When former NFL player Colin Kaepernick made it known that he had donated $50,000 to the charitable foundation Meals on Wheels, Former Alaska governor and vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin responded by posting a blog post in which she mocked Kaepernick. When the post was greeted with a heavy backlash, Palin deleted her post and took to her blog again to apologize and attempt to explain.
The original blog post was authored by a website contributor named Mary Kate Knorr. She had titled her post “Colin Kaepernick Just Pulled Another Political Stunt,” and had included captions mocking Kaepernick’s seeming lack of understanding of why he has been unable to find a job. The distaste expressed by readers of the article was immediate, and those who left comments wasted no time expressing their disagreement in mocking a man for making a rather generous contribution to a program with a purpose to assist underprivileged and homebound senior citizens.
When the post continued to receive copious amounts of negative attention, Sarah Palin deleted the original post, along with several posts on her Facebook and Twitter that had been made promoting the blog post. The same writer authored the follow-up piece, which was entitled “CLARIFICATION: Out Response To The Media Outrage On A Story We Recently Covered.”
Knorr expressed in the updated article that she had become aware of the backlash and distaste for her post on Sarah Palin’s website and various media accounts, in which she accused the $50,000 donation to Meals on Wheels of being a political stunt designed to be anti-Trump in nature. She also made it clear that the article had indeed been written and posted by herself, not the former governor. Knorr further pointed out that this is the trouble that authors can tend to fall into when they are writing for a specific audience when they allow their writing to become a distraction. She further explained that Kaepernick’s political history had clouded her judgment when she wrote the judgemental piece and that she had made assumptions concerning the intentions of his donations. Assumptions for which she was very sorry.
Even with the posted apology and explanation, the backlash continued. Commenters continued to express that generosity should not be mocked, questioned how much money Sarah Palin has personally donated to the program, and even claimed the apology was “hilarious.”