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Kansas City kicker Harrison Butker’s political action committee flops, but he gets an appointment to a White House fitness panel. Sipa USA Sipa USA
We haven’t heard a lot about Harrison Butker since the Kansas City Chiefs field goal kicker’s famous graduation speech at Benedictine College last year.
Remember? That’s the one where he told a bunch of women who had just sweated four years of college to go get married and have babies, while telling their male counterparts to “set the tone of the culture” and fight “cultural emasculation,” whatever that is.
It was also the speech where he blamed single mothers for violent crime in society, proclaimed Pride Month a “deadly sin,” bashed Congress for passing a law against antisemitism and longed for the good old days of dour, unfriendly priests delivering Masses in Latin.
Well, off-season is over and Butker’s back. He’s been in the news a couple times this past week for something other than kicking a football between yellow pipes.
He popped up at the White House, joining President Donald Trump in reinstating the President’s Physical Fitness Test. More on that in a minute.
Meanwhile, the Washington political finance watchdog website opensecrets.org reported that a political action committee Butker formed to promote his special brand of forward-to-the-past politics hasn’t gotten past the line of scrimmage.
According to the Open Secrets report, Butker’s Upright PAC reported income of about $38,000 since it started in October.
That may sound like a lot to those of us who don’t wear shoulder pads and jock straps on Sundays. But it represents approximately six-tenths of 1% percent of Butker’s annual $6.4 million salary.
In politics, it’s pocket change. For perspective, $38,000 is one-sixteenth of what Lily Wu and friends spent to get her elected as mayor of Wichita.
Butker’s PAC didn’t spend any money on supporting candidates, but blew the budget on a couple of low-budget videos, a consultant and operating costs, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
But on the upside, Butker’s getting along famously with Trump.
He appeared at a White House event where the president called him “young superstar,” and spoke for nearly 30 seconds without insulting anyone, as he accepted an appointment to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition.
By executive order, Trump is bringing back fitness testing in schools because “rates of obesity, chronic disease, inactivity and poor nutrition are at crisis levels, particularly among our children.”
Not to mention among our presidents.
I remember taking the president’s fitness test in school.
We all knew it was part of prepping us to go to Vietnam (and Trump’s order mentions “military readiness” as a reason to bring it back).
But we weren’t really put off by that, because it had been a running theme throughout our education and we were used to it.
Military recruiters knocking on the door
In grade school, teachers urged us (by us, I mean boys) to bring our toy guns and play army at recess. It was shocking 30 years later when my own son was told he couldn’t wear a T-shirt with a line drawing of a Harrier jump jet to school, because it violated their zero tolerance policy on weapons.
In high school, we had a class called “War and Culture,” (unofficial motto: “Lots of war, very little culture”). We read “On War” by German General Carl von Clausewitz and “Strategy” by British military theorist B. H. Liddell Hart.
Mostly, we played strategic board games recreating famous battles of American history. I remain undefeated as commander of the Japanese Imperial Fleet at Midway, so take that, Admiral Yamamoto.
The experience of older brothers was that if you passed the president’s fitness test, military recruiters would be knocking on your door within the month. (The war ended about two years before my cohort hit draft age.)
Still, I have a very fond memory of taking the fitness test.
The final task was to run a timed mile through the Arizona desert.
But about halfway through, we came across a gigantic fight between thousands of red ants and black ants. So of course, we stopped to watch that.
When no one showed up at the finish, our PE coach jogged out to see what had happened to us. We were like, “Look at this!” and he was like, “Wow!” and stayed to watch with us.
We all got detention that day because we were late for our next class, and none of us got our presidential fitness medal, but it was totally worth it.
That ant fight was epic and I haven’t seen anything like it since.
So put me down as a supporter of bringing back the President’s Physical Fitness Test, because I believe every American child should have the same opportunities I did.
Only thing is, I don’t know where the hell we’re going to get that many ants.
Maybe Butker’s PAC can help fund that.