. Maybe he knew he had the job security to speak honestly about his personal worldview. He’s paying a price for voicing his convictions.
We can disagree with Butker and share that perspective on social media but to say his perspective is invalid because it doesn’t reflect life choices you made? That’s infantile and childish. But that’s the position of so many adult-aged Americans in 2024 and it’s ruinous to having meaningful conversations on or off line.
I don’t agree with everything Butker said. Many of you reading probably feel the same. That’s fair. But I’m glad he said it as his core message is fundamentally patriotic and spiritual: how all Americans should live how we want in a way that makes us happy and successful.
Be grateful we live in a country where we have the choice to live how we choose.
Let’s proceed with the Six.
1. The Collapse Of The News Media.
This terrific, spot on essay from Politico and media writer Jack Shafer is less a blow-by-blow account of the many news organizations going under and more a statement about the shrinking confidence and tempered ambitions of the outlets that are left. This piece’s power lies in the spirit of old school but mostly now retired journalists Shafer talks to, including a former Washington Post editor who put a sign over his office with the word “Swagger” written on it. The news biz needs more people with swagger but I don’t have much optimism.
One of the biggest problems we face as a society at the local, state and national level is citizen lethargy. People across the board are not motivated to participate in our institutions. Entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale takes up this issue—hammering the business elite class in the process—in this compelling essay via his newsletter. He writes: “Building without fighting cedes the field to those who fight without building. Unfortunately, this is a widespread problem among what we could call the moderate business elite in the United States—wealthy people that don’t bother fighting against the immense pressures to shut up and go along.”
3. The Professor, The Caregiver And The Missing $30M.
This is an weird, messy tale of financial elder abuse, in which the person who makes off with the missing money says she was abused by the person whose fortune she walks off with, making both lead characters a combination of victim and villain. The best stories like these make it hard to know who to root for, and this one, published by Toronto Life, delivered.
4. Everest Climbers Breaking Records.
Last Sunday saw two new records posted on Mt. Everest, with Nepali guide Kami Rita Sherpa scaling the mountain for a record 29th time at the age of 54, the highest-ever number of summits, while on the very same day Kenton Cool, also a guide, summited the peak for the 18th time, marking the most ascents made by a foreigner. This is the very beginning of the climbing season on Mount Everest, once a recognizable and impressive achievement in mountaineering but has gone way commercial over the decades, with Everest now being the climbing equivalent to an open gym athletic facility that grants about 800 sporty rich people an ego boost in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars.
5. Sports Is Betting It All On Gambling.
If you’ve watched any pro sports in recent years, you were no doubt bombarded by sports gambling ads, as sports leagues and TV networks have become inexorably linked with the booming sports betting business. Few outlets have examined the scale of this economy, and the potential health crisis it has created, but this piece from Defector takes a stab at the subject, likening sports app-based gambling to “selling you cigarettes through your phone.”
6. Don’t Mess With The Bull. Ever.
Like most Six readers, I’ve enjoyed many a Mexican beach over the years. In trips to Cancun and other locales, there are a few rules. One of them is never abandon a cooler. Another is never go near a stray bull. This tourist learned the hard way. Like bears, bulls are undefeated.
Thanks for reading everybody and have a great rest of your weekend.
Have a suggestion for The Sunday Six? Send email to jonjkerr@gmail.com.