Here’s Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers in August, responding to the question of whether he’d been vaccinated against Covid-19:

Yeah, I’ve been immunized. There’s guys on the team that haven’t been vaccinated. I think it’s a personal decision, I’m not gonna judge those guys.

I showed the story to Swamp Rabbit, who said, “Rodgers pretended ‘immunized’ meant ‘vaccinated,’ which makes him a freakin’ liar. It’s a good thing he ain’t gonna judge his teammates, ’cause he ain’t got the right to be judgin’ nobody.”

The vehemence of Swamp Rabbit’s reply was surprising until he told me he’d lost money betting on the Packers-Chiefs game when bookies changed the odds after Rodgers tested positive for the virus and was barred from playing.

“That’s what you get for gambling,” I said.

Swamp Rabbit shook his head.”That’s what I get for thinking that sneaky bastard was smart enough to know that throwing a football better than most people don’t make him stronger than the plague.”

It’s the way of the world, I told him. You reach a certain level of fame or wealth and you think you’re above the rest of the tribe, to the point where you even downplay the efficacy of vaccines that have protected millions from a deadly virus. Rodgers said he did his “research” and concluded he was better off taking horse de-wormer and “homeopathic” remedies. He misquoted the CDC guidelines regarding allergies and apparently refused to believe he might pose a danger to others if he remained unvaccinated.

And Rodgers had the balls to say this:

I believe strongly in bodily autonomy and the ability to make choices for your body, not to have to acquiesce to some woke culture or crazed group of individuals who say you have to do something.

“I don’t get it,” Swamp Rabbit said. “What the f%&* is woke culture?”

I told him “woke culture” was a big subject. In this case, it’s a term used by right-wing yahoos to describe anybody who doesn’t think we should be able to do whatever we want, even when our behavior might get other people killed.

“You mean them lying politicians and oil company CEOs and coal barons and arms merchants and pharma execs and Wall Street crooks and such?”

“And sports stars,” I said. “Some of them are just as bad.”