Partisans Refuse To Suspend the Sniping Game After NFL Injury

As Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills fights for his life from a hospital bed, National Football League fans and Americans of good will are wishing him the best. To some partisans and pundits, however, Mr. Hamlin’s injury is just another opportunity to start pushing stock talking points regardless of whether the facts fit.During a Monday Night Football game versus the Cincinnati Bengals, Mr. Hamlin went into cardiac arrest after being hit in the chest. He was revived and carted off the field in an ambulance, after which the stadium sat in stunned silence awaiting word on his condition and whether the game would resume.I recall being in the stands at MetLife Stadium when a similar tragedy occurred. In a 2010 game against Army, Rutgers’s Eric LeGrand suffered a spinal injury that left him paralyzed from the neck down, and I can tell you that the desire to restart play has nothing to do with racism or vaccine side-effects, as is being charged in Mr. Hamlin’s case. We all hoped that Mr. LeGrand would be okay despite seeing him sprawled motionless on the gridiron. Everyone was in shock, and when you’re in shock, you don’t think with swiftness or clarity. Denial is the first of grief’s five stages and acceptance only its last.While waiting to see if Monday night’s game would resume, sports commentator Skip Bayless tweeted the obvious. “No doubt the NFL is considering postponing the rest of this game, but how?” he asked. “This late in the season, a game of this magnitude is crucial to the regular-season outcome — which suddenly seems so irrelevant.”Some fans and players are calling for Mr. Bayless to be fired but he didn’t advocate for either outcome. He only asked about the logistics and mindset of league officials who, like everyone watching, were unsure of the situation and clinging to the possibility that Mr. Hamlin might rally.Even after the game was suspended, it didn’t end the sniping. Some in the commentariat imagined a racist motive in the delay, embodied by the left-wing Daily Beast’s headline, “NFL Proves Yet Again It Doesn’t Give a Damn About Black Players.”The story set off fans who cited Chuck Hughes, a receiver for the Detroit Lions who, in 1971, became the only NFL player to ever die on a football field. He happened to be white, and yet the game was played to its conclusion, as was the Rutgers-Army game.The Daily Beast column, I note, begins by saying that “to unapologetically support the National Football League is to be woefully complicit in the harm it has caused its players,” a criticism often raised by those who just do not like the sport. Nobody forces players to put on the helmet. The choice is theirs, and as one pro football Hall of Famer, Harry Carson, told CNN after Mr. Hamlin’s injury, he wouldn’t let his grandson do so. Yet he didn’t seize on this tragedy as fuel for an existing crusade against it.Those who care about Mr. Hamlin are thinking nothing of the cable news topics, headlines, or hashtags their unconscious loved one can be used to promote. They’re hoping that he recovers and can be an inspiration like Mr. LeGrand, whose broadcast career and LeGrand Coffee House thrive despite his disability.There was a time not so long ago that, if someone suffered this catastrophic injury, the political sniping and speculation would wait until he was taken off a respirator and opened his eyes. We might have stewed over the awfulness of the NFL league office or searched for a vaccine side-effect, but those questions were held until they were no longer in poor taste.We knew that the right thing in such situations is to withhold comments, anger, and slander, setting aside our politics to be human for just a little while. That silence would demonstrate our respect, speaking to the fact that we see Mr. Hamlin as a fellow human being who needs our hopes and prayers, not a talking point to be exploited for clicks.

Partisans Refuse To Suspend the Sniping Game After NFL Injury

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