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I had a great weekend, thanks for asking. On Saturday, I joined a half million of my similarly-minded allies and marched on Washington, to share our viewpoints on the world.
There I was, from a distance, a speck in a crowd. But, like everything, it’s all about perspective. From up close, a tall guy in an American flag bandana and a “The Future is Female” sweatshirt. Alongside my wife, aunt, and friend, and smushed up against hundreds of thousands of others.
The Women’s March
Critics would say there was no central message to the march, but I would say that’s what made it so spectacular. Like our country, the Women’s March was a melting pot. While the primary focus was on women’s equality in our country, even that meant different things to different people.
To some, it meant holding people accountable, especially if they are the President. Especially especially if they are the President who bragged about sexual violence against women and are currently signing executive orders concerning women’s reproductive rights.
Others protested pay inequality in the workplace. Many wanted to ensure that their rights to marriage would be upheld, even if it wasn’t the exact marriage described in a book, thousands of years since its last update. There were racial, cultural, and geopolitical concerns too. At one point everyone around me joined together for a rendition of “This Land is Your Land,” which felt almost dystopian. But the truth is, everyone had a place and a voice out there.
Demonstrating for Democracy
Mostly, everyone wanted to tell the President and his appointees that they disliked the direction the country is headed. That even though the march wouldn’t immediately change the priorities of the Oval Office, that this is what the Bill of Rights afforded us, and THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE.
It was supportive, uplifting, creative, encouraging, friendly, exhilarating, and—for the first time in months—exceedingly optimistic. I stood both with people I loved and people I didn’t know and felt a coalesced kinship all around me. It was a we-first crowd trying to communicate to the greatest, most specular, tremendously me-first president in his language: excess and bluster.
Along Came Sunday
On Sunday I watched my favorite football team reach the Super Bowl, by not just beating their opponents but destroying them. Tom Brady and the Patriots shredded a soft Steelers defense, overwhelming them physically and emotionally in a 36-17 rout. After marching up and down the field for 60 minutes, the Patriots left no doubt they were back on top.
Being patriotic and being a Patriot fan—these things seem pretty unrelated. And yet, this weekend, they weren’t as distant as I’d expected.
This surprised me. While I’ve spent far more of my lifetime watching football than participating in protests, I enjoyed my experience on Saturday far more. And maybe that righteousness and activism is why I’m so angry at these accusations about my team.
Why This Season Matters
As a Greater Bostonian (in this sense, greater referring to both the area, AND the quality of my football team), this Super Bowl is extremely important to me. Not just because it would mean a fifth title for Tom Brady, securing him as the All-Time best to ever play the game. But because after a tumultuous two-plus years and zero-plus evidence of Deflategate, accepting that Super Bowl trophy would be the ultimate way to stick it to the commish.
But this season has also become an intertwined mess of football and politics for the Patriots. Tom Brady, head coach Bill Belichick, and team owner Bob Kraft have all had public ties to Donald Trump. And while it hasn’t taken away my enjoyment of the team’s success in the slightest, it has made me question the ethics of the men whose work I appreciate.
Last month, Charlotte Wilder of SBNation wrote that the Patriots have a Trump problem, an interesting but anecdotally-driven suggestion that Patriots fans are conflicted and even giving up on the team because of those Trumpy associations.
The Patriots Don’t Have a Trump Problem
While I also know some who have questioned their fandom recently, I have a bigger problem with the image of the Patriots being a team of Trump. First and foremost, there are 53 rostered Patriots every Sunday, and all we know is that one player and one coach call Trump a friend.
Secondly, though reporters noticed a MAGA hat in his locker, Tom Brady chooses not to talk about politics, a right afforded just as equally as the right for hundreds of thousands to shout loudly at our president from Pennsylvania Avenue. Not everyone can be or has to be Gregg Popovich. Tom Brady calls Donald Trump a friend, for whatever reason, but he never said he voted for him. In fact, Brady’s wife, Gisele Bündchen, is on the record that neither she nor her husband voted Trump in November.
Then there is Robert Kraft, the Patriots owner who also claims a great friendship with Trump. Kraft also happens to be the NFL team owner who donated the most money to President Obama’s campaign in 2012. The guy is a white collar billionaire, and if you need literal evidence of that, here are some of Kraft’s favorite shirts:
My point is that Kraft and I don’t have the same issue priorities. The political difference$ between Kraft and the Patriot fan ba$e are $ub$tantial. And also unimportant on any given Sunday.
Moreover, the idea that any fan should denounce a team for associations with Trump (or anyone with whom they disagree) is preposterous. I can be disappointed in Brady’s social network and love his right arm just like I can think Kanye West is a moron for his half-baked Trump rhetoric, but consider My Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Fantasy an all-time great album. Curt Schilling’s bloody sock game for the Red Sox in 2004 is still one of my favorite sports memories, even though nowadays I’d prefer to see him under a mound of dirt than on top of one.
This Super Bowl Is Not Political
But the most frustrating part of all of this is that now, the Twittersphere make the Super Bowl into some election redemption game. In this game, the Atlanta Falcons, who play in the same district that civil rights hero John Lewis represents, get to play The Good Guys while the Patriots are cast as Team Trump.
But wait a minute. Massachusetts is one of the most liberal states in America. And as Wilder points out, Massachusetts is the only state where every single county voted blue in November. Not only that, but all six New England states went blue for Hillary this year.
Meanwhile, Georgia is a red state with a deep-seated history of racism and conservative values. Let’s also not forget that Georgia didn’t remove the Confederate flag from its state capital until 2001. And that in this past election, Georgia voted for Trump.
Similar to how everyone at the Women’s March does not believe in all of the same things, even if we are temporarily on the same team, my fandom of the New England Patriots does not mean I am in full lockstep with the organization. I love where I’m from and want it clear that these false, simple narratives are no better than Sean Spicer’s alternative facts.
We’ve got two weeks of storylines about to be fed down our throats like gavage tubes for foie gras. I suggest taking time to appreciate Matt Ryan’s ascension or the stakes for Patriots all-timers. Or the Falcons’ pursuing their first title. Or the Brady, Belichick, and Goodell hate triangle. I mostly hope that the Patriots and Falcons conversations can stay off the political battlegrounds. Let’s focus on the pigskin, instead of the thin-skinned pig.
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