Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court made another of their stupid decisions, in this taking a first step in gutting the principle of separation of church and state by decreeing that a public high school football coach could hold prayer rallies on the field. It was just a “quiet prayer” and a “brief thanks”, don’t you know.
The court ordered the school to reinstate him. Curiously, they can’t.
It’s an increasingly surreal situation for the Bremerton schools. They were ordered to “reinstate Coach Kennedy to a football coaching position,” according to court documents. But the now-famous coach is out on the conservative celebrity circuit, continuing to tell a story about “the prayer that got me fired” — even though Bremerton never actually fired him.
In 2015, he was put on paid leave near the end of the season after holding a series of prayer sessions on the field with students and state legislators. He still got paid for his full assistant coach contract, about $5,000. High school assistants often work on yearly deals, and Kennedy, at odds with the head coach and aggrieved by what had happened, never reapplied to work the 2016 season.
“He was not terminated,” Bevers said. The head coach at the time had moved on, as did most of the coaching staff.
The coach claimed to be eager to return.
“As soon as the school district says
Hey, come back,’ I am there, first flight,he said.
Only he’s not. He’s got a busy schedule of bragging to right-wingers about his non-existent martyrdom. He doesn’t have time to help high school football players to find Jesus. They’re on their own. I guess he didn’t really believe the team needed to begin every game with a public prayer, he was really all about being personally praised for his obnoxious piety.
The team has won their first couple of games without him, too. I guess he really wasn’t that essential as a coach.
Or maybe Satan is helping the team out, now that they’ve lost the Jesus-addled leader of their spiritual flock. I would think Satan would be a much more effective war-leader than that wimpy Jesus guy, anyway. That’s the lesson we should take from Coach Kennedy’s example.
“The Supreme Court simply ignored this inconvenient fact — along with a host of others. At one point during oral arguments, as a different school district attorney was saying the narrative that had been spun didn’t fit with the facts — that the coach’s prayers were neither silent nor solitary, nor was he fired — Justice Samuel Alito interrupted him, saying “I know that you want to make this very complicated.”
Don’t confuse me with facts; I’m a Catholic.
It appears that he is better at grifting than coaching.
tedw @2: Real shocker there.
Bremerton and or the courts ought to make him come back. Bastard deserves to have to work for 5K/year.