Donald Trump is going to attend the Super Bowl on Sunday, and, ahem, coincidentally, the NFL has decided to replace the “End Racism” end zone message with something else.
Because, you know, they’d hate to offend the Racist-in-Chief there at the Super Bowl, in front of god and a billion people.
An NFL spokesman is trying to do an end-around to catch us with our eyes on the pulling blockers on the O line.
“We felt it was an appropriate statement for what the country has collectively endured, given recent tragedies, and can serve as an inspiration,” said the spokesman guy, Brian McCarthy, trying to explain why the league is replacing “End Racism” with “Choose Love,” which, they’d better watch out there, because that could come across as being a little too LGBTQ’y for Trump’s sensibilities.
“End Racism” has been on the end line of one of the two Super Bowl end zones since the 2021 game.
The other end zone this year will be topped with the message “It Takes All of Us.”
That one could also perhaps run afoul of the Trump/Musk co-presidency, which is actively working to shut down American democracy, to the benefits of their fellow oligarchs, who might prefer, “It Just Takes Us.”
Trump will attend the game as the guest of New Orleans Saints owner Gayle Benson, in case you’re a Saints fan, and are now considering lapsing.
The game will be played in New Orleans, not far from the site of a Jan. 1 mass-murder in which a former U.S. Army soldier rammed a rented truck through crowds celebrating the New Year in the French Quarter, killing 15 people and injuring 57 others.
Our NFL spokesman fella tried to make the “Choose Love” messaging somehow being about honoring the victims of that tragedy, the wildfires in Southern California and the recent plane-military helicopter crash in Washington.
I’m not sure I see the connection, but anyway.
The messaging on end zone end lines started appearing in 2020 as part of an effort to promote, and here come the magic words, diversity and inclusion.
(Yeah, ruh, roh.)
An internal NFL memo from 2020 said the messages were meant to convey “how football and the NFL brings people together to work as one and use our example and our actions to help conquer racism.”
Looks like we’re done with that pretense.