We’ve previously highlighted the story of Joe Kennedy, an assistant football coach at a high school in Washington state who made a big show out of praying at midfield after the game. The school district asked him to stop, citing concerns about separation of church and state, and he was fired when he refused. He then decided to enter the right-wing victim portal, suing the school district and claiming his rights were violated. Despite reports that players felt pressured to take part in his prayers and fearing consequences if they didn’t, as well as concerns over the Establishment Clause and his refusal to work with the school district to find a mutually acceptable accommodation, the Supreme Court sided with Kennedy and he was reinstated as a coach.
Kennedy returned to the football team this fall — then quit after one game. The Media Research Center’s John Simmons tried to make him a victim again in a Sept. 7 post:
Joe Kennedy’s second tenure as an assistant football coach at Bremerton High School (BHS) in Washington State was short lived, as he has offered his letter of resignation.
Last year, the Supreme Court had ruled that BHS wrongly terminated Kennedy from his position in 2015 after the school discovered he was praying on the football field after games. Kennedy won a settlement with the school in March and was reinstated to his position that same month, but things had taken a drastically negative turn since his return.
Kennedy said in his resignation letter that it became “apparent” that his “reinstatement ordered by the Supreme Court will not be fully followed after a series of actions meant to diminish my role and single me out in what I can only believe is retaliation by the school district.” He was able to help coach one game, but that seems to be all he will do for the immediate future.
Simmons made no attempt to find out exactly what Kennedy is accusing the school district of — he chose totake Kennedy’s word at face value and amp up his victimhood and baselessly accuse the school district of being “petty”:
What those actions were specifically remains unclear, but it prompted a strong response from his legal team that helped him through his seven-year fight to have his First Amendment rights protected.
[…]If you looked up the definition of “petty” in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of BHS right next to it. Unwilling to graciously accept the fact they were wrong, the school is actively ostracizing Kennedy even after the Supreme Court ruled in his favor.
Some people just don’t know when they’ve been beat. We don’t know if Kennedy will continue to pursue legal action against BHS, but if he does, hopefully justice can be served once again.
But Simmons is omitting other, more likely reasons Kennedy is quitting. As the Fox News article he cited noted (but he didn’t), Kennedy currently lives in Florida, and it makes no sense to commute across the country for a low-paying seasonal part-time job.Plus, he’s apparently making more money playing victim than he ever did coaching football; as another news outlet reported (but Simmons didnt), Kennedy is writing a book about his victimhood, and a movie is supposedly being made about it.As Wonkette commented:
What are the chances he purposely tanked the coaching job he allegedly yearned to get back in order to boost his book sales and his speaking fees, and giving himself a nice little new story of his martyrdom that he can spread to the faithful about how the godless heathens of Bremerton High School are still persecuting him for his faith?
We’ll say 100 percent, and take the over.
Simmons is certainly not going to intrude on Kennedy’s grift, since it helps advance the right-wing narratives he gets well paid to promote.