"Divorce rumors have been following the Obamas for some time.... Michelle, as a solo artist, has been out and about..."

"... particularly as she promotes her podcast... She’s also been a regular guest on fellow famous people’s shows. This month alone, she went on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang to talk about bickering with Barack over their thermostat, and on The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett, where she insisted once more that 'everyone would know' if she and Barack were breaking up. 'I’m not a martyr,' she said. 'I would be problem-solving in public: "Let me tell you what he did."'"

That's from New York Magazine, which has a sarcastic headline — "Michelle and Barack Obama Are Dating Again" — because it's pushing back on the New York Post article that's titled "Barack and Michelle Obama spotted on swanky date night in NYC as divorce rumors swirl."

Repeated insistence... sounds like protesting too much.

And is it really true that if she and Barack were breaking up she's be out in public, problem-solving, dishing on what he did? I'd like to think she would not, but it was only 5 days ago that I was blogging "Why are men's podcasts so different from women's...?" after Danica Patrick went on "The Sage Steele Show"

"People could never imagine that I would lack any confidence, or belief in the simple things about who I am."

"Everything was torn to bits. He leaves a trail of blood. I don’t think I’m saying too much earth-shattering stuff after we — there’s been enough out there. But it gave me the greatest gift, which is myself. It gave me the greatest gift of how much I needed to show up for myself and take care of myself."

Said Danica Patrick, on a podcast called "The Sage Steele Show," quoted in "Danica Patrick: 'Emotionally abusive' Aaron Rodgers relationship ‘wore me down to nothing'" (NY Post).

I saw that just as I'm in the middle of listening to Aaron Rogers on a new episode of Joe Rogan. Audio and transcript at Podscribe. I don't think Aaron talks about any of his relationships with women. Does he leave a trail of blood? He doesn't give a clue. He and Joe talk about vaccines, the pyramids, aliens, the Sean Combs trial, transwomen in women's sports. Juicy substantive topics.

Why are men's podcasts so different from women's and why do I only listen to the men's? Part of the answer is that I'm highly skeptical of female empowerment discourse — e.g., "the gift of how much I needed to show up for myself and take care of myself." It's not just that it's superficial and repetitious. I suspect that it's part of the subordination of women, not that it does men any good. 

"The anxiety that’s been ricing my lungs turns steely and sharp when I see a pale wooden door built into a hillside, framed by lava rock."

"It looks like the entrance to Bilbo Baggins’s house. I go in. A stairway tumbles down to a windowless, 300-square-foot room with textured walls, a bathroom, and a wooden bed that smells like sage. A single low-wattage bulb hums faintly overhead. It’s controlled by a switch covered with a hard plastic guard, which makes it difficult to turn off and on. That’s the point. This room and two others like it in these secret woodlands are the heart of what might be the country’s only established commercial dark retreat. This is a spiritual place, where visitors pay good money to spend long periods of time in crypt-like blackness, devoid of all light and most sounds, in an attempt to uncage their minds and, they hope, discover something deeper within... I flip the switch to see just how dark the dark is, and terror presses into me like 13,000 vertical feet of seawater...."

Writes Tim Neville, in "The Darkness That Blew My Mind/Embarking on four days of total blackout, inside the sensory equivalent of a tomb, our writer went on a dark-cave retreat, the same one that quarterback Aaron Rodgers did" (Outside).

"In recent months, Mr. Kennedy and his camp have approached at least a half-dozen people... to gauge their interest in serving as his running mate."

"Aside from [Aaron] Rodgers and [Jesse] Ventura, he is said to have spoken with former Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii; Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky; and Andrew Yang, the former candidate for president and New York mayor, the two people familiar with the discussions said.... All have turned him down, or their conversations have not advanced, except for Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Ventura, the people familiar with the discussions said. If anything could be interpreted as a hint of where Mr. Kennedy might lean, the domain name kennedyrodgers.com was registered last week using a GoDaddy host....

From "Aaron Rodgers and Jesse Ventura Top R.F.K. Jr.’s List for Running Mate/Mr. Kennedy said he had been speaking with the Jets quarterback 'pretty continuously' for the past month" (NYT).

Hiking with @AaronRodgers12 and his amazing Achilles ⛰️ pic.twitter.com/zBbJWUdOS7

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) February 21, 2024

"'You mean, that’s it?' I gasped. 'We have Zach again?' I added incredulously. If the worst thing humanly imaginable happened—i.e., Donald Trump’s reëlection—I will not sound more disbelieving or distraught...."

Writes Adam Gopnik, in "No, Not Aaron Rodgers! It’s hard to name a position in the history of sports so manifestly cursed as that of quarterback for the New York Jets" (The New Yorker).

I love the way Donald Trump intrudes himself even into an article about football almost as much as I love the diaeresis in "reëlection" and the screwy use of "happened" in "If the worst thing...  happened... I will not sound...."

"[Aaron] Rodgers’s appearances out on the town are part of a well-orchestrated campaign by him and his PR apparatus. But..."

"... what’s telling is that he’s making the effort in the first place. After all: Wasn’t Rodgers supposed to be a dangerous, rebellious, edgelord truth-teller? This is the guy who smugly (infuriatingly, really) lied about being 'immunized' during the 2021 NFL season. The guy who thanked Joe Rogan for his 'COVID-treatment plan,' who seemed to imply that Joe Biden isn’t a legitimate president, who wore a shirt on Pat McAfee’s show with the words Cancel Culture crossed out ... who actually claimed... that the government was releasing videos of UFOs to distract from the 'Epstein Files.' Rodgers’s pandemic-era torching of his own reputation was so extreme that, at one point, State Farm, whom he has worked with since 2011, pulled his ads off the air.... And yet he has been a very different person since he got to New York. He is acting like… a guy who doesn’t want to get canceled?"

I'm reading "Aaron Rodgers Really Wants to Be Liked Again" (Intelligencer).

Sword given.

. 🗡️ https://t.co/VnmBbHIFWV

— Aaron Rodgers (@AaronRodgers12) April 19, 2023

Also:

"It’s a darkness retreat... It’s just sitting in isolation, meditation, dealing with your thoughts. It stimulates DMT, so there can be some hallucinations in there..."

"... but it’s just kind of sitting in silence, which most of us never do."

Said Aaron Rodgers, quoted in "NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers completes ‘darkness retreat,’ ESPN reports" (CNN).

"What was the craziness like, when all the people were calling you a plague rat?" Joe Rogan asks Aaron Rodgers.

Joe Rogan is going big with his vaccine series. See yesterday's post, here, highlighting his interview with Alex Berenson, who was kicked off Twitter for saying the wrong things about the vaccine.

I've got 10 TikToks for you this evening. Quite a lot, but won't you tell me what you like best?

1. Sharpening depicted in fuzziness.

2. Is this Mexican outfit offensive?

3. Woo speak, translated.

4. Is that Aaron Rodgers?

5. Lonely lass was Kate Dalrymple.

6. The word ladder exercise for how to write a song.

7. Can any song become a sad song?

8. Will you tell your male friend — seriously — that you love him?

9. Gays are coming for your girlfriend.

10. 1930s desk lamp restoration.

$200 million — that makes sense.

Aaron Rodgers and the Packers have agreed on a 4-year, $200M deal to make him the highest-paid NFL player ever, per @RapSheet @brgridiron pic.twitter.com/MVuRdjiDGk

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) March 8, 2022

Why Ayn Rand is trending on Twitter under the heading "Sports."

I thought this was odd:

 

But I clicked through and saw that it was no mistake:

Yes, I blogged Aaron's bookshelf gesturing — back on January 4th... in happier days....

Aaron Rodgers points out his copy of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand to Eli and Peyton Manning during Monday Night Football. pic.twitter.com/2qSOcSSb3m

— The Recount (@therecount) January 4, 2022

Aaron Rodgers explains everything.

Aaron Rodgers brags he has Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” on his bookshelf.

Explains everything. pic.twitter.com/fYHmGeY7FX

— Marcus Hayes (@inkstainedretch) January 4, 2022

"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."

"Health is not a one-size-fits-all for everybody. And for me, it involved a lot of study in the offseason. … I put a lot of time and energy researching this and met with a lot of people to get the most information about the vaccines before I made my decision." 

Said Aaron Rodgers, quoted in "Aaron Rodgers lashes out against NFL, ‘woke mob’ in defense of vaccination status" (WaPo). Or watch him making the statements on the Pat McAfee Show here.

He also says that he's getting advice from his "now good friend" Joe Rogan and that the NFL’s coronavirus protocols are "not based on science but on a more shame-based environment."

Aaron Rodgers vs. cancel culture.

"Back when I first got into the league and I grew up watching it, I feel like trash talk was a little more normalized. You didn’t have to apologize if you said something to offend a few people.... If you don’t like it, that’s fine. That’s your prerogative.... There is this culture that exists that gets off, I think, on shrinking people, keeping them small, keeping them in a box, quieting them through cancelation or demeaning comments. I stand behind what I do. I like to speak the truth. I’m not a part of this woke cancel culture that gets off on trying to silence people all the time." (Link.)

Aaron Rodgers throws shade on "woke cancel culture":

“There is this culture that exists that gets off on shrinking people...quieting them,” Rodgers says. "I like to speak the truth. I’m not a part of this woke cancel culture that gets off on trying to silence people." pic.twitter.com/hkWxU2AqXM

— Jon Miltimore (@miltimore79) October 21, 2021

"I don’t think I’d need to give up football to do it. They film 46 days a year. I worked 187 this year in Green Bay. That gives me 178 days to do Jeopardy!"

"So I feel like I could fit 46 into that 178 and make it work. It would be a dream job for sure, and I’m not shy at all about saying I want the job. That’s how I went into it. I want an opportunity to be in the mix.” 

Said Aaron Rodgers, quoted in "Aaron Rodgers Says He Wants to Be the Permanent Host of 'Jeopardy!'" (Inside Hook).

“I feel like I bring something different to the stage — I’m the youngest of any of the guest hosts, I’d be the youngest host of just about any major game show, I bring an audience from the NFL, and I feel like I appeal to nerdy people, too, because I was a nerd in high school and got caught in that weird phase of wanting to be a jock and an athlete and also really caring about getting good grades. And at the same time, there’s not many bigger fans of the show than me. I’ve been watching it for years and years and years. I respect the show and appreciate the history of it, and also there’s my background of stepping in for a legend and their footsteps. I feel like all that combined makes me a pretty good candidate.”  

I love the forthright, heartfelt, humble/proud submission of an application for the job. He's such a huge sports hero, and he wants to come home to nerddom. So appealing!

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email. 

FROM THE EMAIL: Mary Ann writes:

"It wasn't my decision."

"It wasn't my decision."

Aaron Rodgers on Packers coach Matt LaFleur deciding to kick a field goal on 4th down late in the 4th quarter.

(via @CBSSportsHQ)pic.twitter.com/aThJYXgT2f

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) January 25, 2021

Football snippet, Drudge-style.

Maybe concentrate on winning the game...

Here's something that went out in the Milwaukee Bucks' Twitter feed last night (as they were losing the third game in a row in the Eastern Conference finals):

🍻 @DavidBakhtiari and @AaronRodgers12 go head-to-head in a beer chugging competition!! #GoPackGo | #FearTheDeer pic.twitter.com/etedPaiJ9G

— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) May 24, 2019

In Wisconsin MVP’s crush beers. @ChristianYelich | #FearTheDeer pic.twitter.com/qTnMl4K3eN

— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) May 24, 2019

Even if they'd won, what kind of example is this? Beer chugging? And it's touted in the Wisconsin State Journal, under the headline "Brew Crew: Watch as Christian Yelich refuses to be upstaged by Aaron Rodgers, David Bakhtiari in beer chugging contest." ESPN has "Brew-haha: Yelich, Rodgers chug at Bucks game."

#powerofthestash.

#powerofthestash pic.twitter.com/RjsB5h2a5C

— Green Bay Packers (@packers) February 24, 2018