Football, Gas Prices, and the Performance of Empathy
By LONNIE KING
Donald Trump recently criticized the rising cost of watching NFL games, lamenting how streaming services are “taking football away from many, many people.”
On the surface, it sounds almost compassionate. And honestly? There’s a piece of the argument that resonates.
Sports fans are being nickel-and-dimed to death. What used to require a television antenna now requires a collection of subscriptions, passwords, streaming apps, and monthly charges.
The NFL has become increasingly fragmented across corporate platforms, each carving out exclusive slices of America’s most popular sport.
For working people already stretched thin, it’s frustrating.
But the more I thought about Trump’s comments, the more they started feeling like another example of something that has become deeply common in modern public life:
Performing concern about symbolic inconveniences while avoiding accountability for structural harm.
The Easy Populism of Football
Football is safe territory. It’s emotional. Familiar. Culturally unifying.
When a politician says, “People shouldn’t be priced out of football,” it instantly creates identification.
It sounds like solidarity with ordinary Americans.
And unlike football, gasoline isn’t optional for most Americans.
But there’s also something convenient about choosing football subscriptions as the place where empathy suddenly appears. Because while Trump was expressing concern about streaming costs, the country is simultaneously dealing with rising gasoline prices tied to escalating tensions and military actions involving Iran — actions his administration initiated without congressional approval and continues defending without meaningful oversight from a compliant Congress.
One Cost Is Entertainment. The Other Is Life.
People can stop watching the NFL. But most people cannot stop driving to work, buying groceries, transporting goods or living inside an economy affected by fuel prices.
That’s what makes this contrast feel so jarring to me.
A politician expressing outrage over the increasing cost of entertainment while helping create conditions that increase the cost of daily living feels less like populism and more like performance.
And maybe that’s the deeper issue: we’ve become conditioned to confuse symbolic empathy with meaningful accountability.
The NFL Isn’t a Victim
The irony is that the NFL itself is hardly some weak or mismanaged institution under attack by greedy streamers. The NFL is one of the most profitable and aggressively self-protective organizations in America.
The league long ago shifted away from depending primarily on ticket sales. Its real money comes from television contracts, streaming exclusivity, advertising, gambling partnerships and media rights.
The NFL doesn’t survive because average fans can comfortably attend games. It survives because millions of emotionally invested viewers continue generating attention and revenue.
And the league knows this.
That’s why it continues slicing its product across multiple platforms despite constant complaints from fans. The outrage has not meaningfully damaged the ratings.
People complain…and then still watch. Which, honestly, feels like a metaphor for modern politics too.
The Comfort of Safe Outrage
Football subscriptions are emotionally easier to talk about than war powers, constitutional accountability, or geopolitical instability.
One conversation is culturally comfortable. The other requires confronting consequences. And increasingly, our public discourse seems built around keeping people emotionally occupied with the first category while avoiding sustained focus on the second.
That’s why I’ve grown wary of leaders who consistently say things that sound compassionate while their actions create entirely different outcomes. And, it’s not because every statement is false. But because selective empathy can itself become a form of distraction.
What Are We Actually Paying Attention To?
This isn’t really a post about football. And it’s not even primarily a post about Donald Trump.
It’s about learning to notice the gap between rhetoric and reality. Between sounding like you care, and accepting responsibility for the consequences of power.
Because in the end, the most dangerous distractions are rarely complete fabrications.
Usually they’re real frustrations…strategically positioned in front of bigger ones.
Grace and grit to you! —LK
This is SO good, I've gotta share it!
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Football, Gas Prices, and the Performance of Empathy
By LONNIE KING
Donald Trump recently criticized the rising cost of watching NFL games, lamenting how streaming services are “taking football away from many, many people.”
On the surface, it sounds almost compassionate. And honestly? There’s a piece of the argument that resonates.
Sports fans are being nickel-and-dimed to death. What used to require a television antenna now requires a collection of subscriptions, passwords, streaming apps, and monthly charges.
The NFL has become increasingly fragmented across corporate platforms, each carving out exclusive slices of America’s most popular sport.
For working people already stretched thin, it’s frustrating.
But the more I thought about Trump’s comments, the more they started feeling like another example of something that has become deeply common in modern public life:
Performing concern about symbolic inconveniences while avoiding accountability for structural harm.
The Easy Populism of Football
Football is safe territory. It’s emotional. Familiar. Culturally unifying.
When a politician says, “People shouldn’t be priced out of football,” it instantly creates identification.
It sounds like solidarity with ordinary Americans.
And unlike football, gasoline isn’t optional for most Americans.
But there’s also something convenient about choosing football subscriptions as the place where empathy suddenly appears. Because while Trump was expressing concern about streaming costs, the country is simultaneously dealing with rising gasoline prices tied to escalating tensions and military actions involving Iran — actions his administration initiated without congressional approval and continues defending without meaningful oversight from a compliant Congress.
One Cost Is Entertainment. The Other Is Life.
People can stop watching the NFL. But most people cannot stop driving to work, buying groceries, transporting goods or living inside an economy affected by fuel prices.
That’s what makes this contrast feel so jarring to me.
A politician expressing outrage over the increasing cost of entertainment while helping create conditions that increase the cost of daily living feels less like populism and more like performance.
And maybe that’s the deeper issue: we’ve become conditioned to confuse symbolic empathy with meaningful accountability.
The NFL Isn’t a Victim
The irony is that the NFL itself is hardly some weak or mismanaged institution under attack by greedy streamers. The NFL is one of the most profitable and aggressively self-protective organizations in America.
The league long ago shifted away from depending primarily on ticket sales. Its real money comes from television contracts, streaming exclusivity, advertising, gambling partnerships and media rights.
The NFL doesn’t survive because average fans can comfortably attend games. It survives because millions of emotionally invested viewers continue generating attention and revenue.
And the league knows this.
That’s why it continues slicing its product across multiple platforms despite constant complaints from fans. The outrage has not meaningfully damaged the ratings.
People complain…and then still watch. Which, honestly, feels like a metaphor for modern politics too.
The Comfort of Safe Outrage
Football subscriptions are emotionally easier to talk about than war powers, constitutional accountability, or geopolitical instability.
One conversation is culturally comfortable. The other requires confronting consequences. And increasingly, our public discourse seems built around keeping people emotionally occupied with the first category while avoiding sustained focus on the second.
That’s why I’ve grown wary of leaders who consistently say things that sound compassionate while their actions create entirely different outcomes. And, it’s not because every statement is false. But because selective empathy can itself become a form of distraction.
What Are We Actually Paying Attention To?
This isn’t really a post about football. And it’s not even primarily a post about Donald Trump.
It’s about learning to notice the gap between rhetoric and reality. Between sounding like you care, and accepting responsibility for the consequences of power.
Because in the end, the most dangerous distractions are rarely complete fabrications.
Usually they’re real frustrations…strategically positioned in front of bigger ones.
Grace and grit to you! —LK
This is SO good, I've gotta share it!
Related