This week in irony

Sometimes you have to look hard to connect the dots. But the dots are there, and the connection, while not readily in evidence, is discernible if you turn your head just so.

Consider: April 4, a Wednesday, was the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination.

On that day, politicians of various stripes, including Our Only Available President, praised Dr. King's work as a leader of the civil rights movement of the 1960s -- even though the President and many of his fellow politicians likely would have had a very different opinion of King and his work back in 1968.

Why do I say that?

Because, on that same day, the Baltimore Ravens pulled Robert Griffin III off the junkheap and signed him as a backup quarterback. That meant once again an NFL team passed on Colin Kaepernick, a Super Bowl quarterback who played 12 games, threw 16 touchdowns and four interceptions and had a quarterback rating of 90.7 in his last season (2016).

Robert Griffin III, on the other had, played five games, threw two TDs and three picks and had a QBR of 72.5 in his last season, also 2016.

This lends yet more credence to the idea Kaepernick is being blackballed for his work as an activist who protested police brutality and racial inequality by kneeling during the national anthem before games -- which prompted Our Only Available President and other politicians to attack Kaepernick for disrespecting America and "the troops," even though that was clearly not the intent at all.

So, to review: On the same day Our Only Available President and his ilk remembered Dr. King with reverence for protesting racial inequality, Colin Kaepernick, whom OOAP and Co. reviled for doing the same thing (albeit on a far less historic and influential scale), continued to be punished for it by the NFL.

Were he still alive, I have to think Dr. King would have been pointing that out to the NFL (and, yes, to Our Only Available President) in no uncertain terms. 

And would no doubt have been treated with something less than reverence for doing so by the President and all those others who praised his memory the other day.

Oh, irony.