Don’t let his “Dumb and Dumber” character fool you. Jim Carrey finds no humor in how the NFL conducts its business.
The famous actor blasted the NFL in a tweet Tuesday morning, six days after the league approved a new national anthem policy that essentially denies its players’ right to publicly protest before games. Carrey also took aim at President Donald Trump and suggested corporations who sponsor the NFL reconsider their partnerships.
“NFL — who exploits players for 3yrs then abandons them to a lifetime of pain — sided with a draft-dodging racist who uses fake patriotism to squash peaceful protest,” Carrey wrote. “Corporations (should) rethink sponsoring moral cowardice before we start asking: whose side is Nationwide really on?”
Carrey accompanied his tweet with a cartoon of Trump ranting at a podium in front of a wall of prominent NFL sponsors, including Ford, Gillette and Papa John’s, which actually ended its official sponsorship with the league via mutual decision in February.
The Canadian-born actor appears to have many issues with the league, first of all its mishandling of player safety and failure to care for players both during and after their NFL careers.
Carrey, who has strongly criticized Trump in the past, also condemns the league for seemingly catering to Trump as it relates to player protests. Trump stirred up considerable anti-NFL sentiment last year with his fiery rants against players kneeling during the national anthem, and the NFL’s owners, many of whom are Trump supporters, appeared to cow to that public sentiment while voting on a new anthem policy.
According to Carrey, the NFL’s behavior should make the league’s biggest sponsors reconsider being associated with America’s most profitable sport. With so much money on both sides of the table, though, that scenario is about as likely as an NFL team signing Colin Kaepernick this fall.
