Over the coming days, weeks, months and, Lord knows, even over the next four years, hate, and those who dwell in its dark recesses, will feel emboldened. That emotion will crawl out from the sewers of social media and into the daylight of real life, feeling protected as if marching with a battalion of millions. And if we’re not careful, we might look at hate just gloating there, face screwed up in a snarky smirk, and decide in all its swelled-up pride – whoops! — that hate has left its chin uncovered to a potential clean right hook. While it’s never productive when provocation leads to punches, maybe that’s exactly what it wants.
Because hate loves a response. It needs an audience to make itself feel seen and validated, as if it has won. It needs a reaction, our energy to promote its life. And once we give ours away, we’re stuck doom-posting or clapping our jaws right back any toxic way we can. The ones who react to hate then become the seekers of attention, even if it means stomping on someone else’s joy.
A political movement that brokers in disunity has convinced enough Americans that, once again, this is truly who we are. With our better angels having chunked up the deuces a while ago, just like before, hatred will overflow into our sports.
Games used to pass for a welcome diversion with strangers who become friends, but there are more and more moments in which sports instead erect bigger arenas where we can express our hostilities. In those spaces, not even someone as popular and relatable as Jason Kelce can escape the hate.
You’ve already seen the viral videos from the Penn State campus, where Kelce was doing his everyman bit. While his younger brother has put himself on the map for dating the world’s most famous pop star, the elder Kelce has a more approachable, down-to-earth vibe. His brand is being the regular guy you would love to slam cans of beer with — either at a tailgate near the turnpikes in New Jersey or in a bougie suite outside Buffalo. But Saturday, ironically in Happy Valley, hate chased down Kelce as he walked, with a purpose but without bodyguards, through a crowd of college kids.
That’s when someone who probably does a pretty decent tough-guy act in spaces such as Elon Musk’s mind-polluting app called out Kelce’s brother by using a homophobic slur. Sigh, silly bro. He might have been thinking that whatever he feels big and brave enough to type on social media, he can also spew out in the open. Foolishly believing that it would be okay, as long as he held up his cellphone, because every provocateur knows that red record button also provides a magical force field of protection.
However, no sense of safety and entitlement found on social media can ward away a former Philadelphia Eagles center who spent 13 years scrapping in mosh pits with men twice the size of that boy. Kelce grabbed the phone, slammed it to the ground and, when confronting the lil’ fella face to face, echoed the same nasty word back at him. That’s where Kelce crossed the line. As corny as turning the other cheek may sound in that moment, ignoring the fool would have stopped Kelce from stooping right down and playing in his pig slop. By the time all the other cellphone cameras captured the incident and Kelce walked away still holding his pack of beer, his brand had been covered in mud. He had volleyed hateful words. He had unintentionally caused hurt.
“I’m not happy about the situation,” Kelce said on the latest episode of “New Heights,” the podcast he shares with his brother. “Me reacting gave him the time of day and it also gave the situation notoriety. That’s what I regret, all right? It didn’t deserve attention, it was really stupid. If I just keep walking, none of this … it’s a nothingburger [and] nobody sees it.”
Hate didn’t account for Kelce turning around and reacting in the real world. But maybe that’s precisely what it wanted. Spite, and those who peddle in it, will try anything to get attention. Kelce could have been targeted because his brother is dating a powerful woman who uses her voice and platform for the issues that matter to her and people such as her. And you can already envision the nonsense that will be directed at LeBron James, the least likely superstar athlete to shut up and dribble despite cries from the MAGA crowd, for his latest Instagram post, in which he promised to protect his daughter and wrote “WE DONT NEED THEIR HELP.” The morning after the election, James might have been reacting like any Black parent, despondent because of his native land but determined to build up his young Black daughter, but hate will infiltrate his comment section anyway, searching for an assembly of likes.
In the coming weeks, years and generations, athletes must be on high alert. We all must. On X, even though it is not a real place, and especially in our daily lives. Because if we’re not careful, we might end up reacting like Jason Kelce.
We might see hate triumphing somewhere, with its smug face oozing overconfidence while its hand doesn’t have a strong grip on its cellphone. We might grab that phone — or check that chin. And though some might cheer us for these actions, we would be wrong. Somewhere in exile, our better angels would be reminding us of better ways.
Even more, because we have been provoked to combat hate with more hate, we might slip up and repeat a word that should be neither typed nor uttered. No one wins that way. Kelce didn’t and has expressed regret over his response. The two-headed monster of hatred and division continues to spread like an oil spill in our country. Though the toxicity appears to have no boundaries and the taunts and temptations are strong, let’s hope our self-control will be even more powerful.
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