The wife of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes recently “liked” a Donald Trump social media post. The girlfriend of Mahomes’s most important teammate recently endorsed Kamala Harris.
Mahomes will be navigating that specific minefield by not entering it.
“I don’t want my place and my platform to be used to endorse a candidate or do whatever, either way,” Mahomes told reporters on Wednesday, via David Close of CNN.com. “I think my place is to inform people to get registered to vote. It is to inform people to do their own research and then make their best decision for them and their family.”
Mahomes doesn’t intend to change his mind, or his message.
“Every time I’m on this stage and I get asked these questions, I’m going to refer back to that because I think that’s what makes America so great,” Mahomes said. “I’ve grown up with people from every aspect of life and every background. I think the best thing about a football locker room, and kind of how I’ve grown up in baseball locker rooms is people can come together and achieve something and achieve a common goal. . . . I think if we can do that as a nation, I think we can get the best out of each other.”
Amen to that. In recent years, politics have been weaponized to divide us, to highlight that which makes us different. Our collective interests will be better served if we focus on the things that make us similar.
For the media outlets, however, that thrive on the outrage and outrage-in-response-to-the-outrage machinery, there’s no money to be made in having us all get along. Powerful forces want us to hate each other, because they profit handsomely from it.
The example set by Mahomes defies that mindset. If all news outlets followed that same approach, maybe things wouldn’t be such a mess right now.
