On May 21, 2024, X user @justice_Tyr22 posted a meme displaying photos of Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker with the words, "Kansas City Cancels Three Pearl Jam Shows at Arrowhead Stadium: 'We Stand with Harrison Butker.'" The Chiefs play home games at Arrowhead Stadium, located in Kansas City, Missouri.
The text in the user's post read as follows:
After Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder went on an anti-Harrison Butker rant, the front office at Arrowhead Stadium canceled three of the band's upcoming shows.
"We stand with Harrison and his admirable moral values. Vedder and his band can find somewhere else to play."
The move will cost the band around $14 million.
Ouch!!!
Several other users on both Facebook and X shared the same meme and text. One user posted the meme with the caption, "GO WOKE GO BROKE."
However, this item was not a factual recounting of real-life events. The Facebook page America's Last Line of Defense first posted the same meme and text on May 20. The page's management describes its content as containing satire and parody. In other words, Arrowhead Stadium did not cancel any Pearl Jam concerts, nor were any Kansas City dates listed on the band's tour schedule.
Butker's May 11 commencement speech at Kansas' private Catholic liberal arts school Benedictine College partially inspired the creation of the America's Last Line of Defense meme. The author of the meme also sourced inspiration from the fact Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder commented about Butker's speech during a May 18 concert in Las Vegas, rebuking the thoughts about women and motherhood Butker expressed to the female graduates at the commencement.
Readers can watch Vedder's comments in the following YouTube video:
The National Catholic Register website features a complete transcript of Butker's speech, while the official YouTube channel for Benedictine College hosts a video. The video ends with many of the people in attendance giving Butker a standing ovation.
For background, here is why we sometimes write about satire/humor.