By Gary Wickert
We are fast approaching the 30th anniversary of the 1996 romantic comedy Jerry Maguire. Its director, Cameron Crowe, later published the entire 5,000-word mission statement he wrote for his sports agent protagonist Jerry Maguire, played by Tom Cruise. Maguire has a late-night epiphany and pens a candid manifesto entitled The Things We Think and Do Not Say. It laments many of the dysfunctions within the world of sports agents and endeavors to improve the profession through plain talk and candid truths. In it, Maguire says the things about which need saying but which nobody else has the courage to say. As a result, Maguire is publicly shamed, cancelled, fired, and humiliatingly perp-walked out of his offices.
In many ways, Maguire’s manifesto is also parallel to the phenomenon of cancel culture and the public shaming which occurs when somebody speaks a time-honored truth that goes against the current or the Progressive mob mentality in today’s society. Today’s “open-minded” and “tolerant” left claims to have the “big tent” to which all are welcome—but in reality, they brutally excoriate, cancel, and publicly shame anybody who dares to counter their mob mentality.
It seems like a decade ago, but it was only four short years ago when Harper’s Magazine published “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate”—a letter criticizing cancel culture and signed by 153 rich and famous celebrities, including J.K. Rowling, who was immediately cancelled and branded as a heretic and “transphobic” (whatever that means). Public shaming is as old as time itself; with stockades, public restraints, head shaving, etc., serving as a social penalty which some choose to swim against the current.
Today, the vast majority of people form opinions instantly, and not as a result of thorough research and considered thought. Instead of using facts to form their opinions, they allow their opinions to become their facts. Social media magnifies this and when something ostensibly terrible appears on a social media feed, there is a mass “knee-jerk” reaction, rather than a process of investigation and discriminating thought. Like a large school of tiny fish swimming in unison and turning on a dime en masse in response to a disturbance or predator, people today react instantly and say things online we would not say if we were face to face with someone.
Such was the uninformed, angry, and ignorant response to Kansas City Chiefs’ Harrison Butker’s commencement address at Benedictine College on May 11. Butker was cancelled and publicly shamed by millions of tiny, frightened fish who had heard from somebody who had heard from somebody that Butker told all of the women in the graduating class that they should be housewives. Nothing could have been farther from the truth; and a better example of the frailness and laziness of the human mind would be hard to find.
The Super Bowl champion spoke about the dignity of life, masculinity, and living life as Roman Catholic Christ-followers. He talked about the posers in life, like delusional Joe Biden who made the Sign of the Cross during a pro-abortion rally, and the importance of being more than just Catholic in name alone. He spoke of the chaos in the world around us, the duty and privilege of being authentically and unapologetically Catholic, and the danger of remaining silent and doing nothing. So far, so good, right? No protests, cancellations, or public shaming.
But then Butker stepped on a land mine. Speaking as a Roman Catholic to students and faculty at a Benedictine Roman Catholic school, he broke all of society’s rules and consigned himself to the public stockade when he congratulated the ladies in the graduating class and suggested that some of them may actually choose wife and mother as their vocation. The blast, thermal radiation, and shockwave from the detonation could immediately be felt as far away as Hollywood.
The main theme of Butker’s speech was the God-centered pride and joy of completely surrendering yourself and turning toward Jesus Christ. He talked about the many sources of Christian joy in a secular society and dared to suggest that there was nothing wrong with a woman in 2024 choosing the time-honored vocation of “wife and mother” instead of striving for promotions and titles in the rat race of today’s fast-paced business world. It was one short paragraph, but the detonation destroyed all of the other beautiful messages in the speech:
He said, verbatim, “For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”
The detonation of those innocent words and that sound advice echoing Catholic values overshadowed the rest of the beautiful message he shared, but which the American left never even heard. “He told the women who worked hard for those four-year degrees to throw them away and consign themselves to a life of dirty diapers and no sleep”, is one comment that I read. Thousands of uninformed university students and paid insurgent organizers have spent months shouting racist anti-Israel slogans and praising known terrorists, but millions of women were offended by what they thought this many said—offended by a man supporting the family, women and babies, in a country where the birthrates in the U.S. have hit historic lows and threaten the very economic fabric of our society.
Butker’s “wrong-think” echoed like a hydrogen bomb and what remains of a woke, and politically correct NFL came out and issued what must be the most ridiculous and non-sensical statement of all time. They said that “Butker’s comments don’t reflect the views of the league.” The NFL has an official view on motherhood, fatherhood, and having children? Ironically, this prompt NFL response was issued by none other than Senior Vice President Jonathan Beane, the league’s chief “diversity and inclusion” officer. The NFL has a diversity and inclusion officer? A male-only sports league where African-Americans make up 12% of the U.S. population but 53% of NFL players? A league in which, throughout its 102-year history, has only had one Vietnamese player, one Pakistani player, three Filipino players, three Taiwanese players, and no women. Sounds like the NFL needs a new chief diversity and inclusion officer. Just imagine how busy his days must be.
Butker got himself in trouble by echoing Christian values to a group of graduating Christians because we have become like Stalinist Russia. In Luke 13:34, Jesus says: “How many times I wanted to put my arms around all your people just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings…” Moms are at the forefront of teaching kids about the word of God and modeling Christian ways of living in their own homes to their children. Motherhood is revered throughout Scripture, and the Bible has plenty to say about godly mothers who raised their children to love, honor, and serve God. Mothers like Jochebed, Elizabeth, and Mary raised sons who ministered to and led God’s people. Mothers in the Bible were committed, hardworking, and resourceful. They willingly did the work that was before them.
Neither the Bible nor Butker said that motherhood is the highest calling or that it is the purpose for which women were born. It isn’t. We don’t have to look far to discovery what is their purpose, however. In Matthew 22: 37-38 it reads, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.” That is a woman’s (and a man’s) primary purpose and role in life. One’s tendency is to find our purpose in the good works we do for God and the people we impact for Christ, but that’s getting things backward. Witnessing to others isn’t the purpose of our lives, it’s the result. A mother’s primary purpose isn’t to love her children, her friends, or even her husband—it is to love God. Motherhood is just one part of our hearts’ endless pursuit to enjoy and glorify God. So, clearly, the Bible does not reflect the views of the NFL either.
Leftist sycophants on NBC eagerly lied about the “fact” that Butker told the women graduates that they “would be most fulfilled by being wives and mothers and not by successful careers.” When a mainstream news report uses the word “insinuating”, know that it is the reporter who is doing the insinuating. Butker said nothing of the sort. He said that some of the women in the class would go on to lead successful careers in the world, and that some are excited about marriage and the children they would bring into the world. At no point did he suggest one path was more fulfilling than the other. In fact, he never even used the word “fulfill” or any derivation of it. He didn’t even suggest that having a successful career and getting married and having children were mutually exclusive.
Butker went on to excoriate the high absentee father rate in the U.S., noting that the great lie that has been told is that “men are not necessary in the home or in our communities.” He was driving home the fact that fatherhood is as vital to the healthy socialization of a child as it is to a healthy society. But all the media and the mighty women who didn’t listen or investigate, but roared nonetheless, instantly buying into the phantom insinuation that women should stay home, and men should run the world. Not everybody is shaming Harrison Butker, however. Following his speech, the top selling NFL jersey is now No. 7 of the Kansas City Chiefs.
A Roman Catholic NFL player speaks candidly about his faith and Roman Catholic values to Roman Catholic audience and he is publicly shamed and cancelled. What is to stop the thought police and the NFL from doing the same to a Christian priest or pastor giving a sermon on a Sunday morning? Our Founding Fathers would be rolling over in their graves. In fact, one of them is—Thomas Payne—who famously said, “The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes.” The hand-wringing over Butker’s words is simply more woke virtue signaling. As Elon Musk has said, “At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary, and hateful. It basically gives mean people a shield to be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue.”