Watching Harrison Butker’s speech to the graduating class of Benedictine College, I thought to myself that the country must John Rocker an excuse.
Rocker, for those too young to remember, was a relief pitcher for the Atlanta Braves whose reputation and career were damaged by quotes he made to a Sports Illustrated writer in 1999.
He said a lot of things in that article, but what stuck like glue was this comment about the New York Mets and their fans: “Imagine having to pick up the [Number] 7 train to the stadium, looking like you are [riding through] Beirut next to a boy with purple hair next to a queer with AIDS next to a guy who just got out of prison for the fourth time next to a 20 year old mother with four children. It’s depressing.”
And this: “The biggest thing I don’t like about New York is the foreigners. I’m not a big fan of foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anyone speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish and everything up there. How the hell did they get to this country?
Even back then, long before social media and when less than half the country was connected to the Internet, the news went viral. It even spawned a website, rockersucks.com, where people could complain about him on what were then called online “bulletin boards.”
Rocker was universally criticized for his comments. If someone agreed with him, they usually had the decency to keep it a secret.
Ultimately, John Rocker was just a man ahead of his time. His comments about queer people, single mothers, and foreigners invading America are essentially the Republican Party’s 2024 platform.
Which brings us to Butker’s commencement speech, the walk-on for the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs.
His Benedictine commencement speech was a strange mix of nostalgia for the 1950s as portrayed in “Leave it to Beaver” along with the Catholic Church of the Dark Ages.
The son of an accomplished medical physicist, Butker told the women of the Class of 2024, essentially, that they didn’t need to worry their pretty little heads about careers, because it would be better for everyone if they stayed on their path, got married, met their husbands. needs and give you many strong children.
This got a lot of attention.
Less attention was paid when he criticized the LBGTQ rights movement as “the kind of pride in mortal sin that has an entire month dedicated to it” and claimed that someone (he didn’t say who) is “pushing dangerous gender ideologies on young people.” of America .”
Even his exhortation for male graduates to take care of the children they father (which I actually agree with) felt like an indirect slap at single mothers, who, according to Butker, are too weak to manage their children themselves. .
“As men, we set the tone for culture,” he said. “And when this is absent, disorder, dysfunction and chaos ensue. This absence of men in the home is what plays a huge role in the violence we see across the country.”
Butker’s tone was polite and he didn’t go everywhere Rocker went – I didn’t see any mention of foreigners in his commencement speech.
But two out of three isn’t bad (except when you make a living kicking goals).
Like Rocker, Butker is being criticized for his pronouncements.
But the big difference between then and now is how many people are defending Butker’s outdated bigotry, including our own Kansas senator, Roger Marshall.
He tweeted: “I support Harrison Butker. Families, babies, and strong moms and dads are a BEAUTIFUL thing. No amount of liberal enlightenment and manufactured “outrage” will change our convictions. Christ is King.”
I assume the senator didn’t hear the whole speech.
If he had, he would have heard Butker criticizing the type of modern Christian worship practiced in the non-denominational Protestant church Marshall attends.
At Butker World, Christian liturgy must be taught in Latin rather than English because “I believe that just as the God of the Old Testament was quite specific in the way he wanted to be worshiped, the same is true of us today.” He also criticized the clergy for being friendly to their congregations rather than aloof and reserved as in the good old days.
Butker also had harsh words for the institution where Marshall works: “Congress just passed a bill where declaring something as basic as the biblical teaching of who killed Jesus could land you in prison.”
Besides being a way of saying “the Jews killed Jesus”, Butker is completely wrong.
The House recently passed a resolution that expands the definition of anti-Semitism and calls on the Department of Education to withhold federal funding from educational institutions that discriminate against Jews. No mention of prison sentence and still awaiting vote in the Senate.
So for Senator Marshall, you might think you support Harrison Butker.
But I don’t think he’s on your side.
