Your completely cynical tale for today

Once upon a time there was a quarterback named Colin Kaepernick who started kneeling quietly for the national anthem to protest racial inequality, particularly with regard to African-American interactions with the police.

Some people thought this was terrible. Against all logic, they thought Kaepernick was disrespecting not just the anthem but also the flag, the troops (alternate punctuation: THE TROOPS!!!) and even America itself. They were encouraged in this by the President of the United States, a morally bankrupt con man who scammed his way out of military service during the Vietnam War, but now regards himself as the sole arbiter of what is patriotic vis-a-vis the anthem, the troops, America, and so on.

This made the National Football League nervous, because the National Football League has long traded on a sort of window-dressing patriotism that features giant American flags and military flyovers and THE TROOPS!!! League officials were terrified that if these protests continued, people would stop watching football on Sundays and Mondays and Thursdays, especially with the President carrying on about it so.

This eventually led to Kaepernick being dropped by his team, the San Francisco 49ers. It also led to no one picking him up, even though Kaepernick had quarterbacked the 49ers to a Super Bowl and, in six seasons, had thrown for more than 12,000 yards and 72 touchdowns and averaged 6.1 yards per rush with 13 more touchdowns.

This made Colin Kaepernick much better than a goodly number of quarterbacks who already were on NFL rosters, but no team would touch him on account of they thought he would be too much of a "distraction" -- which translates to "we don't like his politics" in standard English. This obvious, concerted banishment was camouflaged by flimsy cover stories such as "He's not good enough," even though lame-os such as Nathan Peterman were still finding gainful employment in the league.

Eventually, this got to be an embarrassment for the NFL, too. And so they arranged a workout for Kaepernick. It will take place today, in the middle of the season. There is no explanation for this, other than the fact the NFL wants to put to rest the obvious fact it was blackballing Kaepernick.

Now the league will be able to say "See? We didn't blackball him. We even arranged a tryout for him!"

And no matter how cynical you think the telling of this tale has been, nothing is more cynical than that.

The end.