Stop me if you’ve heard that before.
Except this time, it feels more like character assassination because of the “B” on his chest rather than the act itself.
As the only American on the Bruins 2011 Cup winning roster, many feel like Thomas should have gone to the White House in solidarity with his teammates, to show respect to the President (even though he doesn’t agree with his politics) and generally to not rock the boat. Many say that if he wanted to make a political statement, he could have done it in another way (yeah right, if it were to come to that, the same people would laugh and say “who the hell is Tim Thomas? Shut up and play hockey, fatty”). Let’s recall that both Nick Boynton and Kris Versteeg (yes, both Canadians) decided not to visit the White House as members of the Cup winning 2010 Blackhawks. Granted, they had both moved on to other teams, but so did Tomas Kaberle, and he was there. I don’t recall the outrage when they skipped the ceremony, do you? You can tell me that as an American, Thomas had the duty to go and represent. But most people say it was about team unity. So which is it? Team unity, or Patriotic duty? Where does free will come in to play?
We’re all entitled to our opinion, and we can go back and forth all day over whether what he did was right or wrong, selfish, or bold. Personally, I could care less either way, so there’s my stance for the record. It doesn’t affect me in any way. What does bother me is this: Canada could barely muster a 60% voter turnout for its most recent Federal Election. That means nearly 10 million Canadians who were eligible to vote chose not to. South of the border, the situation is even worse. When President Obama became “The Man”, only 56.8% of voters showed up to have their say, meaning that nearly 100 million eligible Americans opted to not vote. In the 2010 mid-term elections, nearly 145 million eligible Americans stayed home (37.8% showed up).
I don’t know who did and who didn’t vote in their country’s elections. Based on the massive twitter outrage yesterday, the sheer volume of angry voices says that there were plenty of lazy donkeys among them who gleefully took up arms in the “bash Tim Thomas party”. They chided Thomas’ lack of respect for the President while they themselves didn’t have enough respect to get off their rear end to have their say.
To you people, kindly STFU.
To anyone who thinks that Thomas disrespected his teammates, if they are truly upset with him, they’ll stop defending him as well as they have in the past couple seasons. They won’t play as hard or with as much heart for a guy they’re that angry with.
