Welcome to the holidays! Is there anything better than spending time with friends and family, good food, good times, and the inevitable specter of someone coming in to ruin everything with their piping hot political takes that come in dryer than your dad’s turkey? Every year, Fancy Boys Club co-founder Brandon Andreasen is here to guide you through the holidays in a way that will hopefully allow you to survive with your brain intact, if not quite your sanity. All though Christmas season, Brandon will talk you through topics to survive the minefield that is getting all of your family together at once.
Timing is a funny thing. It can be a great sense of serendipity, or it can be the harbinger for your uncle to explain why people are supposed to stand for the National Anthem. For those who are blissfully disconnected from social media, Colin Kaepernick is in the news again, which is sure to agitate the most flag humping of your friends and family members.
To paint with broad strokes, what happened was: the NFL, for reasons that will be discussed below, set up an oddly timed workout for erstwhile NFL Quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a showcase for him to potentially get back into the NFL. After a lot of contentiousness, Kaepernick threw his own workout off site, which was attended by scouts of eight NFL teams. Whether this will lead to anything is dubious at best. What got us here?
Several years ago, as a way to show his support for victims of police brutality, Colin Kaepernick began to kneel for the National Anthem. He actually was going this for quite awhile until Donald Trump happened, and the people who felt most strongly against this (racists) decided that this would be a cause that they could really scare people over.
Because the NFL is run by feckless, chicken shit check counters, Colin would eventually find himself on the outside of the NFL looking in, in spite of leading a team to a Super Bowl berth this decade. This would lead to a lawsuit by Kaepernick against the NFL that was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. The NFL basically paid their way out of the fact the rest of their league was afraid to draw the ire of the president if someone brought in the former 49ers quarterback.
Since then, Kaepernick has become a beacon for standing for something you believe in, or a villain who is representative of everything wrong with this country, depending on your political leanings. How you feel about this strongly depends on how often you post un-fact checked pictures with words around it on Facebook.
Last week, the NFL announced that they were holding an open tryout for Kaepernick. The timing was unfortunate. Not because of the NFL, but because this all happened right before Thanksgiving, meaning that the Fox News mainlining members of your family have something new to froth at. But that said, it’s the holidays, and I’m here to help. Here is how to survive Colin Kaepernick at Thanksgiving.
“He’s just doing it for attention.
He doesn’t want to actually play quarterback” is going to be a
favorite screech among the members of your family who like to pretend
they see both sides, but don’t understand politics OR sports, so
they try to keep their mouths shut unless they really, really, really
have undeserved confidence in their take.
You could do the honest
thing, which is to explain that while there is a ton of
misinformation out there about him, Kaepernick has openly stated that
he is ready to play football ever since he last played. He has stayed
in NFL-ready shape. His arm is sharp, and he is ready to go onto a
roster, as he has been since 2017. All he has been waiting for is an
actual opportunity to be in the NFL, and potentially have a chance to
play on an NFL roster.
Of course, this will never work. There is a
way to shut this down, though. The person who most often makes this
argument is the one most open to being shut down due to personal
attacks. When your uncle says this, respond with something like “You
know, Uncle Bill, when Aunt Joan left you, nobody said you would
never meet a girl again, and we still have faith in you even though
you have been alone for seven years.” Even though you are being
nice to Uncle Bill, you are making it fairly clear that we all know
he has been a lonely sack of shit since Joan left, and he knows deep
down that he has let himself go and every night goes to bed with a
full size body pillow that he spoons to not feel so alone. You are
equating his cold spell with Kaepernick’s ability to get back in
the NFL while still showing positive reinforcement that we believe in
ol’ Bill to find love again, even though we know that he will never
meet another woman because he works 60 hours a week so he can afford
child support for kids he only sees every other weekend because of
his drinking problem and then goes home at night and eats Hungry Man
meals because he grew up thinking that learning how to cook was
“woman’s work.”
There is a near 100% chance that this will
lead to Uncle Bill hitting the bottle and throwing his 3 month AA
chip at your mother over whether Redi Whip or Kool Whip is better for
pumpkin pie, and your mom will kick him out then threaten to not let
him come to Christmas. THAT’S WHAT BILL GETS FOR QUESTIONING COLIN
KAEPERNICK’S DESIRE TO PLAY FOOTBALL.
“Colin Kaepernick isn’t good enough
to play in the NFL” is another chestnut that will inevitably be
spewed by a more confident member of your family. Of course, everyone
knows that this person, usually someone who married into the family,
a second marriage at that, is wrong. This is the person that will
inevitably scream at the television thinking that the coach will
actually hear him, and is absolutely convinced he knows more about
your team than anyone else, even though he can only ever name six
guys from the current team, but can breathlessly name every great
(white) coach in the team’s history. The type of guy that prays at
the altar of Ditka.
This is relatively easy to dispel, even to
the bigger dipshits for fans. In the past few weeks, the following
people have played NFL quarterback: Chase Daniel, Jeff Driskel, Colt
McCoy, Matt Barkley, Devlin Hodges, Ryan Finley, Brian Hoyer, Luke
Falk, Brandon Allen, and Matt Moore. That is ten quarterbacks that
people are shocked are on an NFL roster. They are all terrible,
sub-replacement level players, who have no business in the NFL. After
that, you have Josh Rosen, Mitch Trubisky, Marcus Mariota, Case
Keenum, Joe Flacco, and Eli Manning. That’s another half dozen
players who aren’t better right now than Colin Kaepernick. With
little to no thought, I’ve come up with 16 players who have set
foot on an NFL field that give credence to the idea that Kaep is
being blackballed by the NFL. If someone has the audacity to say that
any of those guys are better, just up and challenge this guy to a
fight. You wanna really set a precedent at Thanksgiving dinner?
THREATEN TO THROW HANDS OVER SHITTY TAKES! After you threaten him, a
more confident person might call you a snowflake who isn’t in their
safe spot. Then you get to ACTUALLY SWING ON SOMEONE AT THANKSGIVING!
Just do it! It’s thrilling. Throw punches at dinner. If you have a
big enough jerkoff to scream “snowflake,” “SJW,” or “safe
space” at dinner, you are legally allowed to fight them, and the
only warning you have to give, in a loud, guttural tone, is to
scream “OK BOOMER.”
“HE’S BEING DISRESPECTFUL TO THE TROOPS!” This will be screamed by the family member that posts on Facebook all the time saying that Trump is being indicted in a witch hunt, and why don’t they arrest Hillary. The only book this family member has ever read is a Burt Reynolds biography, and only because that was a book on tape. This is a quick one. Kaepernick actually talked to active and retired military members to find a respectful way for him to quietly protest. This is where they landed. This will not satisfy anyone because facts don’t fit their Facebook memes. They will eventually leave and everyone will be better off for it. Mute them on Facebook. You will lead a much more satisfying life.
“He hates America because he doesn’t
stand for the National Anthem.” This is quite possibly the
stupidest take of all, and it’s only said by the most hardcore of
Trump fans and people who have no grip on reality while ALSO managing
to be racist. See, “they hate America because…” is from the
same attack family as “If you don’t like this country you can get
out.” What this always breaks down to is: If you aren’t white,
then shut your mouth. Basically, if Colin Kaepernick looked like Andy
Dalton, we wouldn’t be worrying about any of this. If you remember,
Donald Trump based his entire presidential campaign on getting white
people to hate minorities and make it seem like only white people
deserve to be a part of this country, and everyone else is
interloping. If a white quarterback did this, then there would never
have been the same discussion. A white quarterback would still be in
the NFL.
Kaepernick isn’t white, though, and therefore he
becomes a beacon of hatred from a group of people that like to talk
about SJW’s, safe spaces, and whatnot, but lose their fucking minds
at the idea of a black quarterback protesting police brutality and
oppression. Everyone who says things like that are the easiest people
to break down mentally. Screw it. It might be Thanksgiving, but it’s
time to go for blood!
In the end, the
only way to survive Colin Kaepernick at Thanksgiving is to drink
heavily and keep your mouth shut. You aren’t going to change
anyone’s mind about it. The people that think the above things
about Kaepernick are already too stupid to be reasoned with. If you
are going to cause a scene, it’s better to go out in a blaze of
glory. Always be the best judge of your situation. If you are on
enemy territory, then just go down in a blaze of ad-homonym attacks
and petty name calling.
If you are at your parent’s house or
your sibling’s house, then it’s time to throw punches. I don’t
care who gets caught in the crossfire. Elbows up, Abigail Mae! You’ve
spent 30 years knowing which members of your family say the N word,
now is the time to stand up and punch them!
Fancy Boys Club 