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Aaron Rodgers’ damage control attempts to put him back on both sides of the fence

Aaron Rodgers stands by what he said.

Before parsing Tuesday’s carefully crafted mea culpa it’s vitally important to keep this in mind. Rodgers doesn’t regret his appearance on the Pat McAfee Show last week.

Doesn’t regret extolling the virtues of Joe Rogan, or the non-FDA approved use of Ivermectin or any of the junk science he trotted out to explain why calling himself “immunized” wasn’t technically lying. Rodgers, the reigning NFL MVP and one of the league’s most marketable players does, however, take responsibility for those comments, though that would depend on how he defines “responsibility” now, wouldn’t it?

Last week responsibility was a “woke mob” coming to “cancel” him for spreading dangerous misinformation. This week none of those buzzwords came into play because Rodgers did his best not to say anything at all.

Except, of course, that he stood by his previous comments.

In his latest appearance on the Pat McAfee Show, the quarterback refused to say exactly what he got wrong last week, instead using time-worn platitudes to feign remorse for upsetting a certain group of people. We’re not exactly sure who, though, because he doesn’t want to say. That would be divisive, you see, and Tuesday wasn’t about retreading battle lines for Rodgers so much as it was about entrenching himself on both sides with rhetoric no one could disagree on.

“I’m an athlete, not an activist. I’m going to go back to do what I do best and that’s playing ball.”

“I made some comments that people might’ve felt are misleading. To anybody who felt misled by those comments, I take full responsibility for those comments.”

“I respect everybody’s opinion…. Hate is not going to bring us out of this pandemic…. I’m not going to hate on anybody that has said anything about me…. It’s a time to move forward for me and talk about football.”

Who could be mad at statements like that?

Certainly not sponsors like State Farm, which used almost the exact same language in announcing they’d keep Rodgers on as a spokesman — though commercials featuring the QB were hard to find on TV Sunday. Definitely not the Packers’ media relations department, which can now point to the QB’s own words rather than discuss what it did and did not know about Rodgers’ status. Rodgers kinda-sorta apologized, so that’s it. No need to address it any further.

Except he still stands by his statements.

Including that an NFL doctor allegedly told him those who take the vaccine can’t get COVID-19 despite both the league and NFLPA denying that such a meeting ever took place. Rodgers stands by saying that those who do get COVID are provided greater immunity against it — a claim that a Google search debunks in less time than Rodgers usually has in the pocket. He’s not an activist, you see, he just quotes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when describing why he broke collectively bargained protocols.

 

In the days since revealing himself as a “critical thinker” to McAfee, Rodgers has spent his time reading, talking to friends like Rogan who’ve had COVID and consulting with his medical team.

It appears the only thing the quarterback hasn’t done is listen. If he had, maybe he’d realize this isn’t an issue he can play both sides on.

Aaron Rodgers isn’t the least bit remorseful over the discredited statements he made. He just knows how to sound like he is.

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