Ray Lewis dresses like a guilty man.
This is what immediately came to mind yesterday as I was reading that the Baltimore Ravens have had to hire extra security for the statue of Lewis outside of M&T Bank Stadium. Lewis, of course, knelt during the national anthem before Baltimore’s game in London—an act that was initially interpreted as support for the valueless NFL “protests” Sunday, until he clarified that he wasn’t for the cause; he was just confused and thought he was at church. Unfortunately, this explanation did nothing to satiate the rabid fans thirsty for uppity-NFL-nigger blood, as a petition calling for his statue to be removed now has over 50,000 signatures.
This entire ordeal is a gazpacho of abject idiocy. There’s Ray Lewis’ dumb ass kneeling like he’s in a church overflow room with sunglasses on like the deacons won’t see him if he can’t see them. There’s his even dumber explanation for why he was kneeling, as if he didn’t know exactly how it would be interpreted. (But maybe he did?) And then there’s the 58,000 fucking nincompoops who are:
- upset that Lewis did something he clearly and stupidly said he did not do,
- targeting their fury at a thing (protesting the flag) that is clearly not the reason for the protest that they are upset about, and
- unaware that their rationales for being upset about protesting the flag—which, again, is NOT what’s being protested—negate the point of the flag existing.
“We’re mad that they’re protesting the flag!”
“They’re not protesting the flag, though. Just attempting to bring attention to racial injustice with a peaceful public protest. But even if they were protesting the flag—which they’re not—doesn’t the flag stand for freedom? Like, for instance, the freedom to protest the flag?”
“DERRRRRRdbyukfbykterdsenulUNGRATEFUL! WHERE’S MY LIGHTER FLUID SO I CAN BURN THIS FALCONS OVEN MITT IN MY KITCHEN THAT’S ALREADY KINDA BURNT CAUSE IT’S AN OVEN MITT BUT AMERICA!!!”
It’s been almost a year now since over 60 million of us decided, consciously and with agency, to elect Donald Trump president of the United States. Since then, there’s been no shortage of effort and energy spent attempting to explain and contextualize his political ascent and victory. The rightest answers, of course, involve race. Race-based fears and anxieties. Racial animosities. Racist misinformation and dog whistling. Gerrymandering. A gradual devaluing in white people’s minds of what it’s supposed to mean to be white. A clear repudiation of Barack Obama. Any answer other than one of these is peripheral; the cranberry sauce on the “How the fuck did Trump’s bitch ass get here?” Thanksgiving table.
But I think we need to make space for another dish. There are A LOT of seriously and sincerely stupid-ass motherfuckers in this country. Grown motherfuckers who graduated from high school (and college!) and do not know how facts work or where to even begin to find them. And believe the wildest and stupidest and silliest pseudo facts and conspiracy theories known to man. And exist in bubbles of stupidity, where they’ve built barricades to keep all the stupidity in and eat food with stupidity-injected nutrients and pay stupidity-guarding sentinels generous salaries to guard the exits, stupidly. Trump isn’t just president of the United States and grand marshal of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He’s also king of the doofuses, and his kingdom is race-neutral.
Of course, being stupid for stupid’s sake isn’t the worst thing in the world. You can be sweet and stupid, like Forrest Gump. Also, although this platform is called Very Smart Brothas, I am not particularly smart. Just yesterday I accidentally microwaved some lettuce and then attempted to eat said microwaved lettuce—forgetting that I’d just microwaved it—and burned my tongue. I then attempted to cool said tongue by drinking some cranberry juice. Because, again, I am not smart. We should be called “Not So Very Smart Brothas.” (Because burn!)
But what makes this pervasive and pandemic stupidity so aggravating and depressing is that so many sincerely stupid motherfuckers have the audacity to believe that they’re smart—and attempt to tease people with this fabricated intellect when they can’t even properly pluralize fucking nouns. I get on the internet and I watch the news and I read comments and I listen to people talk at bars and I feel like Haley Joel Osment. I see stupid motherfuckers walking around like regular people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re stupid motherfuckers.
And I guess what I want to know is whether they’ve always been here, and the internet and the lack of barriers to discourse has brought them all out. Like a house that’s been roach-infested but you didn’t know until you left a cake out one night. Or did we just get this stupid? Have we (collectively) gotten progressively dumber and dumber? And if so, whose fault is that? Our parents? The schools? The government? Pop-Tarts? It’s the fault of those fuckboy Pop-Tarts, ain’t it? Thot-ass Pop-Tarts in their shiny silver suits dumbing us down at breakfast.
Anyway, in summary, Ray Lewis dresses like he’s guilty of crimes we haven’t even accused him of, and the entire fucking country is one big-ass unapproved comment.
Happy Thursday!