The US media has savaged NFL star Aaron Rodgers’ vaccination controversy over the past few days and SNL hasn’t held back.
Saturday Night Live has laid the boot into Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers after he was sidelined after coming down with Covid-19 last week.
The NFL’s reigning Most Valuable Player said in August he had been “immunised” but both NFL Network and ESPN reported the 37-year-old signal caller had not been vaccinated against Covid-19.
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According to the NFL rules around Covid-19, Rodgers must spend 10 days away from the team, meaning he missed Monday’s 13-7 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs and will only be able to rejoin the Packers on the eve of Green Bay’s game against Seattle.
NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport tweeted: “Aaron Rodgers received homoeopathic treatment from his personal doctor to raise his antibody levels and asked the NFL to review his status. The NFL, NFLPA and joint docs ruled him as unvaccinated. Now, he has Covid-19.”
Rodgers went on the offensive on the weekend in an interview, sharing fears which have been widely panned, as US media took aim at the NFL quarterback.
And Saturday Night Live joined the party, kicking off last week’s show with a scathing sketch featuring Cecily Strong playing controversial Fox News host Jeanine Pirro and Pete Davidson playing Rodgers.
“Our first guest is an American brave enough to say ‘screw you science, I know Joe Rogan’. Please welcome, NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers,” Strong said start the sketch.
She then added: “Aaron, you’re not vaccinated — so what! Who the hell cares. It’s your body, your choice. And please never use that quote for any other issue.”
Davidson replied: “Exactly Jeanine, it’s my body and my Covid. I can give it to whoever I want. But suddenly the woke mob is coming after me.
“I never lied. I took all my teammates into a huddle, got their faces three inches from my wet mouth and told them ‘trust me, I’m more or less immunised. Go team’.”
As for one Rodgers talking point that the vaccine would make him sterile.
Strong as Pirro said the claim was “so insane I’m jealous I didn’t say it”.
Davidson as Rodgers: “People can talk all they want but at the end of the day my record is still 7-1 — meaning of the eight people I’ve infected, seven are fine.”
It comes after Rodgers doubled down on his comments over the weekend, going on The Pat McAfee Show to explain his side of the story.
He said he was “in the crosshairs of the woke mob”, calling the reporting “blatant lies”.
He also said that he was not an “anti-vax flat-Earther” but rather a “critical thinker”, and added that he believes “strongly in bodily autonomy and the ability to make choices for your body, not to have to acquiesce to some woke culture or crazed group of individuals who say you have to do something”.
He also quoted Martin Luther King when he said: “You have a moral obligation to object to unjust rules and rules that make no sense.”
He added that he had also consulted with doctors, added that he was allergic to one of the ingredients in Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines and appeared to be worried the vaccination would make him sterile.
Fortune.com reported University of Florida paediatrician and epidemiologist Sonja Rasmussen said: “There’s absolutely no evidence that the vaccines cause infertility”.
Rodgers also said that he consulted with Joe Rogan and is “taking mononuclear antibodies, Ivermectin, zinc, Vitamin C and D, HCQ, and I feel pretty incredible.”
Ivermectin is used most commonly to treat worms in animals, and for scabies and certain parasitic infections in humans.
Before play on Fox’s NFL coverage, four-time Super Bowl quarterback Terry Bradshaw slammed Rodgers.
“I’ll give Aaron Rodgers some advice. It would have been nice if he had just come to the Naval Academy and learned how to be honest. Learned not to lie,” Bradshaw said.
“Because that’s what you did, Aaron. You lied to everyone. I understand ‘immunised,’ What you were doing was taking stuff that would keep you from getting COVID-19. You got COVID-19.
“Ivermectin is a cattle dewormer. Sorry, folks, that’s what it is. We are a divided nation politically. We are a divided nation on COVID-19, whether or not to take the vaccine. And unfortunately, we’ve got players that pretty much think only about themselves. And I’m extremely disappointed in Aaron Rodgers.”
Originally published as SNL’s Pete Davidson savages Aaron Rodgers vaccination controversy
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