Goodbye, Tom Brady
Goodbye, Tom Brady. Let’s keep this brief. No more ensorcelling — you are not a representative of my home in New England, but a monied incident here; keep your bloated contracts, your good looks, your nutritionist, your common family lifestyle and your uncommon digs, all your excess goods, bank books, managers, your wakes of grown men spending their middays trying to divine your weekend and your wife. I’m taking back your nimbus.
Let’s keep this brief. I should’ve said so weeks ago but now — now! — you’ve shown yourself such a fine professional ball player, all the vapid bandwagon reporters are in love again, so now’s the right time to say — though it pains me somehow to say — goodbye Tom Brady and fuck you.
You said Gisele Bundchen made a rule about you talking Trump at home and we should ‘ask [your] wife’ about your politics, didn’t you — as you likely said ‘ask my attorney’ about that erstwhile phone, your phone’s imbroglio — gone, isn’t it? At least Daddy Belichick had the guts to sign his name to an epistle beginning Dear Donald won’t you safeguard my big money since little else matters won’t you keep my whiteness tidy and in-charge? Fuck him too, Bill Belichick, goodbye to him, goodbye Tom Brady.
Tom Brady, in supporting Donald Trump you support a man who mocked a disabled reporter, denigrated too many women to chronicle, proposed building a wall between you and the brown people — your darling advantaged children will be safe now, Tom Brady — for their rapey and druggy behaviors — their rapey behaviors! — a man who rails against the vices of immigrants while employing them at low wages, who lacks the necessary information to disavow white supremacists. So goodbye Tom Brady and fuck you.
O I see. You keep politics separate from your profession, don’t you. From your profession, ‘sport.’ Tom Brady, sport — despite what ESPN and all your billionaire associates assert, despite what stadiums assert, despite what Mr. Kraft asserts and what your wallet seems to tell you — sport, Tom Brady, is small. You are grossly overpaid, as all athletes are. Your professional commitment to sport, Tom Brady, I see, this takes precedence over an interest and a commitment to general human decency — you think you can separate the rest of your life from celebration of a man who threatens national support for the arts, climate change accords, and the safety of Muslims in America? Your support of a man like Trump colors you indelibly, Tom Brady. I will not allow you to set it aside as an ‘aspect’ of you — it is you. Stupidity is not a luxury to which you are entitled.
Support for your ‘friend’ — really it’s heartwarming — Donald Trump is not support for a carefully checked and weighed set of ideals that simply differs from my own — one only needs listen to Donald Trump for ten minutes to know he has never ‘weighed’ ideas a moment in his life — it’s an assertion that something — anything — is more important than the extension of basic human rights across races, genders, sexualities, religions, classes, by-birth nationalities. That’s an unforgivable error. It cannot be looked past or referred to as a matter of ‘differing opinions.’ It is, quite frankly, an error that must be located, exposed, sung, attacked mercilessly. Every line of demarcation must be drawn by a person of principle in its presence, Tom Brady. You will not be excused, since in your support of Trump you are a supporter of divisive bigotry, fear, and the marginalization of a large percent of the populace. So fuck you, Tom Brady.
I’ve been told I’m not a ‘real fan’ — I do love these childhood assertions in the mouths of 40-year-olds. Certainly not! No, I will not continue to give attention to a poorly officiated, violent pastime — listen carefully, Tom Brady: pastime, point of leisure — that acts as a refuge for gravid executives — filled with what exactly — and pretty scourges like you, Tom Brady. I will not pretend that sport or ‘fandom’ — a misappropriation of value, a dimension of envy without investigation — means anything when compared to the real-life psychic and physical struggles of janitors, cooks, foster parents, firemen, secretaries, freelance writers, substitute teachers, fast-food workers, cobblers, landscapers, poets, dancers, retail clerks, taxi drivers, PCAs, school bus drivers, waiters, painters, librarians. A ‘real fan’ of sport is simply a person with deep personal vacancy and no well to give it water.
Fuck you Tom Brady — I meant to be shorter about this — and your repellant bourgeois life, your trophy room, your inherent sense of self-importance, your association with a capital machine that keeps some in shackles so you can have a proper home theater and your kids can ride in jets. Fuck you Tom Brady for your public appearances and well-timed image-building, fuck me for needing the campaign of Donald Trump to see you, fuck every person who still supports you knowing you share little smiles and giggles with a would-be demagogue.
You are not — nothing of you — New England; you are not winter trees, you are not forward-thinking, you are not the fox keeping tight in a coil beneath the stars. You are instead a small-minded, selfish, rudimentary mass of cells without searching kindness to your credit.
Goodbye, Tom Brady! Fuck you, Tom Brady! Who were you? I’ll begin: you were a man who fancied the protection of his money over the living rights of a Mexican girl in Nebraska. That’s you. You were a lucky privileged white man alive and profiting off a valuefucked society and just loving it, just sitting high on the backs of indigents who know little but to love what’s shiny and fine. That’s you. A man who threw a ball to where a body waited, was hit, and fell.
