Aziz Ansari has no faith in pro-footballer Aaron Rodgers. Absolutely none! Or, it sounds like, any football players, for that matter, as his new Netflix special Aziz Ansari: Nightclub Comedian. In the 30-minute affair, Ansari takes aim at Rodgers for his anti-vax stance and his confusing comments about being “immunized.” And while it seems the comedian simply wants to mock Rodgers’ foolishness, in the end, he actually calls for some empathy towards the NFL star.
“People go in on people who don’t want the vaccine. Who’s that guy — a football player? Aaron Rodgers? What do you think about that guy?” Ansari says, earning a wave of boos from the audience.
He continues: “Fuck him! People hate that guy,” Ansari says, now in a sarcastic tone. “He’s a fucking idiot! It’s like, calm down. He’s a football player. He read some articles. He got skeptical. He did some research. Are you stunned he came to the wrong conclusion? Did you really think he was gonna crack the case?”
Ansari goes on to satirize Rodgers’ position in society, saying we shouldn’t blame him for his ludicrous actions.
“This poor guy! It’s like we’re all in high school making fun of the quarterback for doing bad on the science test. ‘You’re a dummy, Aaron, you’re a dummy. You don’t know anything. You’re a dum-dum,’” Ansari says. “This guy makes a living getting hit in the head. Can we cut him a break?”
This all stems from Rodgers, who not only refused a vaccine, but also lied about being “immunized” for COVID-19 at a press conference in which he was asked whether or not he was vaccinated.
“I guess he did lie,” Ansari acknowledged, doing a nasally impression of Rodgers lying. “‘My doctors gave me some powders from Jamba Juice.’”
Ansari then throws the sketch into scientific method, saying that Rodgers thought about the vaccine through hypothetical situations. Instead of “data gathering” with real scientific evidence, Ansari accused Rodgers of “listening to some podcasts and talking to a few sketchy doctors.”
“I don’t think he’s an idiot, though, okay? I don’t think him, Nicki Minaj, any of these people are idiots. I’m not here to say that. I just think they’re trapped in a different algorithm than you are,” Ansari proposes. “If you’re calling them idiots, you’re trapped in another algorithm.”
The comedian concludes by saying we shouldn’t bash folks like Rodgers who deny science — when we deny them, it just “pushes them further away. I don’t know man, we have to have some sort of empathy. We’re all just trapped in our own little world! Unless we figure out how to talk to each other in real life again, it doesn’t matter what the problem is.”
Scroll up to watch the trailer for Ansari’s new special in the clip above. Aziz Ansari: Nightclub Comedian is now streaming on Netflix.
Stream Aziz Ansari: Nightclub Comedian on Netflix