Orange man does comparatively not bad thing (UPDATED: nevermind)

UPDATED: 2/4/25 2:21pm... um, so, yeah, I guess Rog kind of capitulated, and my semi-respect of the man and weak cap doffing below is thus rescinded.

“Almost nobody's competent, Paul. It's enough to make you cry to see how bad most people are at their jobs. If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind.” - Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

Think about how many websites you visit on an average day. You have your key social media apps and the links in your feed interesting enough to click, anything linked in an email, and maybe some habitual favs. So we’re talking, what? 20 sites a day? A few dozen, depending on your job requirements and/or addiction to the scroll-and-click?

Now consider that the administration of the President of the TV has scrubbed over two-hundred times that amount of government websites in his quest to eliminate a concept that I’m increasingly believing he thinks is a tangible thing that can be exterminated like roaches at Jean-Georges. 8,000 websites chalk full of important but benign data, guidelines, and advice dealing with anything having to do with what ghouls misunderstand or intentionally mislabel as the McCarthyism of this decade–DEI–and that which the ones immediately in charge of those sites are too frightened to risk their jobs over have very recently been taken down, per the New York Times.  .

Everything a certain side of American politics dislikes is now DEI, which is an acronym that not only most of them can’t actually spell out but has been misapplied so much that it has taken the baton from critical race theory in the bad-faith buzzword relay. Giant boat hits bridge and kills people? DEI. Wildfires? DEI. Plane crash? DEI. Why won't the grandkids talk to them anymore? DEI. 

The likely more accurate explanations for those disasters is some form of greed inevitably manifest as horrific death of people who don’t get to be part of that greed, but that would self-indict most of the faces on cable news or firing off viral tweets, so distraction it’s gonna have to be to continue to press that greed button while everyone is looking at the boogie man they’re pointing at that doesn’t seem to actually be there upon further inspection.

Oddly enough, there is one place in America that still has a hell of a lot of greed but is not kowtowing to DEI panic for now. 

On Monday at his annual State of the League-ish presser, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was asked about America’s national religion embracing, on the surface, what every major faith worldwide purports to do–diversity. Per Fox News (smirks), Goodell explained:

“We got into diversity efforts because we felt it was the right thing for the National Football League. And we’re going to continue those efforts, because we’ve not only convinced ourselves we’ve proven it to ourselves — it does make the NFL better,” Goodell said. “We’re not in this because it’s a trend do [sic] get into it or a trend to get out of it. Our efforts are fundamental in trying to attract the best possible talent in the National Football League both on and off the field as I said previously. We see that. We see how it benefits the National Football League, and so I think we’ll continue those efforts."

But what about "Go woke, go broke" culture and the sponsors and the coffers?

"We don’t make policies for our sponsors or any of the corporations or networks or partners that we deal with," he said. "We have a lot of conversations about the importance of it to us. We will obviously take everything into consideration…  There’s a lot of corporations who have been tied to so-called changing their diversity policies and haven’t really called directly about that. There’s a lot of conversations that go on about that."

He even deflected having his tenure specifically tied to advances in the league become more diverse off the field. 

Goodell said he didn’t have time to reflect about his role in the NFL’s diversity commitment but believed it made the league better.

"I am proud of it in this sense — I believe our diversity efforts have led to making the NFL better. It’s attracted better talent. We think we’re better when we get different perspectives, people with different backgrounds, whether they're women or men or people of color — we make ourselves stronger, and we make ourselves better when we have that," he said.

That’s … actually a much better response than I would have expected from any corporate exec, let alone the mouthpiece for the owners of the cheering for bodily destruction factory. 

Goodell is by no means an admirable guy–he makes well over $60 million a year to funnel fan hatred toward himself and away from the 32 owners who are mostly much worse people. And he isn’t exactly Riz Ahmed up there.

And the Rooney Rule the league hangs its Rob Lowe hat on cannot seem to stop stepping on its own toes every year and will just continue to… be, since it seems more problematic to get rid of it and more problematic to mandate a hiring quota and, gosh, that whole thing just sucks.

And the league’s coaching nepotism makes it suck more, and there doesn’t seem to be any attempt by the NFL to squash the hiring of failsons while claiming it encourages diversity.

But this is still the NFL–the most consumed entertainment product in the country–officially saying it will not be signing up for the Sith in the greatest of current culture wars. Even Disney has struggled to hold the line on this.  

And that has to rankle POTVS once word of it gets to him and makes one wonder if he’ll reboot his ragefest at the league from the Colin Kaepernick days which was a convenient vehicle for his forever salty feelings over being denied ownership of a franchise. (Man, it’s been pondered before, but, really, IF ONLY THE GUY HAD BEEN ALLOWED TO BUY THE BUFFALO BILLS WHERE WOULD WE BE AS A NATION RIGHT NOW NOT A DAILY FIREHOUSE OF INSANE STORIES ABOUT HOW RIGHT IN FRONT OF EVERYONE’S FACE DEMOCRACY IS BECOMING THE LITTERBOX OF A GOZILLIONAIRE ON KETAMINE WITH SKIN THINNER THAN THE NYLON ON THE DRAWSTRING BACKPACK OF HIS 19-YEAR-OLD GAMER BROS SNAPPING IPHONE PICS IN THE TREASURY OF SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS.)

So we’ll still be getting the ads during Latino Heritage Month that let people know, “Huh. Isiah Pacheco is Puerto Rican. How about that?” And there will probably still be vague phrases in small font in the back of end zones about something having to do with social awareness of something.

Not sure it’s all something to applaud, this whole NFL behemoth just keeping on its contented semi-aware and corporate progressive-esque way, but it’s more than most of the influential entities in America are putting up right now.