But he hasn’t always dealt well with adversity. Control
is important to Rodgers, and when his preternatural cool is challenged—when
his team is behind or playing tough opponents in the
playoffs—he often chokes.
Rodgers’ recent public relations disaster
is no different.
Rather than fess up after being caught in a
lie
about his vaccination status, Rodgers doubled down with misinformation and
logical fallacies that would make his Berkeley professors weep.
In last Friday’s now-infamous interview
with Pat McAfee, Rodgers began with a transparently-scripted ad
hominem attack on the “woke mob” and
then played the victim with a reference to the “final nail” being put in his
“cancel culture casket.”
He then somehow choked out the words that he would “set
the record straight” while doing the exact opposite.
He claimed that he was allergic to the mRNA vaccines without disclosing the nature of the allergy or noting that severe reactions to vaccines are extremely rare—the CDC estimates that “2 to 5” people in every million experience anaphylaxis from the mRNA vaccines.
Despite the trove of CDC
data
showing the Johnson & Johnson shot to be safe, he claimed he hadn’t gotten
the J & J because of anecdotal “evidence” (friends
who had gotten sick from the Johnson & Johnson).
He played the parenting card, saying that he was
reluctant to get the Johnson & Johnson shot because he wanted to have
children, though there is no
evidence that vaccinations negatively impact fertility.
He defended his statement
to a reporter in August (“Yeah, I’ve been immunized”) who
had asked if he was vaccinated, rather than admit that he had finessed a simple question with a
deceptive and ambiguous
answer.
He said he was getting treatment advice from Joe
Rogan, a podcaster not
exactly known for medical literacy.
He tried to create the impression that he had had a
rigorous alternative treatment protocol, but there’s zero
evidence that alternative treatments work and the drug he
cited, ivermectin, is a cattle de-wormer which has not
been proven to protect people from COVID.
Worst of all, he defended his selfish decisions to lie
about his vaccination status, to not wear a mask while speaking to reporters
who thought he was vaccinated, to jeopardize his teammates and coaches by not
wearing a mask, by misquoting
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “Letter
from Birmingham Jail.”
In Aaron Rodgers’ world, he’s a martyr, comparable to a
Black activist who was spit
on,
stabbed,
and ultimately took a fatal bullet to the face in
his quest to gain civil rights for millions of oppressed people.
Add another record to Rodgers’ career: issuing the
most loathsome example of false equivalence
ever uttered by an overpaid prima
donna jock.
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This piece originally appeared at RawStory
