Might Makes Right: NFL Edition

After all due deliberation, the NFL owners have reached a policy on player protests:

NFL owners approved a new national anthem policy Wednesday that gives individual teams the authority to set their own anthem-related rules and permits players to remain in the locker room during the playing of the anthem, according to a person familiar with the deliberations.

The new policy eliminates the current requirement from the league’s game operations manual for a player to be on the field for the playing of the anthem, allowing a player to remain in the locker room. Teams would then have the ability to set their own policy for players who choose to take the field for the anthem, including the ability to discipline a player for any protest during the national anthem.

However:

The new policy also is expected to contain a clause that the league could fine a team for any protest by a player on the sideline during the anthem, according to a person familiar with the owners’ deliberations.

They're calling this a "compromise." Right.

The reaction has not been universally positive, and at least one owner is telling them to fuck off:

Despite the NFL’s approval of a revised policy that requires players on the field to stand during the national anthem, Jets chairman Christopher Johnson told Newsday on Wednesday that his players are free to take a knee or perform some other protest without fear of repercussion from the team.

“I do not like imposing any club-specific rules,” Johnson said. “If somebody [on the Jets] takes a knee, that fine will be borne by the organization, by me, not the players. I never want to put restrictions on the speech of our players.

Even the New York Times let them have it:

The owners of the National Football League have concluded, with President Trump, that true patriotism is not about bravely standing up for democratic principle but about standing up, period.

Rather than show a little backbone themselves and support the right of athletes to protest peacefully, the league capitulated to a president who relishes demonizing black athletes. The owners voted Wednesday to fine teams whose players do not stand for the national anthem while they are on the field.

Let us hope that in keeping with the league’s pinched view of patriotism, the players choose to honor the letter but not the spirit of this insulting ban. It might be amusing, for example, to see the owners tied in knots by players who choose to abide by the injunction to “stand and show respect” — while holding black-gloved fists in the air.

Remember this?

Photo:  Getty Images

And one former player noted the raging hypocrisy:

U.S. Flag Code passed in 1942 during WW2.

176: Respecting the Flag

D. “The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery”

I. “The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any way whatsoever.” pic.twitter.com/mCzmklImf9

— Sage Rosenfels (@SageRosenfels18) May 23, 2018

Something tells me this isn't over yet:

The NFL players’ protests have never been about the military or the flag. They’re about police brutality and white supremacy. Failing to protest injustice in America is not patriotic, it’s dangerous. #TakeAKnee

— ACLU (@ACLU) May 23, 2018

And:

pic.twitter.com/3FvuGyy4tA

— NFLPA (@NFLPA) May 23, 2018

Lawsuits in 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . .

Only in America

Trump's America, that is:

For 29 years, National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” has celebrated the Fourth of July with a reading of the Declaration of Independence by hosts, reporters, newscasters and commentators.

This historically uncontroversial testament to the nation’s founding document proved uncontroversial-no-more in the year 2017.

After NPR tweeted the Declaration line by line, Donald Trump backers,seemingly unaware of the source document, accused the media organization of playing partisan politics.

Seriously.

Twitter goes bananas:

DEFUND #NPR let the Hollywood Elites pay for your biased propaganda

— Diesel 👌🇺🇸👍 (@ScandalSheet) July 4, 2017

So, NPR is calling for revolution.
Interesting way to condone the violence while trying to sound "patriotic".
Your implications are clear.

— D.G.Davies (@JustEsrafel) July 4, 2017

This one deserves some sort of prize:

Seriously, this is the dumbest idea I have ever seen on twitter. Literally no one is going to read 5000 tweets about this trash.

— Darren Mills 🇺🇸 (@darren_mills) July 4, 2017

Glad you are being defunded. You have never been balanced on your show.

— Alma sanchez (@Almasan93753248) July 4, 2017

This one's in a class by itself:

Are you drunk? Your silly tweets make your state of mind questionable.

— LadyJJ (@Deplorable_JJ) July 5, 2017

The upside is that the responses to these tweets are scathing, at their most gentle.

Happy (belated) Independence Day.

Today's Must-Read

Because nobody does cranky like John Cole.

You may have run across this story, about 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand for the pledge of allegiance:

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has willingly immersed himself into controversy by refusing to stand for the playing of the national anthem in protest of what he deems are wrongdoings against African Americans and minorities in the United States.

His latest refusal to stand for the anthem -- he has done this in at least one other preseason game -- came before the 49ers' preseason loss to Green Bay at Levi's Stadium on Friday night.

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview after the game. "To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."

The reaction is as one might expect.

But Cole's reaction to the whole thing sums up my feelings perfectly. Here's his whole summation:

I’m not even going to get into whether or not his statement was right or appropriate, because whop fucking cares?

People don’t die every day defending our freedoms. The vast majority of our military exploits since World War II have been basically military adventurism and over-reactions, and/or attacking the wrong damned country. Our actual constitutional freedoms, with the exception of the 2nd amendment, have been under assault by lawmakers in the defense of the failed war on drugs and protecting Hollywood and software developers, but no foreign agent has been attacking them.
Soldiers and police do die every day defending the law and fighting the war on terror, but that hasn’t defended your freedoms. That’s kept you safe, maybe. The War on Terror itself has been used repeatedly to attack your actual Constitutional freedoms.

So if you want to thank someone for defending your freedoms, along with soldiers and police, thank the ALCU, the SPLC, the Innocence Project, and other folks who are waging a day to day unheralded battle to defend your freedoms.

And if soldiers were dying every day to defend your freedoms, they would be defending Kaepernick’s right to be a dickhead and not stand during the national anthem, for BLM to protest police, and for people and police union’s to say all live matters, and basically everything that someone says or does that pisses you off.

Because freedom means letting people do their own thing, and not sheltering you from things and get hurt feelings from things that offend you. And you know what? If the NFL and the 49ers want to do whatever they can to get rid of Kaepernick, so long as they honor their contractual obligations, fine.

That’s how things work when you are an adult.

Amen.

Mustang Bobby has a good commentary on this one at Bark Bark Woof Woof and pretty much nails it:

Tell me which is more of a threat to our country: the refusal of a man to stand up during the playing of a song, or the willingness of a lot of citizens to restrict the rights of others because they don’t like what they’re saying or believing?

Read his whole post.

Round Four

The anti-Khan campaign is ramping up, and it appears to be a concerted effort, if not coordinated by the Trump campaign. (But then, what has been coordinated by the Trump campaign? Anything?) Renowned dirtbag Roger Stone has jumped into the fray, relying on the Shoebats, who are disgusting but at least have the excuse that they're insane. Here's a good summary of the whole thing to date from Amanda Terkel at HuffPo:

Khizr Khan delivered one of the most moving speeches at the Democratic National Convention, captivating viewers with his story about losing his son, a U.S. service member who died in the Iraq War saving his fellow soldiers.

Khan, who is Muslim American, said that if it were up to Donald Trump, he and his family wouldn’t even be allowed in the country.

“Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? Go look at the graves of the brave patriots who died defending America,” Khan said. “You will see all faiths, genders and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”

And now, despite his family’s sacrifice to the country, Khan is facing accusations that so many other high-profile Muslim Americans face: that he is unpatriotic and a terrorist.

As far as I can tell, the Khans are a hell of a lot more patriotic than anyone who's criticizing them.

This had to happen eventually: Trump, being completely unable to deal with any sort of criticism without lashing out, finally managed, I think, to crystallize his bigotry and bombast into one easily perceived shot to the foot. Lots of people took swings at him during the Democratic convention, but this one went viral because the right-wing nutjobs jumped on it, taking their cue from The Hairpiece himself.

And let's face it, when you've lost the congressional leadership, you're not doing to well. Yes, McConnell and Ryan are doing a fast dance to try to distance themselves from Trump while continuing to support his candidacy, but what choice do they have? They have to support their candidate, but if they tie themselves to0 closely to him, their own political futures are in jeopardy. They, at least, are in enough contact with reality to realize that attacking the parents of a war hero is just not going to fly.

Boom.

John Aravosis has a somewhat lengthy (and a little dry) post on how this sort of thing becomes viral that's worth reading just to understand the whole process that's going on here.

Today in Disgusting People

Sandy Rios is one of the most vicious bigpts on the right, but this time she's gone overboard:

From my perspective, it is the responsibility of Mr. Khan to distinguish himself from Islamists, from the Muslim Brotherhood whose treatise is to destroy us from within,” Rios said. “If he is a patriotic, loyal, American-Muslim, then we want to hear that, that’s great, and we grieve with them over the death of their son. But do not disparage Americans or Donald Trump for having concerns about Muslims in our midst. . . .

And if you are so concerned, Mr. Khan, if you’re an American first, then distinguish yourself and condemn Islamists, condemn the Muslim Brotherhood, then we will listen to you, and stop waving the Constitution. As far as I can tell, Islam, truly, supporters of Islam and the Quran, cannot embrace the Constitution. Now, if you have a different view, then explain that to us and then maybe we can be persuaded, but don’t shame America for having genuine and rightful concerns about Muslims in our midst when we have no idea who they are or what they really believe, and we’re not even sure about you, sir, because we know about taqiyya, which is the practice of lying to the infidel in order to advance the Muslim cause.

From my perspective, Mr.Khan and his family have distinguished themselves quite enough -- much more than Sandy Rios has, and in a much better way.

This is the man whose loyalty she was questioning:

Some background on Capt. Humayun Khan:

Humayun Khan was born in the United Arab Emirates and immigrated to the U.S. as a small child, growing up in Maryland and attending college at the University of Virginia. He was a 27-year-old Army captain when he was inspecting the gates of his camp in Baquba, Iraq, and a speeding vehicle approached. Khan told his fellow soldiers to hit the ground and he signaled at the vehicle to stop. He took 10 steps toward the vehicle, which had in it two suicide bombers and a large amount of explosives. The car exploded, injuring 10 of his fellow soldiers and killing Khan. The captain was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart, and Khizr Khan believes his son’s actions saved the lives of many of his fellow soldiers.

“We still wonder what made him take those 10 steps,” Khan’s father has said in the past to the web site Vocativ. “Maybe that’s the point where all the values, all the service to country, all the things he learned in this country kicked in. It was those values that made him take those 10 steps. Those 10 steps told us we did not make [a] mistake in moving to this country.”

Mr. Khan has no need to justify himself to the likes of Sandy Rios, who from all indications despises everything that America stands for.

Antidote

To all the Trumpistas, the hard-core BernieBots, BLM, and everyone else who wants to separate us into tiny little enclaves:

A belated Happy Fourth of July.

Honoring the Flag

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