Aaron Rodgers is the absolute worst

A rant.

Aaron Rodgers is very good at throwing a football. Maybe one of the best ever.

What Aaron Rodgers is not is a doctor. Or a public health expert.

Which is why it was odd to me that during his weekly appearance Tuesday on “The Pat McAfee Show” on ESPN, Rodgers dedicated a significant amount of time to spreading debunked theories about Covid-19, masking and vaccinations.

You can watch a supercut of some of what Rodgers said here. (He talked about Covid for roughly 20 minutes. On a show ostensibly dedicated to sports. Good times!)

But, I can summarize it for you — if you don’t want to waste your time: The establishment, whoever “they” are, purposely silenced alternate voices suggesting that masking and social distancing were ineffective strategies to slow the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Dr. Anthony Fauci was at the center of all of this, according to Rodgers, because he had a financial interest in the development of the vaccine.

So, let’s stop right there and do something that Pat McAfee didn’t: Fact check Rodgers.

Masks work. The CDC says so. Scientific American says so. Bloomberg says so. Have there been studies that are inconclusive about masking? There have! Does that prove Rodgers point? It does not!

Then there’s his claim that Fauci, who was the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, somehow profited from the development of the Covid-19 vaccine.

This, like most of what Rodgers spews, gained credence on the fringe right after Townhall.com, a conservative website, published a report claiming that Fauci was financially benefitting from the vaccine. A piece on FactCheck.org debunks the claims — noting that the VAST majority of royalties that Fauci received for his research came before the pandemic even started.

In the interview, Rodgers also said that his beef with late night host Jimmy Kimmel — who he wrongly suggested was on a list of people associated with Jeffrey Epstein — “goes back to Covid times.”

Presumably, Rodgers is referencing the fact that Kimmel was an advocate for following the guidance of the CDC — which included masking and being vaccinated — while Rodgers was, um, not.

What makes Rodgers such an expert on these topics, you ask? “I enjoy reading,” Rodgers told McAfee. “I read studies about this. I’ve read books.”

Books! Studies! I have, it’s worth noting, read some books about flying. I guess that makes me a pilot!

(Quick sidebar: Among the books that Rodgers mentions he has read is “The Real Anthony Fauci” written by none other than presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. That book and the claims in it — about Fauci and the Covid vaccine, among other things — have been roundly debunked.)

Look, here’s the thing. Rodgers, unfortunately, is not unique. He is part of a broader movement in the culture in which experts — actual experts — are looked down upon and questioned by self-appointed experts who, er, read an article on the Internet.

(I have talked to several doctor friends who are ready to quit the profession because their patients are constantly second-guessing diagnoses based on an article they read on the Internet!)

Tom Nichols wrote a terrific book about all of this called “The Death of Expertise:
The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters.” In it, he wrote:

“Americans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy, is an actual virtue. To reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for Americans to insulate their increasingly fragile egos from ever being told they’re wrong about anything. It is a new Declaration of Independence: No longer do we hold these truths to be self-evident, we hold all truths to be self-evident, even the ones that aren’t true. All things are knowable and every opinion on any subject is as good as any other.”

If you hear echoes of Donald Trump in those lines — and even in Rodgers’ “I read books” defense — you’re not wrong.

At the core of Trump’s message has always been a disdain for elites and their ideas and norms. As Michael Kruse noted in a POLITICO piece in 2018 on Trump:

In interviews and speeches at rallies, as his campaign gathered momentum, the steady target of his ire was the establishment and its even more suspect inner circle: “media elites,” “the political elites,” “the elites who only want to raise more money for global corporations,” “the elites who led us from one financial and foreign policy disaster to another.” Hillary Clinton, he said, hammering away at starkly sketched lines, “stood with the elites.”

And that’s the way he governed as well. This, from a November 2019 Atlantic piece, tells that story in stark terms:

Trump’s strategy has been on vivid display in recent weeks, including in his tweet denigrating former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch; the pointed insinuation by House Republicans that Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman isn’t a loyal American; and the president’s insistence last month that “deep-state bureaucrats” have conspired in an “unholy alliance” with “corrupt Democrat politicians … and the fake-news media” to instigate the impeachment inquiry.

For Trump, these new salvos extend a far-reaching offensive against expertise—and the career officials who have it—that has unfolded throughout his presidency. Trump has repeatedly denigrated law-enforcement officials at the FBI, moved to evict scientists from the policy-making process, excluded the Central Command general with direct responsibility for the region from his abrupt decision to withdraw American troops from Syria, and even sparred with meteorologists over his mistaken insistence that Hurricane Dorian threatened Alabama in September.

“All presidents come into office worried that the permanent bureaucracy will be loyal to their predecessor and not to them,” says Donald Kettl, a public-policy professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “But there hasn’t been a president in memory with such a firm commitment to rooting out expertise and to relying instead on loyalists.”

“Rooting out expertise.” Yeah. (Worth noting: Trump’s plans to overhaul the civil service in order to install loyalists is driven by his skepticism toward expertise and institutional knowledge.)

Trump, like Rodgers, has tremendous faith in his own brilliance. “Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” he said via tweet during his presidency, adding that his life “would qualify as not smart, but genius .... and a very stable genius at that!”

Uh huh.

Down this road — that everyone is entitled to their own facts and anyone can be an expert based on reading a book or an article — lies nothing good. If we can’t agree on basic facts, we can’t even have a conversation — much less move toward solutions.

But that’s a big philosophical debate for another day. Today I just really want Aaron Rodgers to shut up.