Eddie Murphy’s iconic SNL character Buckwheat today tweeted his disgust with Colin Kaepernick and called for Kaepernick to get his own hairdo. Kaepernick, currently employed as the last resort booty call of the horrible woman who ruined his career, could not be reached for comment at his home in a van down by the river.

Rule 1: Americans don’t like being lectured.

Rule 1 is the only hard and fast rule applicable to all Americans. Think about it. What other generalization can you make that covers the trailer park junkie in rural West Virginia, the inner city gang member dodging bullets in Chicago, smug, liberal, bubble-dwelling Ivy League professors, and richer-than-Croesus captains of industry?

‘Puter can almost hear his three loyal readers crying out, “So what, ‘Puter?”

Here’s what. Professional sports decided to violate Rule 1 and are paying the price.

It started innocently enough. Colin Kaepernick started dating a hard Left, socialist, “activist and radio DJ.”  As one might imagine, her politics are a bit to the Left of America’s in general. Kaepernick fell under the seductive spell of politics and pussy (mostly the latter), grew out his hair, and decided to stick it to Whitey T. Mann at his place of employment by refusing to stand during our national anthem.

As with all things political now, a third of the country screamed “YEAH! STIK IT 2 DEM RAYCISS BASTIDS!!!,” a third of the country screamed “BUTT MUH FLAGS!!!,” and a third of the country screamed, “WOOD U ASSHATS LEEV UR POLITIX OUTTA MUH FUTBAL??!?”

Last season, the NFL decided to ride out Kaepernick’s ill-advised tantrum, allowing him to continue his juvenile protest without interference. Kaepernick’s corrosive asshattery spread to several other players across the League, but for the most part, it didn’t really catch on.

His protest didn’t catch on mostly because arguing a League full of rich black people is racist may be the dumbest thing ever uttered by an “activist and radio DJ’s” f*ck buddy, and there’s a lot of fertile ground there.

But Kaepernick’s protest did have an impact, albeit unintended. The NFL, television’s ratings juggernaut, saw its ratings plunge and game attendance drop. A large subset of Americans voted with their remotes for a variety of reasons ranging from anger at Kaepernick’s disrespect for the flag to disgust with the politicization of an apolitical sport.

Americans’ revolt (and revulsion) had been growing for years. Kaepernick was merely the precipitating event. Americans watch sports to *avoid* politics, not to wallow in them. ESPN started the long march to politicizing sports by injecting liberal political tropes into everything. Professional athletes began believing ESPN’s hype (and their mostly false assertions that pro athletes are smart and thoughtful enough to have cogent opinions on anything) and taking political stances including refusing to travel to the White House for presidential recognition if they didn’t like its occupant.

To the point, Americans don’t like being lectured. Americans like being lectured even less in a time, place, or manner inappropriate for such lectures, say, for example, during the national anthem at a professional sporting event. Or by coddled rich children who refuse to respect the office of the president regardless of its occupant. Show up, shut up, shake hands, leave. Is that too much to ask for the millions you make for playing a game? Apparently it is.

Americans really, really don’t like being lectured by rich people or stupid people. We don’t like being lectured about racism by a guy who went to college for free and was paid millions to play a child’s game at the highest level. We don’t like being told by morons who get paid to read cue cards and talk out their asses about children’s games that we’re racist if we don’t hate our country. We don’t think your Harvard degree or ability to put a ball through a hoop gives you special insight into intractable issues facing the country. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Honestly, most Americans want to be left alone. We don’t need a “safe space,” because we know there’s no such thing. We just want a place where we can go and forget about the world and all its problems for a while. Sports afforded America this escapist place. Sports had a special role in America. No longer.

Professional athletes, NFL teams, and ESPN may be entitled to lecture us on the “correct” politics and the “correct” views on racial issues. But Americans aren’t required to listen, and none of them should be surprised when a large chunk of America changes the channel.

Professional athletes, their leagues, and the chattering class that “reports” on them would do well to remember Rule 1.

But they won’t.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.