On Tom Brady and Gene Simmons
I made a post on Facebook last night, shortly after halftime, that was simply: “Tom Brady is a Trump supporter. Just FYI.” Some people got pretty mad about that.
And that was kind of the point. It was a shitpost, not really serving any purpose. Because my opinion is that you’re allowed to admire his performance at the sports ball. I should make clear that I’m not a football fan. Or a hockey fan. Or any kind of sports fan except for the Olympics.
Hang on, this fucker is gonna meander.
On December 10 my Shit Went Down post was about Sir Winston Churchill winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. I talked about various authors and how they were shitty people, because Churchill was shitty, and it was okay to still enjoy their work, or not, depending on how you personally felt about them and what they’d done. The concluding paragraph was this:
Everyone is flawed. Some aren’t just flawed, they’re evil. We should not praise people as heroes, because we will always find reason to be disappointed, crushed, or aghast. However, we can praise heroic acts. Admire the deeds you deem worthy rather than the person behind them. Alternatively, feel free to say fuck that guy and cancel them from your life. No one is owed your admiration. No one.
A lot of people liked that concluding paragraph. Hell, someone turned it into a meme. Seeing the positive reaction, when I was writing the opening “Author’s Note” for the forthcoming Sh!t Went Down book, I decided to include it, leading in by writing “it is possible you’ll be vexed by how I have exposed some historical figures as having been less than perfect. To that end, I’ll quote from the entry for December 10:”
So, yeah, it’s okay to like Tom Brady’s ability to throw a ball, build and lead a team, out sports ball the other sports ball team.
Now if he was up for some humanitarian award . . .
A lot of people in the Tom Brady post said, “No he’s not!” in reference to him being a Trump supporter. They said he didn’t put that MAGA hat in his locker that he posed with, and made lots of other leaps of logic that “he never endorsed Trump!” Yeah, but when asked if he thought Trump could win in 2016, Brady said, “I hope so! That would be great!” Brady also repeatedly praised Trump’s “accomplishments” and referred to him as “a good friend” more than once.
I was good friends with a highly regarded nutrition expert named Alan Aragon, and when I learned he was sexually assaulting people I cut him out of my life and publicly disavowed him. Considering all the racism, sexism, and rape allegations against Trump, for Brady to go on and on about what a good friend Trump is speaks volumes about the player’s character. There is also the cheating and the pseudoscience pushing anti-vaccine bullshit he has spewed.
The thing is Brady never disavowed Trump. He just stopped talking about it because of the flack he caught for doing so. And he was largely given a pass on the whole thing because he’s white. Colin Kaepernick, on the other hand . . .
Anyway, Gene Simmons.
In my book The Holy Sh!t Moment I was writing about the KISS principle of “Keep it Simple, Stupid” and quipped “I’ve interviewed both Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. Paul is nice . . .”
That’s intended to imply that Gene is not. Because he is not. And yet, I interviewed him anyway. Time to meander a bit again. That whole Alan Aragon scenario, coupled with Trumpism revealing how many shit people there are in the fitness industry, accelerated the end of my involvement in fitness. I remember one fitness bro, after I wrote the above linked article about Alan, commenting “You’re such a hypocrite because you interviewed Gene Simmons!” This was a guy who regularly fat shamed and publicly posted on social media about whether certain women were “bangable” or not.
And yeah, I interviewed Gene, despite the fact that he is known for being a racist and misogynistic piece of shit who also said people with depression should kill themselves. Plus a lot of other shitty things. Anyway, I’m not proud of it. But there was a reason why I did it.
I’d interviewed Paul a few years earlier. As I mentioned, he was nice. A friend of mine from high school, who I am still in touch with, was a huge KISS fan and thought it was so cool that her high school buddy interviewed Paul. In 2016 we went for lunch and she told me about how her marriage was ending. Her husband had been having an affair and he was leaving her for the other woman. I’d gone to her wedding. I need to explain that in high school she was one of my closest friends. Hell, back then she wanted me to take her to the Triumph concert and I didn’t have any money for a ticket except for the money my mom had given me for a haircut, so she cut my hair and we saw Triumph together with me sporting a really bad haircut. That’s the kind of friend she was.
But yeah, a month after our lunch she sent me a joking message “Since you and Paul are friends, can you get me tickets to the KISS concert?” I thought about it, and realized that I might be able to. I reached out to the same publicist to see if I could interview Gene, and he said yeah sure and set it up. Not only that, but he got us backstage passes for the meet and greet before the show. So I took my friend to the concert to show her a good time to distract her from her troubles, and she got to have her picture taken with the band with Paul’s arms wrapped around her and it kind of made her day because she always loved Paul.
That’s why I did it. That’s why I interviewed Gene.
Now I’ll tell you a bit about what it was like interviewing him. Here is the fitness interview, but I’ll share the stuff no one else knows. We were supposed to do the interview before the concert, but their plane was late. I was waiting backstage and they finally showed up. Paul came in first and shook my hand and said he remembered me and loved the piece I’d written on him. Told you he was nice. Then Gene came in and I stood up to great him and he did one of the most obnoxious alpha male bullshit posturing things I’d ever experienced.
He put his hands up to literally block me from getting up. He didn’t want me standing and talking to him face to face. He wanted to stand and tower above me as some kind of dominance game. It was so overwhelmingly obvious and stupid I almost burst out laughing. But I had a job to do, an interview to get, so I let it go.
But it turned out the interview would have to wait until the next morning, because they were running late. So I met him at his hotel, and we went down to the café to talk about his fitness regimen.
Except that’s not what happened.
It was July 2016, and Trump was all over the news. Usually I can do a fitness interview in ten minutes. Hugh Jackman was so professional and to the point we managed it in eight minutes. I wrote an 1,800-word feature on Neil Peart’s fitness regimen after only 15 minutes with him.
The interview with Gene was 37 minutes long, and I managed to get him to talk about fitness for about five of those minutes. The rest of it was a political tirade.
I mentioned what happened to my editor at the LA Times and she suggested I write a second piece for the political section of the paper. I had to tone it down in order for it to have any hope of getting published, and they still decided not to publish it. Perhaps they considered it too inflammatory. I did get paid though.
Anyway, here is that brief piece that LAT didn’t want to publish:
I wanted to talk health and fitness.
The night previous I’d watched KISS take the stage in my hometown of Calgary to rock and roll at least part of the night. The following morning I was to meet with 66-year-old Gene Simmons for coffee to discuss how he stays in shape to handle a two-hour show wearing 50 pounds of gear.
But Rush Limbaugh showed up instead.
In the land of Trudeau few embrace right wing ideals. During my conversation with Gene, I endeavored to steer the topic back to fitness, and did get that story, but it was wrapped in a coating of conservative rhetoric.
Like a Duck Dynasty star at the RNC, Gene is concerned about giving away free stuff.
“You have a fiduciary responsibility to yourself,” Simmons said, “but unfortunately, in this welfare-minded, socialist world … in the capitalist free market system, we have a guilt complex that the government should be your mommy and daddy and all people should be attached to the teat.”
Simmons explained this is the “Achilles heel of capitalism” and charity “takes away your personal responsibility, your self-determination.” He said Ayn Rand espoused a philosophy that “comes off as unkind,” but in nature mother birds kick their babies out of the nest because “You’re going to have to learn to fly yourself.”
“You want charity?” Simmons asked. “Western culture, that’s Canada and America, are more charitable – especially America – than all the countries put together.” (The World Giving Index reveals Myanmar as the most charitable nation; the U.S. is #2, and Canada ranks fourth.)
Simmons made points regarding teaching to fish vs. giving out free fish. “I support 1,400 kids in Africa myself, directly, with a guy who I partnered with from Australia.” He explained they work for their food. “If you want to eat you must go to school.”
During a brief foray into dietary discussion, I used the phrase “highly processed carbohydrates” and Simmons replied with “Those are big words like ‘gymnasium.’ People don’t understand what you’re talking about.” This quickly segued into comparative merits of Clinton vs. Trump.
“The new politicians of the world have the ability to communicate to people in straight language,” he said. “Hillary Clinton is untrustworthy, so says 70% of the potential electorate.” (At the time of interview her total “unfavorable” rating was 54%, and it currently sits at 52.3%.) “It doesn’t mean she won’t win,” Simmons continued, “but she speaks politicianese. Donald Trump, you can hate him or love him, does not speak that and he’s getting enormous response.”
Speaking of response from a crowd, KISS does still put on an excellent show. Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, if you’re a fan, they’re still worth seeing in concert.