The Iron King Steps Into a Bear Trap
The Iron King Steps Into a Bear Trap
Cardale Jones went to a Trump rally and refused to talk politics. That's not how this works.
Until yesterday, Cardale Jones was my favorite Ohio State athlete of all time. My confidence in his abilities before his first start against Wisconsin in the 2014 Big Ten Championship Game helped me look like I knew what I was talking about for once over at Eleven Warriors.
Him helping lead the Buckeyes to victory over Alabama in the Sugar Bowl and Oregon in the Championship was probably the greatest stretch of three OSU games I’ll ever watch.
Crowning him as The Iron King, Cardale Jones, First of His Name, Poacher of Badgers, Controller of Tides, Slayer of Ducks, Troll Sultan, and 12th Son of Ohio was the highlight of my career. But I knew that day would come long before he lifted the golden football trophy.
I loved every moment of Cardale’s story. Starting with his infamous (and correct) tweet that big-time football players don’t necessarily come to college “to play school.” Not to mention that time when the Buckeye beat legitimately didn’t know if his name was Cardale or Cordale.
Cardale always put off an aura of invincibility with a smile on his face. Not bad for the quarterback who once got caught smuggling a phone into his dorm room that he shared with current New Orleans Saints wide receiver Mike Thomas at Fort Union Military School.
I wish he would have gone pro after the 2014 season and let some NFL general manager horny for a strong-armed quarterback to draft him in the first or second round. Instead he came back and Urban Meyer tried to juggle Jones and J.T. Barrett like he was drunk and they were two 50-pound bowling balls. The result wasted the most talented Buckeye team of my lifetime and squandered Cardale’s draft stock.
So imagine my apoplectic behavior yesterday morning when I saw the Iron King mingling with your stereotypical MAGA chud at a Mike Pence rally in Columbus at a definitely not mobbed-up concrete company called Savko & Sons.
Surely this was another one of my hellacious nightmares. But no. Jones was literally attending a Mike Pence rally. I would rather stare at my cat’s asshole for three hours.
At least if you got the hog president himself, you could get entertainment like watching a drug-addled senior citizen declare he was willing to waddle into the audience and kiss every man but only the beautiful women. Now that’s what we call bisexuality, baby!
The worst part about the Cardale picture is his holding of propaganda literature from Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #9, that odious cabal of pigs that successfully fought for the reinstatement of Zach Rosen, the CDP officer with a history of complaints and who kicked a handcuffed suspect in the head while he was laying on the ground and got fired. (He has since been promoted to detective.)
Black CDP officers have begun leaving the FOP over what they see as an unwillingness to defend officers of color compared to those with pink flesh.
This must be a mistake, I thought. I was already resigned to removing the framed autographed picture of the Iron King from my living room and relegating it to my spare bedroom because I’m sure as hell not looking at a Trump voter every time when I walk into my house.
But a cop supporter? Well, that cursed picture would have no quarter in my house. And you know what? It wasn’t just some random literature that a chud handed him.
From Rick Rouan of dispatch.com:
"I don't talk politics," Jones said when asked by a Dispatch reporter to comment.
In a later tweet, Jones wrote: "People are going to infer what they want. I came out to support a friends business hosting a presidential event and the #FOP, an Organization of law enforcement that holds each other accountable for misconduct."
Suddenly that picture was no longer fit to be inside my house. The Fraternal Order of Police does the exact opposite of hold officers accountable for misconduct. He would later delete that tweet and re-post one claiming he was only there to support his friend’s concrete business which is already successful enough to host an appearance from the Vice President of America.
I’m befuddled by the rest of his answer, hours later. Attending a presidential rally while also declaring support for the Fraternal Order of Police is already an inherently political statement and actions speak louder than words.
Because even if he wasn’t there to talk politics, Vice President Pence had no problem using him as a political prop:
Somehow, it got even more bizarre from there.
I was going to say, who the fuck doesn’t want peace, justice, and equality??? But then I remembered I live in America, that famous No. 1 country in the world, and 244 years after our country’s inception we haven’t even lived up to the first sentence of our Constitution and a majority of white people in this country still don’t believe in the concept.
I understand not everyone spends eight hours a day scrolling political news on Twitter. But what the fuck, Dale? Were you dead for the last three years? That’s the only explanation I can think for anybody who is “undecided” with three weeks until a consequential presidential election.
Do I even want to ponder that there are millions of Americans just now realizing there is a presidential election afoot? Almost makes me want to support voter registration deadlines (almost).
What a charmed life that must be, though. I can’t relate but if I could, I feel it would be easy for me to deduce that America has an easy albeit shitty choice on its hands.
The worst interpretation of Cardale’s actions is that he knew what he was doing and didn’t realize he played himself until he saw the backlash on Twitter.
Sure, most Ohio State football fans are conservative, but if Jones is taking political cues from construction company owners and the Fraternal Order of Police, then probably had a misconception about the popularity of President Business Deals.
I think the most likely scenario is either his friend’s company or the Trump campaign paid him to be there as an “influencer” and he stepped into a bear trap when local media reported his presence and he was forced to walk it back with platitudes and a promise to educate himself on a pivotal election in the next three weeks.
I don’t expect Jones to tweet “Joseph Stalin did nothing wrong.” I don’t expect him to agree with every single point of my political views, though it would be much cooler if he did. I just think it’s shitty to see a man I respected appear at a Pence rally while defending the Fraternal Order of Police.
Conservatives call this “cancel culture,” a bankrupt culture war term they created when they got mad they could no longer use slurs in public. I don’t have the power to cancel Cardale Jones.
We will always have that magical 2014 run to the title. But sometimes crossroads present themselves in life and you and your buddy go the opposite way. I feel like that’s where I am with Cardale. I wish him nothing but the best. I just refuse to associate with anyone who actively supports the Fraternal Order of Police. That’s a dealbreaker for me. They are on one side and I am on the other.
Congratulations to 2020. You are truly the worst year of my life. Given the trajectory, tomorrow I’ll wake up to news that Dick Cheney is back from the dead and will replace Pence on the Trump ticket and Hitler is the new commander of the CDP Franklinton substation.