Dan tweets:

I think this is spot on. Quite obviously, the outcome of a Bills-Bengals game does not matter as much as Damar Hamlin’s life. But, as Dan notes, this proposition has now been transmuted in some quarters into a different claim: Namely, that the game didn’t matter at all.

Which is wrong. The game did matter. Indeed, the game does matter. And, naturally, it matters most to the people who play it at a high level. Of course Damar Hamlin woke up and asked who won. That’s what he does all day. If, on the final day of the recording of Sgt. Pepper, Paul McCartney had gone into a coma, what do you think he’d have asked first upon waking? I’ll tell you: He’d have asked whether the album had been released, if it had sold well, and if it had been well-received. And that wouldn’t have been irrational, or indicative of some false consciousness, it would have been entirely in keeping with who he is.

I do not know whether Damar Hamlin wishes that the game had been completed, and it would be grotesque for me to try to guess. I do know, however, that one of the arguments we have heard this week against the game being continued — or even replayed at all — was a total non sequitur. That argument was that the game should have been stopped because “all that matters is Hamlin’s health.” If, as it seems to have been the case, the other players did not want to complete the game, then it makes total sense that it was postponed and then canceled. But Damar Hamlin’s survival never entered into it. Hamlin was in an ambulance, and then he was in the hospital. At no point was there a choice between finishing the game and helping Hamlin recover. Once he had been taken off the field, those two things became completely unrelated, and the only thing that mattered to whether the game would continue was whether the remaining players wished to compete.

In my estimation, this incident should remind us to be careful about how we use other people’s names when those people are unconscious or dead. Human beings are unpredictable and complicated, and this is especially true of human beings who have a great talent or passion. When Hamlin woke up, his first thought was of the game he plays for a living. That’s not a problem or a flaw or a mistake, and it’s not for anyone else to decide whether it’s appropriate. It’s his call, not ours.