COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
If the NFL wants to
recover from the anthem protests, it needs to start showing some leadership
The league needs to
find a way to let players air their concerns without alienating a large portion
of their viewers
Drop the stupid anthem at sports events where it has no
business.
Playing it at the start of a paid entertainment has always,
always been inappropriate.
And many British people may not know this, but back a decade
or so ago, the NFL players stayed inside for the anthem, only appearing on the
field when it was over.
The only reason they have appeared on the field during the
anthem since is because the American military started paying the NFL to have
the players stand there.
Why would it do that? To excite young men to join up when
they see their sports heroes standing there.
So, who is it that really has been disrespectful to
America's symbols? The guys manipulating them to get recruits, the American
military in need of young bodies to send off to America's pointless colonial
wars.
Of course, at a "deeper" level, one perhaps not
appreciated by Trump or his trailer-park devotees, the very essence of being
American is supposed to have something to do with rights and freedoms,
including the right to protest injustice.
Only a couple of days ago, a police officer in Salt Lake
City was released without blame after he shot a young black man in the back and
killed him. The young man was running away, and a camera caught the entire
sequence.
Some who saw the video say the officer literally executed
the young man. Protests were immediate.
That's what the players are kneeling about. In my sense of
values, their protest is entirely fitting, and an even more demonstrative one
would be.
Ironically, the players protesting have been almost overly
respectful by going down on their knees, a gesture understood by most as
respectful. It is only a protest because the gesture is different than the
expected one.
Just think of what Trump and his pick-up truck crowd would be
saying if these players instead were doing what some black American athletes
did at the Mexico City Olympics of 1968. They raised their arms high in the
black power salute while the anthem played.
This controversy has been ridiculous almost beyond telling.
With all the terrible problems in America, from violent police to terrible
ghettoes, and with all the wars and terror in the world, much of it
deliberately created by America, here is the President and other major figures and
commentators fiercely engaged over how football players pose during a piece of
music.
The utter stupidity is comparable only with the Russo-phobia
which has totally gripped the country for many months, a phenomenon comparable
in every way with some primitive wave of fear over demon-possession. Yet this
nonsense has engaged virtually all the country’s highest figures and its major
security institutions and news organizations.
“Those whom the gods
wish to destroy they first make mad.”
