Let’s take away all the goodies from all business. I don’t care and neither does the constitution. Come on man, you know that you have limited freedom of speech within your place of employment. That has been discussed here many times. You can’t admit that in one case and then demand complete freedom in another.
If you google pics of players you can find players doing this during the anthem.
Yeah, the government can’t force the NFL to allow kneeling, and more than it can force anyone to stand. The government should not be involved in this at all.
And ultimately, that’s the main problem now (aside from the racism being protested). That Trump has politicized the issue to rile up his idiot base.
Perhaps the best argument I have heard against the NFL’s new rule is that the NFL took something that had become almost forgotten and turned it into front page news.
I wonder if we will see any teams that stay completely in the locker until after the anthem.
And if they think this decision puts the matter to rest they are fooling themselves. This will be talked about every single week as people wait to see who comes out and who doesn’t. Simply staying in the locker room might become the proxy protest.
This is all great as long as you are willing to ignore the fact that there are contractual issues involved that the owners side stepped and while you’re at it go ahead and ignore the racial issues involved when a group of old white men make mandates regarding matters of this nature. You act like businesses are slave owners and employees must accept or get the whip. Which is a surprising insight considering the situation. There are limits to the powers allowed businesses. They do not have unfettered free reign, as much as you would like to believe it to be true. I believe mandating that someone can not kneel during an anthem should be beyond that scope of power, if not legally then morally. Also, the constitution does care and it cares more about an individual’s civil rights than it does about a corporations individual rights. Quit using the constitution as a defense because no where in the constitution does it afford businesses the right to supersede civil rights.
Nobody has ignored the fact that the NFL had no rules to prohibit this type of behavior, which the NBA and MLB have. The NFL has screwed this up from day one, and I don’t think anyone here is defending anything the NFL has actually done.
And man, you like to get dramatic don’t you.
Anyone who was kneeling previously should now stand (with hand on heart), but facing the opposite direction of the flag. Seems like a gesture you could explain in a post-game press conference as “America and the NFL have turned their backs on the problem of racial injustice…so until it’s addressed, I will continue to turn my back as well…but hey, I’m not kneeling!”
Cue idiot heads exploding.
I believe the new rule specifies that you must stand AND show respect for the flag or the fine/penalty will apply. So I don’t think it’d be a workable solution but this whole thing isn’t going to go well for football anyways.
It’s not the sarcasm I’m objecting to. You keep saying the same thing over and over again and that’s not really what the counter argument to your position is actually saying.
And in case I was unclear the first few times I said it, my boss cannot make me stand for, rehearse or even acknowledge the national anthem.
Remove the anthem from it, your boss can “control” your freedom of speech. Whether it be a tirade against someone of color or against a political figure. How does the NFL differ from Sears in that way?
I’m not removing my anthem, and no they cannot control my freedom of speech in the way you are stating it. You know how i know that, in addition to just knowing that, because my place of employment, due to the fucked up nature of our country right now, will actually send out company wide e-mails reminding people of what their rights are, who we can reach out to if we feel our rights are violated, and a gentle reminder to be respectful despite opposing views.
What they are not doing is saying this form of political speech is okay, the one they like, and this other one, the one they don’t, isn’t. That’s what the NFL is doing.
I am not sure what you mean with that last sentence. I understand people here are defining standing and respecting the anthem as political speech, I think while that argument has some merit it is also a tradition that has been done regardless of anyone’s political beliefs. People do it cause they have always done it.
And I have said above, several times, that the NFL has really screwed this up themselves. I am not defending them in anyway for their decisions.
Having the team stand on the field for the national anthem is not some deep and long-standing tradition. It was a political move done less than a decade ago that is currently backfiring on them. While some people do stand for the national anthem as some unwritten tradition, a quick sweep of the stadium shows it’s completely voluntary and if not doing so is disrespectful, I’d say a lot of sports fans are disrespectful… a fair amount of the time.
As for my last sentence, if an employer tries to limit the political speech of some but not all employees, they might be hitting against discrimination laws, especially around issues of race, religion and sex… you know the same ones used in discrimination lawsuits. And of course there are retaliation laws as well.
So no, Freedom of Speech is not a right you’re afforded in the workplace like you are on your private time, but I never said it was; however, an employer cannot force me to recite the national anthem anymore than they can force me to read scripture from the Bible or the Quran. If they told me to go hide in the closet while everyone else did it… that might be a problem, as in a problem the courts would address.
Not going to disagree basically with anything you said. I think we are on the same page there.
The anthem thing has been more than a decade, probably since right after 9-11, and while we can disagree on how political it was meant to be. I think sports (MLB) had the tradition going back as far as WW1 with the anthem.
The real difference was the arrogance, greed and stupidity of the NFL owners.
For the NFL it seems we both get to be right about that 2009 date.
Apparently there are… different kinds of games in the NFL. And the paid patriotism is part of several sports.
Stadiums just need a more extensive variety of flags!
Vox seems to think this isn’t so cut and dried just because it’s in a workplace and not the government.
Me, I think the players association should time the obvious lawsuit to coincide with the season opener, since the league is obviously trying to bury this in the off-season.