CNN host and self-appointed guardian of truth Jim Acosta welcomed sports reporter Rachel Nichols to Friday’s CNN Newsroom for a factually-challenged segment about Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker’s commencement address to Benedictine College, where he declared that female graduates may get more satisfaction from their family lives than their careers. For Acosta, it was obvious Butker is benefiting from a double standard that the ostracized Colin Kaepernick is not.
Acosta rambled, “Well, and is there a double standard here? I mean Colin Kaepernick. I mean, he takes a knee to protest police brutality and gets banned from the NFL, can't get a job in the NFL. Harrison Butker gives this speech, goes wide right so to speak and the NFL says, 'well, you know he was on his day off when he gave this speech, no big deal.' I'm sorry, what?”
Like Butker’s field goals, there are three points worth mentioning. First, Kaepernick didn’t just “protest police brutality.” He went to Miami, of all places, and praised Fidel Castro and compared getting paid millions of dollars for a voluntary job to slavery. Second, the NFL went out of its way to appease him. You can’t watch an NFL game today without seeing something like “It takes all of us” or “end racism” on the back of the end zones. Finally, Kaepernick began his refusal to stand for the national anthem in August 2016, he was benched for poor play the previous season and later that same season.
[see NewsBusters for more]