real life. today on larry king now n.f.l. player an unexpected gay rights activist cursed clearly society is trending towards more tolerance more equality and you see that in the locker room the oakland raiders punter is not afraid to speak his mind same sex marriage that is a human right and you can't discriminate against that but does being outspoken in the n.f.l. have a price when i'm in the football locker room i don't i don't try to preach to guys i don't try to make them and uncomfortable situations because i'm there to play football that's that's my job that's all ahead on larry king now. welcome to larry king our special guest today is chris kluwe the n.f.l. pundit who recently signed with the oakland raiders he made headlines for arriving

in open leather championing marriage equality and free speech he's written a book which i can't wait to read because it looks really funny is what was on the mark beautifully unique sparkle poem he's it's out in stores now ok what's the title mean oh the subtitle is on myths morons free speech football and the sort of the absurdity and what does the title mean so when i originally wrote the letter to delegate burns the phrase a lot of people seem to latch on to was last four years so i didn't think barnes and noble would stalk a book with the title last four years and in the censored version of the letter i wrote i've placed that with beautifully unique sparkle pony's so. that's that's the title you have before you know the whole burns letter he was responding to what the players said or get a story right so brendon ayanbadejo who at the time played for the ravens he had recorded a youtube commercial promotional thing essentially promoting same sex rights because. they had

a initiative coming up in maryland and he wanted to support it i did that in new york for the same so yeah and so you're familiar with that and then dom telling it burns he wrote a letter to the teen saying you need to stifle brandon's speech you know no one wants to hear him speaking out about this now his mistake was he wrote his letter on official maryland state stationery any reference to himself in his constituents so i was like hold on a minute it's a first amendment violation first off a second off why do you care why does it matter g. what other people do with their lives because you're trying to control someone else's life so i wrote my letter in response essentially laying out those points with some choice vocabulary and it seems a lot of people paid attention to it as you can so with the readers or anyone before your taking you don't know the size with the vikings then and i had actually been i've been helping out in minnesota to defeat a constitutional amendment there that would have banned same sex marriage and i had had cleared that with the teens legal department they're like yeah you know go ahead you're free to participate in this and so when i wrote the letter it was you know it got a little bigger than i expected but also you know i thought it was the right thing

to do and it was as good you think the vikings got to because of your opinions i don't know just because i'm not i'm not in those meetings you know i don't know what do you think what i think i think my body of work stands for me i've been pretty consistent over the years and you know just looking forward to going out and punting while ensuring that i can still play did you have a good year pointing i did i had i had consistently right on average with why normally have and you know i leave the vikings with every punting record so you go to raiders and all question you about your stand on these these no no they just they said you know hey don't you know don't let it be a distraction make sure football is the primary focus and for me it always is the primary focus of the birds over and so you know the only thing i got from the state of maryland was an official commendation thanking me for my support for equality. puzzled by the whole gay thing use obviously basketball now has to be zero he has assigned it right. they all say. who have

a. that football will be the last sport to accept this was of the nature of the sport and the locker room you agree i don't agree simply because when you're in the locker room you're around those guys for the vast majority of your day you see the players in the locker more than you see your own family and you get to know guys really really well in football is also a young man's game you constantly have guys coming in from college cycling through and as we see in society society is trending towards more tolerance more equality and you see that in the locker room but baseball but well well baseball are really married to each other and yet here because of what those words say you know touching and violence and body contact and you think it on the phone player will come out of some point yes i mean there there's without a doubt gay players play in the n.f.l. you know anybody i don't know anyone personally but statistically speaking there there has to be gay players and there's been gay players that have played before i actually a book signing i did last night david ok i was there i knew and so you know he's

here's a guy who played in the n.f.l. played well in the n.f.l. in who just so happened to be gay you know his sexuality had nothing to do with how he played the game you think the columns coming out the nation tones will encourage other athletes i think that depends on whether or not he signs with the team because if he can still play and he is signed with a teen a lot of athletes are going to look at that and say why are we going to risk this job that's so hard to get when there's a chance that we might lose our our income do you think it will happen. really when a star player comes out i think that would help a lot just because that's who people are into other when you career and he was right he's more kind of a back up guy you know and people will look at it and say oh he's just a back up but at the same time you know you're talking about the one percent of the population that's able to make it to a professional sports level so he's still really really good but yeah having a star player come out that would really enhance kind of the image it would be nice wizards appropriate place washington the nice of if they would want to resign does his layers to yeah yeah it's that one the thing is he should he should get

a chance because he's seven feet tall you can't teach seven feet tall and so long as he keeps his body in shape you know he can play back up center roll which is what he's done his entire her we're just going to the supreme court this is i like the dome decision because obviously extended federal benefits to married couples not a huge fan of the prop eight decision because laws because while it allow gay marriage in california as soon as they hate the stay the problem is the supreme court had a chance to extend those rights across the entire country you know they just ruled on that he didn't have to be right right exactly where is they could have made a statement you know and they have pressed and they have loving v virginia that says marriage is a human right and they could have extended that out to say you know same sex marriage that is a human right and you can't discriminate against that so you can't really leads the way right right right yeah you know they're kind of opposed to doing that so now it's just can be ok we got to you know we got to go to all the other states that right now gay marriage is illegal in and you know get that passed so you become more than just

a comment if you're an activist in this fight yeah i would assume so i mean it's kind of what my my role has become my i view my role is speaking out about stuff writing you know writing pieces and hopefully trying to make people aware that if you don't have empathy if you don't have equality in your society your society is flawed it will not stand the test of time because every other civilization in history has failed every civilization has collapsed and it's either conflict from within you've oppressed a segment of your own population or you seek out conflict with someone else. and you get into a fight you can't win did you get any hostility from anyone over what you say you wrote a couple twitter comments but you know that's that's the internet that's to be expected the vast majority of twitter comments though were very positive and then in the locker room i had probably forty forty five percent of the guys said we may not agree with you on same sex rights but we appreciate you speaking out for brendan and then the other fifty five sixty percent said we think you did the right thing you know great job writing that letter. what's your reputation around locker rooms you know. i am who i always have been. yeah the nerdy guy who who will

talk about video games and paint miniatures in the locker room and you know i'm i've always been me but when i'm in the football locker room i don't i don't try to preach to guys i don't try to make them uncomfortable situations because i'm there to play football that's that's my job now if they want to have a conversation i'm perfectly willing to have a conversation but they're going to have to initiate it in the locker room because again i'm there to play football what's life like brought to the world because dolphin football i knew a lot of punters great front room guy with the raiders yelling to the greatest point to who was a first round draft pick the first pick in the draft. should be in the hall of fame . first pick first round first pick. punters are unique people you feel part of the team i mean you you only go into certain situations yeah. i think especially with the way the n.f.l. is now every position is a specialized position you know you don't have the days where guys are playing

oftens and defense anymore you don't have guys who play multiple positions so as punters we're not out on the field as much as the other guys but when we do go out you know we can have just as much an impact on the game it's important when else yeah it's very important you know you look at if you give up a punt return for a touchdown the stats say you lose the game seventy percent of the time regardless of anything else you're going to lose that game seventy percent of the time so it's a very important part of the game it's just one that you don't happen to see as much why did you not play skip. i actually did both in high school and then once you get into college it becomes more difficult to separate the two motions because you're taking off the grass instead of off the two inch block and high school and once again the n.f.l. . if you try to do both are going to blow your leg because there's no one else to take the backup reps so you really have to focus on one of the other soccer players you with a good many great pointers most and most of them are its most are either soccer players or aussie rules football players if you want to be a pro early on yeah but first soccer baseball. was in

mid to high eighty's in high school and then as a pitcher so you were drafted wall a tore my hamstring playing soccer my freshman year tore my a.c.l. playing football my sophomore year and then junior year i had a really good football season and at that point i was like well football is going to be the way to go when i was going up you almost never heard of hamstrings and one of the more of them now the smallest question was especially i think it's because guys are pushing their bodies more and more and we've discovered you know sports science guys are are more athletic now you know you have guys running so much faster now you're putting more stress on the body that muscles before you never really heard about now you can diagnose and know ok that's exactly what happened and really if you're pushing yourself past what your body can do which is you're perfectly capable of doing you're going to get those muscle tear in those muscle strains looking upon deserve ridges often unfair because you often want to take it out of bones of those who writes right so it's only

a thirty eight point two sort of a forty six point how do you judge a punter on to judge a punter you really need to look at hang time you need to look at location on the field where he puts the ball and you know how distance relates to that and the other the real problem is that you have to know what the coach wants the punter to do which is something you know a fan normally isn't going to get to know because they're not there on the sideline so in my case there were there were a bunch of games a bunch of years actually where the coaches. said we want you to kick it forty two yards high and force a fair catch because you know our coverage teams are struggling right now and so from my stats you know it makes it look like a forty two yard punters like oh he doesn't know how to punt but the coaches are happy because you're doing exactly what what they want you to do so also there's no need to kick away from that one guy has to have a very simple exactly like will take a thirty five yard punt out of bounds if it means hester doesn't return it for a touchdown and and so you know people look at that and they only look at the numbers they don't look at the circumstances surrounding those numbers are you

thinking about where you're going to do after i wrote a book on it what do you want to be a writer you have you can all you want to be i would like to be a writer i think that would be a lot of fun and i've discovered i really enjoy writing and i think there's a lot of stuff to say and my my philosophy has always been approach life one day at a time and whatever i'm going to do i'm going to do to the best of my ability so it's worked out so far i think one does are underappreciated all i think they are just simply because it's such a specialized skill in a sport of specialized skills that people don't really care that much about it and and honestly it's more exciting for the vast majority of people to see someone make a diving catcher you know a great tackle or you know a quarterback to rifle a pass and then i don't blame them for that in sport there are certain as approaches sport with prove the profession that part of the profession is considered weird closer in baseball right let's have that mind it was a pitch warning and it comes up and what's the moneys that of the punter i'd say it's very similar in that you know you're only going to have like four or five

plays to do your job you're not like the normal office or defense where you're going to get you know thirty one thirty two thirty three plays over the course of again so you have to make sure you're on point every single time because you can't make up for it over the rest of the game you know one one bad punt out of five is much different than one bad play out of thirty three. coming up he's funny you can of even a bit twisted and i'm going to go inside the minds of who's really right after this . when the greats spade blind to what is happening in their country. the american dream is disappearing. the houses with gardens are laid down. the poor are left hopeless the streets are full of angry crowns that are fighting against.

high school who stole the american dream. the mission. couldn't take three months for chargers. to make amends three. three stooges free. download free broadcast quality video for your media projects a free media. dot com. download the official publication to yourself choose your language stream quality and enjoy your favorites. if you're away from your television just. not with your mobile device you can watch on t.v. anytime anywhere.

the new york times calls him the most interesting man in the n.f.l. mother jones said chris kluwe is a glimmering sparkle pony of candor and not afraid to die fearlessly into the marriage equality debate as well as a lot of you know we always outspoken they always outspoken my friends and family and really it's with the rise of social media that you know the message started to take off. like hundred seventy three thousand we have to win six yet although you give me a bump you know. ok and one of you tweeted out against his some of against peyton manning vincent jackson drew brees. as in regards to the end of those collective bargaining agreements referring to them as david once again grieve is the operative word you also publicly bless the n.f.l. for the lockout what was your gripe with. the great there was the fact that during the lockout the n.f.l.

brought a suit you know on behalf of the players in order to say that you know hey you can't lock us out this is this is illegal and once the suit was close to being settled once we were close to finishing the lockout. drew brees macon's in the midst of jackson it was reported that they were asking for essentially a ten million settlement for each of them you know for having their names on the suit and to me i was like wait a minute that's kind of greedy you're supposed to be representing everyone in the n.f.l. you know all the players and there were seven other guys signed on to that suit who aren't asking for anything and and really the thing was is that their their idea was they had gotten kind of screwed over by free agency during the you know the uncapped year and so they they wanted to get recuperation there was no they no no responses but they dropped the ten million request i mean again for me it's an issue of basic fairness is that everyone you know should be should be equal and should have the same opportunity you're right tony and she would you serious you tackle gun control in free speech. and you strongly for gun control yeah it's it

will in the in the real issue right now in this country is that we can't even have a discussion about gun control it's either you know one side views the other is all guns all the time we can't have anything else the other side is you're going to take everything away we can't ever have guns you know no other option and the truth is you have to be able to talk about this you have to be able to talk about the fact that there is rising levels of gun violence in the united states and and that the people who create guns have a vested interest in selling you guns in they are funding legislators to make sure and are is right exactly they're making sure that they want guns available and we have to be able to talk about the fact that do we really want all these guns in our country i mean there are legitimate uses for guns for hunting purposes you know for family. you agree that the second amendment refers to the militia makes it a bill issue was a group of people going together to defend themselves. difficult to interpret. you could debate betterment all day long what were they talking about and we can

interview jefferson right exactly and my thing is and i said in the book is that the second amendment is obsolete at this point they wrote the second amendment at a time when you had muzzle loading muskets and candidates and there is a huge difference between a muzzle loading cannon and an assault rifle or a bushmaster an automatic shotgun and and the other thing is if the government wants to oppress you have tanks and they have drones. title one right right exactly if we're really talking about the second amendment i should be entitled to have a drone and drop hellfire missiles on someone and if they were ordered only if they weren't referring only to the militia one mentioned militia were not just the right deb guns right right exactly and it's really the idea that you're trying to keep the government from oppressing the population but in the current age that were in order to keep the government from oppressing the population you have to educate the people who will be in that government as to why it's a bad idea to do that as a proponent of free speech sometimes it's very hard to be i'm a proponent to push you have to back up lol deeds right yeah yeah yeah exactly how

do you deal with a poll of the who has a right to free speech but we have a right to take away their spawn right exactly and so the thing is is the right to free speech is also the right to suffer the consequences of that speech if you say something that you know society does not approve of and ideally society doesn't approve of it because it's discriminatory against someone or it's you know bringing someone else down then that's your own fault you need to judge your own actions and say is this something that other people you know are are they going to be treated equally we can't do is stop you from say right exactly you can you can say whatever you want but you have to accept the consequences of that is that when you bring up the argument against free she where you can say why or in a theater. you are did you. you know it's the red carpet for the no one runs in the theater it happens to you right you know what have you heard from readers how it was you've been munition reaction to this book oh it's been really really positive people are really enjoying it i have had quite a few people say they should they should teach it in schools. might be

a little bit of an issue there but i would i would love for that to be a cape case you have life lessons right yes yes i have a lot of crying is only fun when someone pays attention yeah exactly it's a i learned that from my children you know you see your children and you see him fall over and they've quickly look around like is anyone looking at me and if you don't look at them they don't cry. it's a same with a lot of adults you know they they they bump their head or do something stupid and if you don't look at them they don't cry but with facebook now everyone has to look at them so they cry. do you enjoy would you become well yes i do i mean i'm me. i like being me and i think one of the things in the book they're trying to show is that we try to define someone as just a label as just one facet of who they are you really miss out on everything else that goes into them and you know whether that's just a football player or just a gay person or just a talk show host or you know just anything then everything else that goes into them you've essentially put that to the side and human beings are complex creatures you

can't do that you can't define someone by just one label julia i did i did i really enjoyed it there telephone yes yes grew up in southern california it was far enough away from my parents where they couldn't bug me if i didn't want them to close enough where i could bug them if i wanted to it was perfect what would you want to be and all them other than the punter actually and never really wanted to be a punter i was looking back through some old writings that my my mom had dug out of the closet and there was an essay in there from sixth grade where i said i want to be a professional soccer or baseball player i don't understand why people would play football what's the joy in throwing a dead pig and ironically you know you know i'm kicking the dead pig around have you been to mini camp not yet. the raiders mini camp starts july twenty fourth we just finished our we had a early camp right yeah you had o.t. a's and oh yeah the mantra mini camp starts all camp starts july twenty four u. the punter of the challenges there's a challenger it's me and market king he's the other guy we're competing for the slot and it's essentially me the best man in the book is beautifully unique squawk

oh ponies right there how's the family reacted to this good good day my wife is very proud that i wrote a book on not so proud about some of the pictures. you have picked better pictures of you the baby pictures yeah i threw up i tried to find the most embarrassing pictures i could because growing up i was the nerdy kid with thick glasses and we were you know i was i was i was always reading a book and yeah i mean that's still one of my my favorite hobbies is just to read play video games and football helps fund all that with the glasses contacts contacts and then lasik i got to do it yeah i did the lasik as you right away right now yet was the one i got up early my corneas were too thin so they had to do where they centrally scrub your eyeball with a steel wire brush. so i took a couple weeks me where it was. all right we have some social media questions for you ok david on twitter asks what's your take on the aaron hernandez murder case on i think it's a shame because you know obviously he had such great potential and you know he's

entitled the presumption of innocence before guilt but with everything that's been shown you know it it really is that something the n.f.l. tries to talk to players about is that once you make it to this level if you have bad influences in your past you know if there are people you no longer want to associate with don't associate with him because he just you have too much to lose you know they were troubles about inclusion they've got to be for sure. yeah yeah i suppose you surprise the patriots kind of without a trial no i mean this is this is one where you know the negative publicity to you know really outweighs the fact that maybe potentially he gets off the same follow on twitter i want to know should penalties be stiffened in the n.f.l. for drug abuse for drug abuse on depends what kind of drugs we talk. we talk about street drugs are talking about. steroids because there are two different tests in the n.f.l. so they're always is what yes the steroids is random testing all year round and it feels really you know really wants to catch their word use very very small right and street drugs is once a year kind of an annual test in between it's like may and july we want marijuana

right right marijuana coke meth whatever it's you believe as long as they were used in the film i think there's some just because of the way you know just some guys or bill you look at him in college and then you look at him in the pros and there's you know a huge jump in muscle mass and that's you know that's tough to do randi dilemma for play it over here you want to be a pro you want to make some money but here you're a guard you wait two thirty we need you we british seventy yeah exactly and it's one these days it's like three twenty or three thirty what do you do with that dilemma and it's really it's weighing ok the risk of being caught versus how much money i could potentially make and you know that's that's that's a tough equation we're going to play a little game cause if you only knew that there's this chris kluwe of the oakland raiders remember your first kiss i do who are shoes her name was kimberly and it was the senior last last dance of senior like going away night or whatever was you know a group my senior year in high school so i took great wait

a minute i've gotten so many i was the nerdy kid with glasses that urged his you see your high school you know. the first kiss what happened to kimberly moved to oklahoma the next day. never really heard from her again what was the distance of your first pro punt first for about i actually know that it was sixty yards below yeah it was we were lined up on the forty ahead and about fifty yards in the air and it bounced in the end zone we were playing it was in minnesota in the metrodome i don't remember who we were playing but i kicked that because you think you can doors yes much easier you don't whenever the wind affects your drop it can really play havoc with with your kicker. turns and you've come up with. a monster seems to be the most pop. although i used one last night that i was fairly proud of it was syphilitic cow felt like. biggest pet peeve the biggest. actually ignorance willful ignorance to be specific i do not like people who don't

take the opportunity to educate themselves especially when you have so many opportunities to do so favorite person to follow on twitter. i'm going to go with either brandon mccarthy or tom crabtree mccarthys a pitcher for the arizona diamondbacks no tom crab tree is a tight end for the buccaneers both really really funny guys follow the craziest fan encounter crazies fan encounter i had i had someone ask me to sign a guitar hero controller back in minnesota that was entertaining and i've had a fan give me a dream catcher that was that was pretty cool where you go in oakland i was going to say we've got training camp coming up the most embarrassing moment. probably any time i shank the ball fifteen yards in front of millions of people watching his fans in the end of zero toughest fans. got to be chicago chicago fans are very brutal although i haven't the one time we played in philly it was kind of muted it was that tuesday night game because they were worried about the snowstorm but i've

heard philly fans can be really really old cure for cancer yeah exactly. biggest misconception about punters that the locker room doesn't like us. that's a misanthrope that's a misconception i'd say you know most vast majority of us get along very well with with everyone else on the team best part about being a professional athlete salaries not. just being able to have the free time to do what you want with your life as well as the resources to make that happen and hopefully more guys use that in a positive way. biggest funniest teammate you played with funny teammate probably jared allen he's he's a pretty funny dude thank you very much very very much appreciate our guest has been chris cooley the book is beautifully unique sparkle ponies. i love that title in stores everywhere and you can find.

one of the greats blind to what is happening in their country. the american dream is disappearing. the houses with. the poor are left hopeless the streets are full of. fighting against. who stole the american dream.

is he.

an infinite number of people coming who are taking jobs that pay over one hundred thousand a year you know they're going to pay taxes we create lots of other jobs around those people in my my basic view is that the country should welcome as many of those people as we can get and what the corporations tell congress all there's a shortage of engineers is a shortage of us we can't fund this is all an absolute total lie with the many corporations will go to any lengths including these legal but deceptive practices to hire cheaper foreign labor look at this video clip recorded at a seminar conducted by an american law firm for human resources professionals at our goal is clearly not to find a qualified us worker. you know that it is said.