“Dear Twelve…”

by David Benjamin

Aaron Rodgers
1265 Lombardi Avenue
Green Bay Wisconsin

Dear Aaron:

You’re an odd duck.

I mean that in the most complimentary sense. I’m one, too. Been that way since — best guess — the summer before second grade when I was corrupted by Chucky Dutcher.

You’re also a know-it-all.

Me, too.

Like me also, your dignified bearing and air of superiority are hard-won. We both come from small towns — although mine was smaller than yours — which means that, throughout your formative years, you were underestimated and overlooked. You’ve been bypassed by guys with equal or less talent because they came from bigger cities, bigger schools, bigger money. People have never shown you the respect you deserved. This explains the chip on your shoulder.

I know how you feel. I know how you’ve swallowed your pride when you had to and how to had to buckle down to proving yourself again and again. You’ve persevered where others merely coasted. Because you’ve had to work harder and think faster than most of your privileged peers, you can seem, to the casual observer, a little arrogant and sort of a smarty-pants.

Believe me, I’ve been there!

But also, you’ve tapped in yourself a vein of smalltown conversational charm. You’re cool and easy with regular people. If they’re not prejudiced by your snooty reputation, they warm to you. On the other hand, you can’t charm warmth from a Vikings fan, and you’ll never erase the stigma of replacing Brett Favre.

Which brings me around to your Covid-19 screwup. Open mouth, insert cleats, right? Listen, I used to run a newspaper, where I had to express a bunch of opinions, every week. Some of my editorial gaffes were almost as dumbass as you lying about your vaccination status. You have to face it, Twelve, you lied — an impulse that plunged you into the big pitfall for someone who poses as an authority on everything. Which is this: Sometimes you don’t know your ass from elbow — like when you decide to air your theories on viral epidemiology or if I start discussing Augustine’s position on quickening in the womb — but you can’t resist the urge to dazzle the crowd. So, you just roll right on, talking through your armpit.

In the Covid-19 fiasco, you not only screwed the pooch by way of your armpit. You also bloviated yourself into a corner occupied by just the sort of mouth-breathing, Trump-voting yahoos that you left Chico to get away from. Cornered on the radio by a former punter, you reverted to the smalltown kid with a chip on your shoulder. I understood this, of course. I even empathized. The hitch is that I tend to be more tolerant than the average liberal. This is because I have recourse to the Dostoyevsky Principle, a forgiveness device that I use whenever one of my favorite celebrities wanders into Wonderland and says, or does, something dumber than a Thurber football player.

To explain: Fyodor Dostoyevsky is, of course, Russia’s greatest writer. In real life, however, away from his literary pursuits, he was Calamity Ted. He drank, smoked and probably chewed. He gambled himself into hopeless debt, he missed deadlines and lied to his editors. He was mean to women, rude to his few friends, faithless to his God and, half the time, he was sick as a dog. Pathetic yes, but when you filter all these personal foibles through the Dostoyevsky Principle, none of them count. A reader’s only interest in old screwed-up, chip-on-the-shoulder, drunk-and-disorderly Fyodor is — must be — what he put between the covers of The Brother Karamazov, Notes from the Underground, The Idiot, etc., all of which is remarkable, powerful and immortal.

As you will be remembered, in the somewhat less exalted — but more popular — realm of American football.

What I’m saying is that, when you have a little talent — as we both do — you always have the chance to live down your screw-ups by leaving behind a body of work that transcends your quotidian stumbling and bumbling. The 24-hour news cycle will soon carry you past your selfish Covid evasions and the whiny excuses you used to justify your irresponsibility. In the long run, you’ll be remembered — and valued — for what you’ve done on the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field. All else will be forgotten.

I mean, who remembers that Dostoyevsky, in 1849, before he had written almost anything, got arrested for sedition and was almost executed?

On the other hand, Fyodor never had a “platform” or did media interviews. He never had a future as a color commentator on National Football League broadcasts next to Joe Buck. This is your likely future, which means you’re going to be talking all the time — and risking a rep as the second coming of Howard Cosell.

Given all that airtime, you ‘ll always be tempted, as I am, to treat your audience with the sort of smarmy Ted Cruz condescension that confirms your erudition, but tends to really piss people off.

Being a renowned polymath, you see, is a delicate balance. Of course, it’s okay to be a know-it-all if you know it all, as I do. But the secret of a know-it-all’s success is to make out like you hardly know a goddamn thing. For instance, let’s say that during a lull in the Titans-Falcons game, you utter a jewel of esoterica about, perhaps, the use of the spinning fullback in the single-wing offense. After you’ve enlightened your boothmate and the world with this cunningly obscure reference, you should then immediately wax apologetic about bringing up the subject, suggesting that you only know this stuff because of a paper you wrote in junior college, or maybe you heard during a webinar with Terry Bradshaw. You can then plunge into a lot of aw-shucksing about how you might have forgotten part of it and you might be wrong and gosh, Joe, there’s tons of folks out there who know a lot more about the ol’ single-wing than little old me.

Even though there isn’t anybody.

Here’s the thing, Aaron. As you move beyond Green Bay and put away childish things, remember fearsomely that a little learning is dangerous to your future livelihood. The best way to win friends, influence people, and succeed as a know-it-all in a know-nothing nation is to hide your smarts, behind a mask of self-mockery and beneath a bushel of false humility.

Or better yet — if you can grow up and add it to your repertoire — real humility.

Sincerely,