In a pitch-black 2020 song called “Murder Most Foul,” Bob Dylan wrote, “What is the truth? Where did it go?”
Fair questions right now in the age of New York congressman-elect George Santos fabricating his way to office shamefully, but, even worse, shamelessly.
Many of us seem to find the truth to be bor-ing, in need of jazzing up. Just as actual news is no fun because A) you have to wait for it, and B) you have to believe it.
While truth and news do their necessary, pedestrian work, speculation and rumor is the space where we would rather play. This is where anything goes. There is no responsibility in it, just fun.
Two examples in the NFL this week.
As the Kansas City Chiefs-Cincinnati Bengals and Philadelphia Eagles-San Francisco 49ers prepare to play on Sunday for the AFC and NFC titles and a ticket to the Super Bowl, there’s a two-ring circus around that:
In one ring: The latest iteration of the Tom Brady-to-Miami speculation, which runs neck and neck with the Lionel Messi-to-Miami speculation for the enough, already! fatigue factor.
In the other ring: The spectacularly unfounded conspiracy wave on social media suggesting that Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, recovering from cardiac arrest, has in fact died and that a massive coverup is ongoing.
Let us explore each.
— A writer for FloridaGators.com and a sports anchor at WUFT, Will Levenson, tweeted out a jumpy video Tuesday of Tom Brady touring Miami Country Day, a local private school, for the apparent purpose of perhaps enrolling his children there. (Brady, 45, has two boys ages 15 and 13 and a girl, 10.)
This is where it would be fun to suggest a hoax, a prank, but it sure did appear to be Brady speaking to a lady from the school as two armed cops or security stood on either side.
At the end of the 25-second video the guy with the wobbly smartphone camera says, “Tom, you playing for the Dolphins?” The most accomplished quarterback of all time does not reply. The video has more than 300,000 views and is being scrutinized like a modern-day Zapruder film.
The tweet is posted with the question, “Could Brady be a Dolphin next season?”
The informed take: The Dolphins are committed to Tua Tagovailoa (despite his concussions issue) and Brady will either retire or leave the Tampa Bay Bucs for another team, most likely the Las Vegas Raiders. So why is Tom touring Miami Country Day? Because he loves Miami and is building a house in South Florida to move here. Meantime he is renting a $70,000-per-month luxury apartment near Miami Beach.
By his skulduggery Dolphins owner Stephen Ross cost his team a 2023 first-round draft pick by wooing Brady while he still was under contract with Tampa, ruled the NFL. Ross still wants Brady but, now, likely as a future limited partner owner perhaps with an additional club role — not as a QB.
— Hamlin almost died on a football field on Jan. 2, causing the Bengals-Bills game to be first delayed then canceled, and not replayed. He was resuscitated, brought back to life. All reports and indications are he has made a full, perhaps even miraculous, recovery.
Some aren’t buying it. Social media is alive with conspiracy theorists who note whenever Hamlin has since been seen in public he is wearing a hoodie that mostly disguises his face. Is it a body double? Has he died? Is this a massive coverup?
Bills quarterback Josh Allen, asked about such speculation, had the perfect two-word answer:
“That’s stupid.”
Hamlin trolled the conspiracy loons on his own Twitter site @HamlinIsland on Monday by posing next to a giant street mural of himself ... while wearing a face-obscuring hoodie ... with the word, “Clone.”
Back in the day, the crazies among us were the folks sure they saw UFOs in the sky or believed bigfoot was real.
Now the Q-Anon mind-set of unfounded suspicion has moved on. It’s tougher and tougher to proclaim JFK is still alive when he would be 105 today. Election-denying by degrees has become a hopeless, lost battle. Whatever Kyrie Irving is promoting probably isn’t worth backing. So what to do?
Why does Damar Hamlin always hide in a hoodie since his supposed “recovery.” WHY!?!? What is going on!?
Meanwhile, back in the real world, 28 NFL teams including the Miami Dolphins are trying right now to figure out what it will take to be one of the four still playing on Sunday.
Reality. So dull! The final four needs spicing up. A rumor. Something.
That reminds me. I can’t exactly remember where or from who, but I just heard somewhere that Patrick Mahomes, because of that worrisome ankle injury, is being fitted in time for Sunday’s kickoff with a bionic right leg.
