This concludes our broadcast day.
Don’t kid yourself. This isn’t about pro sports players, this is about black pro sports players. Black pro sports players are not allowed to express their opinions. They’re just lucky white folks let them entertain them.
That was TV though. And it was quickly abandoned once 24 hour programming became viable. Now they just repeat the evening news all night, and before that, it was Mr. Ed reruns and tacky infomercials.
(and now I’m suddenly reminded of the “intermissions” HBO used to air back in the day, where they’d drag a steadicam through Central Park or Museum of Natural History for 15-20 minutes between movies. I often enjoyed them more than the films.)
Hearing the Panthers are considering mutiny over Richardson’s ban on sideline protests (he’s the one owner still banning them)
Ack, didn’t realize this topic got its own thread today so I posted about it in the ‘stupid shit on facebook’ thread.
Re-posting a question I asked over there… does anyone know who among the kneeling NFL players are well-known for charitable work, hospital visits, or donating money?
The Bennett brothers, Martellus and Michael came to mind for me right away. Over the weekend, Michael took a knee, and Martellus raised a fist in the air while his other arm was locked with teammates.
Another that jumps to mind is Von Miller. An outspoken player in every way, front and center on the protests, and runs a charity in Denver that provides low-income kids with free eyecare and corrective lenses and contacts so they don’t fall behind in school.
Most NFL players, at least the stars, run a lot of charity work.
this is good:
Do kids still pledge their allegiance every morning in elementary school? That always creeped me out…
Trae is always pretty great.
As a kid, I only did it overseas in a DOD school. Never did it after that.
First place we lived after coming back to the States was rural Virginia. Maybe that was the reason.
Similar to where I was- semi-rural North Carolina.
Oddly enough, we didn’t at the DoDDS school I went to, but that is probably because we were also a NATO school at AFCENT/AFNORTH.
Suburban Chicago, and we did it when I was there.
I always get creeped out when people fetishize the flag. Especially, as others have noted, the most strident defenders of the faith tend to be the ones who know the least about what the flag or the country actually stands for. Historically, people who have “rallied 'round the flag” in this sense aren’t standing up for American values per se, but for their own, very specific, very narrow, interpretation of American values, which always happen to be simply things they agree with. Any other interpretation of what America or its flag means is instantly rejected.
Hell, you can find Ku Klux Klan meetings where they salute the freakin’ flag. I’m not sure that’s a ringing endorsement of Uncle Sam, frankly.
This is not about the flag! If these athletes were taking a knee to protest Democrats taking their guns, or millions of aborted fetuses, or Hillary Clinton’s emails, it would be fine. This is about certain white folks’ discomfort in having black folks protest something they don’t agree with.
Oh, I agree, but the flag thing is the angle used to avoid admitting that this is mostly a racist rant.
Me too. As a kid I always mumbled through it as I couldn’t get myself to say words pledging allegiance to the flag, an inanimate object, and I wasn’t prepared to make such a commitment that the pledge was asking. That is to say nothing of the “under god” part.