Jon Gruden checks "all of the above" in current societal no-no's
You ever have one of those coworkers who just doesn’t get that there’s a certain level of dressing up your behavior when you punch the clock? That personal phone calls in the cubicle cluster which include yelling obscene words at the ex-wife about whose holiday with the kids it is just aren’t cool? That calling the IT guys pansies just doesn’t pass the vibe check, no matter how weak and flabby they may be? That gratuitous use of the f-word in conversation, emails, and budget meetings is off-putting to the max? That arguing politics on scheduled breaks renders the breaks to be of no positive effect whatsoever? If said hypothetical coworker is currently on the job market, tell them to hit up Jon Gruden. Maybe they could start a dive bar where ethnic minorities get gently and not-so-gently ribbed about their skin tone.
For you see, Gruden is what one might call a perfect storm of cultural taboos. Objectification of women? Check. Remarks easily construed as offensive to African Americans? Check. Bandies homophobic slurs like he was hucking a baseball around in the backyard with his son? Super-check. Railing about the transgenders? You know it. Is dubious about a woman’s ability to be productive part of a football referee squad? Really, Jon? Really? Check and check.
In the multiple choice exam of mistakes that could get you canceled, all that’s left is Islamophobic Tweets and he could fill in oval E for “all of the above”. He’s like a boomer who spent their formative years in Mississippi and isn’t super jazzed about the way things have been going in this country. One wonders if he even does the double head turn when he’s telling a joke about black people. The only thing that could save him from all his transgressions would having been an elected Democrat. Among his dredged emails are criticisms of Obama and Biden, so there’ll be no shield of leftist behavior and voting patterns to protect him on that front. Anti-Semitism is fine on the DNC reservation nowadays so I’m not sure any emails yet to come to light which riff on commissioner David Stern will have any additional effect.
I’m no fan of cancel culture but I have my limits. I think past behavior can be taken into account when determining one’s current or future employability. Especially when said unprofessional behavior was used in the professional medium of company emails. I’m no fan of the current retroactive system of professional punishment, but he does coach a team comprised of men who don’t look like him. It’s not a good look, to say the least. This does wreak of a delayed hit job on a guy who doesn’t hit the standard woke ESPN prerequisites, but it’s been years since he worked there and one wonders what their agenda is if they’ve anything to do with it.
With the limited amount of information I’ve got to go on the subject, he strikes me as a guy who just doesn’t get it. He seems like a crane operator who sips whiskey on his lunch break and will put you in a headlock for suggesting he should clean up his act. Seems like that coworker who brags about the interaction with his kids being limited to telling them to bring him another beer while watching the game. Seems like someone who complains about how (insert group that is the topic of conversation that day) are destroying this country, and then proceeds to complain about…everything else while he’s got you cornered at the water cooler. Someone who will argue in all caps and run-on sentences on comment threads and forget what he’s putting out there is permanent, always, and forever.
See (forgive the soapbox, it’ll be quick), this is one more reason why I can’t be a Republican or Democrat. The hardcore ones whose public behavior is so atrocious they ruin it for we who value peace and quiet, mind our business, and just want to engage in honest trade with one another. Gruden has the trappings of the hardcore Trump supporter Democrats have been railing against for years. They’ve got some valid criticism when it comes to the more obnoxious ones. One doesn’t need to constantly be tiptoeing around the emotions of snowflakes, but one also doesn’t need to run roughshod over the feelings and sensibilities of others. There’s a happy middle ground with an abundance of vacancies.
I’ve nothing really profound to say on this matter, but hope I made you laugh once or twice and helped you buck up the courage to say something to that difficult person at your place of business who makes their living getting stepping on everyone’s last nerve.
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Image taken from:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/raiders/2021/10/10/jon-gruden-las-vegas-raiders-racist-email-demaurice-smith/6084986001/