Jemele Hill tried to cancel NFL player Nick Bosa just before the Super Bowl

Hill took the San Francisco 49ers player to task on Saturday after discovering, through a political account called “Resist Programming,” that the Super Bowl LIV contender Bosa was following a “private Instagram account that jokes about Kobe Bryant’s death.” The account in question, “@angry_vet_” posted a meme depicting the Grim Reaper on a claw machine trying to pick out Betty White. It had the audacity to like replies joking about how those upset by the image were “butt hurt,” including a remark that the post was “going to piss off the Kobesexuals.”

Popular meme accounts on Instagram often set their status to private to encourage more people to subscribe to their accounts, but this ignorance of Instagram etiquette often creates misunderstandings in users unfamiliar with the social networking platform to assume that these “private accounts” represent their followers’ hidden political views—and it lets bad faith actors like “Resist Programming” to perpetuate a narrative about celebrities and other public figures in an attempt to cancel them. They’re essentially bait for people like Jemele Hill.

Hill tweeted: “Nick Bosa continues to show exactly who he is. I asked the question before, if there is nothing wrong with who he’s following and what he’s liking on social media, then why is he so secretive?”

February 1, 2020

Bosa has been in the sights of the anti-Trump “resistance” ever since he came out into the open as a Trump supporter, earning himself a personal endorsement from the President. As Breitbart reported, Bosa, who was voted the NFL Defensive Rookie for the Year, has referred to President Trump as the “GOAT” (Greatest of all Time), and tweeted support for conservative personality Tomi Lahren. Like anyone else with a brain, he called Colin Kaepernick a “clown” for his kneeling antics on the field—a remark he was forced to apologize for. He has not, however, apologized for supporting the President.

April 27, 2019

Regardless of Bosa’s support for the President, Resist Programming, its supporters, and Jemele Hill are making it seem like Bosa himself runs the meme account and that he co-signs everything someone else posts—or even likes. It’s guilt by association taken to an even further degree than ever before. When confronted by conservative journalist Stephen Miller, who referred to Hill as a “media vampire,” Hill moved the goalpost by complaining that “considering there are players in the league who have beat women, Nick Bosa has nothing to worry about. As long as he doesn’t take a knee to protest racial oppression, he’s good.”

Hill asks: if “it’s no big deal, why was he erasing tweets and what not?” Well, most people don’t have time to deal with people like Hill. It’s often easier to just delete a tweet and move on with your life and not have to deal with political pundits trapped in their media bubbles on Twitter.