Liberals Rip Cardinals President Michael Bidwill for Endorsing Brett Kavanaugh

Michael Bidwill
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
Warner Todd Huston

Liberals are piling on Arizona Cardinals President Michael Bidwill for posting a note of support for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, on his team website. Most detractors are saying that Bidwill should stay out of politics even though the endorsement was personal, and not political.

Bidwill’s note explained that he supports Kavanaugh because he has known the judge since they were in high school in the 1980s. Bidwill’s note carefully avoided any mention of politics, saying only that he is only vouching for Kavanaugh’s character.

“The purpose of the letter is to talk about Brett as a person,” Darren Urban of the Cardinals team website said. “We have known him and known what a brilliant mind he has. He’s eminently qualified.”

“I think now that he’s been selected by the President, he will go through a thorough vetting process, and as they go through that process, they will learn about the great person we know. He is a man of high character, high intelligence, excellence, and independence,” Urban added. “We want to speak up and show our support as former classmates and long-time friends.”

“I’ve known him for more than 37 years,” Bidwill wrote. “We stayed in close contact over the years – we have a pretty tight high school class – and we all knew Brett was pretty special. He’s got a sharp mind. He’s been a brilliant jurist for a long time.”

But, Bidwill’s personal support for his old friend is being misinterpreted as a “political endorsement” by members of the left-wing media, all as a means to once again slam the NFL for working to put an end to the players’ anti-American protests during the national anthem.

Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio led the pack, saying that supporting a judge is “all political” whether it is meant to be or not.

“Although Bidwill’s quotes and the letter he has signed supporting Kavanaugh says nothing about politics and espouses no political causes or ideologies, everything about the appointment of a Supreme Court justice is political,” Florio bloviated.

Florio added:

Bidwill’s support for Kavanaugh comes at a time when players advocating political causes routinely are told to “stick to football,” and the league seems willing only to listen to a vocal minority of fans on the hotly-contested national anthem issue. Bidwill’s gesture follows last year’s effort by Broncos G.M. John Elway to publicly support the candidacy of Neil Gorsuch, the most recent justice appointed to the Supreme Court. (And, yes, Elway said, “Take the politics out of football” only six months later.)

So, while attacking people who say the players should “stick to football,” Florio is attacking Bidwill for not “sticking to football”? Like all liberals, Floria wants it both ways.

Florio’s argument, though, misses the mark. The whole reason people have criticized the players is that they are getting political during a game. On the other hand, Bidwill’s statement is in the news section of a website, a place fans can go if they feel like it, as opposed to being forced to watch it on the field. They are hardly the same thing.

In addition, as previously stated, Bidwill did not make a political endorsement of Kavanaugh, no matter how much Florio wants to turn it into one.

Florio is not alone. ESPN’s chief social justice warrior, Jemele Hill, also slammed Bidwill for “getting political” even though he clearly didn’t.

Hill ridiculed Bidwill’s announcement as an example of hypocrisy.

Others agreed with Hill that the Kavanaugh announcement was out of place on the Cardinals’ website:

https://twitter.com/rumdoodle/status/1016497975181262848

Still, others noted that the endorsement was specifically non-political:

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.

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