Posted on 05/26/2018 4:58:02 AM PDT by Kaslin
“LET'S GET REAL: If you think kneeling respectfully to protest injustice is more egregious than cops gunning down 12-year-old #TamirRice for holding a toy or murdering #PhilandoCastile in his car with his young daughter, then you have no moral compass. NONE.” – Peter Daou
I love that quote because it’s like saying, “LET'S GET REAL: If you think urinating respectfully on Ted Kennedy’s grave to protest injustice is more egregious than an illegal immigrant murdering Kate Steinle, then you have no moral compass. NONE.”
A reasonable person might ask, “What does urinating on Ted Kennedy’s grave or kneeling when it’s time to respect the flag have to do with what’s being protested?”
There is an answer to that question.
You see, there were a lot of ways Colin Kaepernick could have protested. He chose protesting the flag because he knew that doing something so incendiary would be extremely polarizing and would get a lot of attention, good and bad. Other NFL players saw what he was doing and copied him, not because they really care about the issue, but because they wanted attention for themselves.
However, it turned out that the protests were so polarizing that there were consequences. The protesting players cost the league enormous amounts of money and teams decided they didn't want to hire Colin Kaepernick because bringing him onboard would lead to more protests, which would cost them more money.
That’s when the argument became, "These players aren’t disrespecting the flag. Where do people get that from?" Well, of course the players are disrespecting the flag. That was the whole point of picking that form of protest. The disrespect of the flag was designed to get attention and it did. “Oh, but it’s a peaceful protest! That means it’s good!” The Westboro Baptist Church peacefully protest outside of funerals and that’s not good, right? There is a time and a place for everything and outside of a funeral or while your nation’s flag is being honored is the wrong time to protest.
Of course, the real surprise is that the NFL let its business be hijacked like this. After all, the NFL typically does not hesitate to crack down on players that get out of line in any way on the field. I can still remember Jim McMahon getting a $5,000 fine for wearing an Adidas headband. NFL players have also been fined for wearing special cleats to bring attention to breast cancer awareness and domestic violence. NFL players have been fined for touchdown celebrations, not talking to the media, wearing the wrong color socks and using a cell phone during a game. Yet, when it came to disrespecting the flag, the NFL was just fine with it until viewers started tuning out.
However, it turned out that the protests were so polarizing that there were consequences. The protesting players cost the league enormous amounts of money and teams decided they didn't want to hire Colin Kaepernick because bringing him onboard would lead to more protests, which would cost them more money.
That’s when the argument became, "These players aren’t disrespecting the flag. Where do people get that from?" Well, of course the players are disrespecting the flag. That was the whole point of picking that form of protest. The disrespect of the flag was designed to get attention and it did. “Oh, but it’s a peaceful protest! That means it’s good!” The Westboro Baptist Church peacefully protest outside of funerals and that’s not good, right? There is a time and a place for everything and outside of a funeral or while your nation’s flag is being honored is the wrong time to protest.
Of course, the real surprise is that the NFL let its business be hijacked like this. After all, the NFL typically does not hesitate to crack down on players that get out of line in any way on the field. I can still remember Jim McMahon getting a $5,000 fine for wearing an Adidas headband. NFL players have also been fined for wearing special cleats to bring attention to breast cancer awareness and domestic violence. NFL players have been fined for touchdown celebrations, not talking to the media, wearing the wrong color socks and using a cell phone during a game. Yet, when it came to disrespecting the flag, the NFL was just fine with it until viewers started tuning out.
That was dumb. Very dumb. Why? Well, imagine you’re a restaurant owner who doesn’t care one whit about your employees’ political views. Then, one of your waiters starts wearing a button that says, “Barack Obama can kiss my butt” or alternately, a button that says, “Donald Trump can kiss my butt.” Assuming you don’t just fire him outright, do you tell him to knock that off? Of course, you do because if your business serves the general public, you don’t allow your employees to offend large portions of the general public while they’re on the job. If they want to argue on Twitter all day or work on political campaigns in their off time, that’s fine, but they shouldn’t be using your place of business to push out controversial and potentially offensive political messages.
It took the NFL losing enormous numbers of fans for it to realize that basic principle and now, it’s been decided that the NFL is going to levy out fines if players disrespect the national anthem. According to the NFL,
It was unfortunate that on-field protests created a false perception among many that thousands of NFL players were unpatriotic. This is not and was never the case.
This season, all league and team personnel shall stand and show respect for the flag and the Anthem. Personnel who choose not to stand for the Anthem may stay in the locker room until after the Anthem has been performed.
We believe today’s decision will keep our focus on the game and the extraordinary athletes who play it—and on our fans who enjoy it.
Would this be happening if there wasn’t a boycott of the NFL that cost it enormous amounts of money? Absolutely not and smart conservatives shouldn’t forget that lesson. Of course, the NFL still hasn’t acted decisively. The owners should have made it absolutely clear that NFL games are no place for any kind of political statement and players that refuse to respect that decision can go somewhere else. That’s an entirely reasonable position, but the NFL didn’t have the guts to do that. Moreover, it let the inmates run the asylum for way too long. So now, it’s going to catch a lot of flak from the unpatriotic Left that wants to use the NFL’s product as another way to push its agenda.
Furthermore, the controversy is far from over. Players may choose to stay in the locker room en masse. Some teams, like the Jets, are already saying they will just eat the fines for unpatriotic players. Of course, liberals will be dying to praise any player who is willing to take a fine to disrespect America and the union is already upset that a NFL player’s right to be unpatriotic on the NFL’s dime might be abridged in any way. The NFL deserves this and the protesting players deserve the backlash they’ve gotten as well.
If NFL players had wanted to be a bridge between the community and the police, they could have done a lot of good, especially since there is at least some rare bipartisan agreement on issues like more police training and body cameras for officers. Instead they disrespected the country that gave them so many opportunities, created division and hatred and hurt the cause they claimed to help. If you start a conversation by being deliberately unpatriotic to get attention for your cause, a lot of Americans will respond by telling you and your cause to drop dead. If the NFL had respected its fans enough to keep politics off the field, it wouldn’t be in this mess and if these players cared about something other than “look at me,” they would have never engaged in such an offensive protest in the first place.
So the Obama administration and its marxist 5th columnists in the MSM cherry pick stories that are far in the minority (no pun intended) nation wide and cause people across America to riot.
That administration and those MSM blackguards need to be arrested for inciting to riot.
That’s an easy one...it’s nothing less than a display of utter contempt for everything this country stands for.That’s why the punk who can’t seem to even land a bench warming job in the NFL is seen wearing pig socks.
Nothing, of course.
The NFL just pretended not to understand until the money nozzle slowed.
The NFL may never ever recover the nozzle. Stupid stupid league. In the 70s thru late 90s they were really good at marketing. Like ESPN they went political.
I’m sorry that Blacks are killing Blacks at an unbelievable rate. They need to get a handle on the violence and killings within their own group before I pay attention to police killing them. In reality, the percentage of Whites being killed by police far outweighs their issue. This reminds me of the “pussy Hats”. All this hate against Trump, meanwhile in California the front runner for the Democrats for Governor is a pussy grabber. The irony
The Libertarian in me would blame congress for mandating the anthem b4 ALL sporting events. It was installed during the Great Depression to take peoples minds off 25% unemployment. Now it’s coming home to roost. What does the national anthem have to do with sports?
I find that hard to believe, as it would easily be thrown out under even the simplest legal challenge.
They just like to ruin stuff
Yuu really think it’s voluntary?
The root of the problem is black organizations desire to control professional foot ball by exerting pressure on the small addled brains of the black players.
Controlling the NFL yields a platform for disssemination of black propaganda.
Cultural analysis, not racial bias
To give an example: Just this week a young female cop was in a ‘good area’ outside of Baltimore responding to a call of a suspicious vehicle, and a house burglary on the same street.
Wound up being 4 young jacks from downtown Baltimore collecting some loot while the worker class...was working. So she tries to hold them at bay while backup is on the way. The 16 year old driver (not an angel, but not a violent type, like Travon Martin was, either) - the kid panics because he fears being shot by the cops (my interpretation) due to BLM putting that level of fear in him. He tries to get away, runs her over and kills her. The funeral was yesterday and her kids get to grow up without a mom.
Either we end this crap of often ‘identifying’ with the brutality of the cops, or it just gets worse. We need to lay it out and tell LaHood that we’ve had it with their shit and if cops kill some of them, tough, because they’re usually asking for just that.
If the players were holding up signs saying:
“Support Trump! Support the Wall!”
They’d be fined/fired tomorrow, without a doubt. And I think most of us here, even though we agree with the message, would be fine with the punishments too. Football is (was) football - THAT SIMPLE.
This was NOT hard for the owners to figure out, and the ONLY reason they’re now reacting is because the Season Ticket renews must TOTALLY SUCK...it will be fun watching what happens there.
Has nothing to do with it, but the media and the left supports their delusion.
Instead, we turned them off and tuned them out. They damaged their "cause" (such as it was) beyond repair. I predict that pro football will never recover.
Now THERE'S "justice!"
You think we are dealing with rocket scientists here?
Good article.
This is the same NFL that refused to allow the Cowboys to wear a sticker to honor their slaughtered cops (by a black man). That was at the start of last season, the season they made every excuse to support the players antics.
Yes. Except now it’s been so firmly established as a tradition that no sports league or team wants to face a PR nightmare by doing away with it.
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