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Throughout his weekly look on The Pat McAfee Show, vocal anti-vaxxer Aaron Rodgers took a shot at Travis Kelce for showing in a PSA encouraging individuals to get each their COVID boosters and flu pictures, referring to him as “Mr. Pfizer.”
McAfee laughed fairly onerous on the joke, saying throughout a later present that a part of that’s as a result of he was fascinated about the response Rodgers would get on-line, which he definitely did get. Rodgers is clearly hooked on consideration, and I assume I’m a part of the issue as a result of I’m giving him some extra.
I’m not right here to police jokes. It was only a joke in spite of everything, however Aaron Rodgers has constantly gone on The Pat McAfee Show and non-jokingly peddled misinformation about COVID vaccines, and never as soon as to my data has McAfee pushed again.
Rodgers has been making weekly appearances on the present for 2 years now, and did so after he was found to have lied about his vaccination standing, and issued a phrase salad of an apology, fielding softballs from McAfee and former teammate, AJ Hawk. Watching McAfee and Hawk throughout that 2021 interview made me surprise if that’s what it was like within the Inexperienced Bay Packers’ locker room all these years.
Possibly it’s unfair to anticipate somebody like McAfee, who’s clearly an entertainer, to do the job of a journalist and really counter Rodgers’ conspiracy theories with info. That being stated, it shouldn’t be an excessive amount of to ask him to cease being Aaron Rodgers’ PR crew.
Later within the week, McAfee recounted the interview on his present, saying “That was a stable joke. It was a stable joke. Now clearly there are individuals on the web who didn’t respect the best way Aaron cracked a joke at Travis’ expense, due to a vaccine, particularly with Aaron working for Johnson & Johnson at present on the New York Jets.” [Ed. note: Jets owner Woody Johnson is an heir to the J&J pharmaceutical empire.]
That’s an attention-grabbing piece of hypocrisy that McAfee may’ve introduced up whereas interviewing Rodgers, however after all, he saved it for a later date.
One other member of the present, Ty Schmit even speculated that Rodgers made the joke as a result of he was jealous of Kelce (allegedly) relationship Taylor Swift, or as a result of he’s in State Farm commercials. However to not Rodgers’ face. By no means to his face.
Even when McAfee doesn’t vehemently disagree with Rodgers about vaccines, he clearly does no less than considerably as a result of he himself is vaccinated, and selected to work for a community with a vaccine mandate. He doesn’t imagine in Rodgers’ reasoning for not being vaccinated, however he simply lets Rodgers say any loopy factor he needs with out questioning something.
I imagine the explanation nobody on the present ever pushes again towards Rodgers or provides him any grief about something is that they’re frightened they’ll piss him off sufficient that he stops approaching the present.
The Pat McAfee Present debuted on ESPN on Sept. 7, and has skilled a stellar month of rankings with 242 million across all platforms from its begin to Sept. 29. I can’t say something about that. That’s unbelievable for a present that’s on throughout the center of enterprise days.
I’m skeptical about whether or not this efficiency will proceed. Reveals are likely to obtain the best rankings after they debut after which decline and stage out as time goes on. The PMS was an enormous success earlier than ever being on ESPN, and it looks like it has introduced its viewers to the community, however I’m wondering if ESPN’s conventional viewers will come round.
The format and presentation of the present hasn’t modified, and there’s one thing inherently bizarre about seeing a more moderen type of media collide with conventional media. It’s like seeing a late-night discuss present host make a joke a couple of TikTok development.
Irrespective of how profitable the present is, McAfee definitely needs to take pleasure in a ranking enhance from weekly Rodgers interviews, and he’s not going to do something to lose that.
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