If you had April 20 in the "when will an NFL player, past or present, use a Nazi analogy to describe Roger Goodell" pool, please step forward and collect your prize.
Former New York Giants wide receiver Amani Toomer made the inevitable, unfortunate analogy on Wednesday. Via PFT:
"I think the way Mr. Goodell has handled [the lockout], the way he's kind of using his power, is like the kind of a Gestapo-type situation, controlling the players, not letting the judicial system do its work," Toomer said Wednesday, in comments that were repeated on ESPN Radio Thursday morning. "It rubs a lot of players the wrong way, and that's why you see a lot of players now lashing out at Mr. Goodell."
(Sighs.) Do we have to go through this again? Murderous dictators are the only men like Hitler. Political police forces that operate without civil restraints, arrest innocent people and send them to death camps are "Gestapo-type." That's it. Goodell may be heavy-handed and authoritarian but that's a long, long, long way from Nazi.
There's no use in trying to rationalize Toomer's point, so save your emails that parse his phrasing or defend him by saying that the former wideout clearly didn't mean to equate the termination of 12 million people with distributing billions in television revenue. Nazi analogies are off the table. Period. Not only are they ignorant of history, common sense and awareness of current affairs, they're lazy and played out too.
I'm reminded of a great post my colleague Kelly Dwyer wrote last week about Kobe Bryant using a homophobic slur toward a referee:
Don't say that word. Don't. Don't care, don't care, and I don't want to hear the excuses. There's no getting around this on any meaningful level. You don't say it.
Is that simple enough?
The same goes for comparing anybody you disagree with to Hitler or one of his minions.
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