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Before last night’s thrilling preseason victory, the Eagles held a moment of silence for Garrett Reid. They also wore the initials GR on their helmets. Both actions were respectful, reasonable, and mostly subtle ways to honor the head coach’s son.

One person had a problem with that.

Apparent blowhard (honestly, I’d never heard of this guy until I started seeing some his inanity retweeted) Steve Czaban, a national sports talk radio host from D.C. with 20,000 followers, didn’t think it was appropriate.

His Tweets:

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Screen Shot 2012-08-10 at 9.19.08 AM
Screen Shot 2012-08-10 at 9.19.08 AM
Screen Shot 2012-08-10 at 9.19.08 AM 

It’s mind-boggling how someone can have that reaction to a moment of silence. Garrett wasn’t known for being an “unqualified, low-level team assistant,” he was known for being Andy Reid’s troubled son, who died, presumably, within a few hundred feet of his father on Sunday morning. The forced public moment of silence came at an Eagles preseason game. You know, that’s the team Reid has coached for the last 14 years. It came, ostensibly, at his place of work. And while getting into comparing losses and tragedy is a silly debate, there’s a difference between Reid’s son dying and, say, a cornerback’s grandmother passing away of natural causes at the age of 92. But it doesn’t matter– moments of silence happen before many sporting events, often for people who had no attachment to the team or sometimes even the city. There’s no reason to debate them. There’s also no reason to debate the claim that Czaban is an asshole.