Leon Wolf
This is not an article about who is right
and who is wrong. This is an article about who is winning and who is
losing.
And as someone who is a) not a
fan of Trump (to use mild understatement) and b) believes that there are real
racial issues that need to be addressed in this country, it is nonetheless
obvious that Trump has won this dumb NFL national anthem protest battle decisively
in the hearts and minds of the middle-of-the-road voters who decide
presidential elections.
Watching this bizarre
spectacle unfold has been surreal, from a political perspective. The NFL’s
image has been tarnished a tad of late, but it is still the undisputed
king of sports in America. Its ratings have slipped, but it is still the
envy of every other sport and television property in the country, especially
since live sports are the only programs that can’t effectively be watched on
DVR with commercials getting skipped, and advertisers know it. And even though
people have complained about the league, by and large a huge portion of the
country still loves their team and their players.
Trump, on the other hand, is
widely unpopular. Thanks to a recent bump caused by favorable reaction to his
handling of multiple hurricane disasters, Trump is back to hovering around the
40 percent approval range, which is disastrous for a president whose presidency
is not yet nine months old. Trump started his presidency with a historically
shallow public honeymoon and things almost immediately got worse.
It seems incredible that Trump
could pick a fight with the NFL and come out ahead, but that’s exactly what
he’s done. And he did it by rope-a-doping the NFL into engaging him on the one
territory where the NFL was sure to get massacred: by poking at the festering
sore opened by former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick last year.
Trump knew that the country —
even those who don’t watch football — was simmering with resentment over the
relatively small number of NFL players who were unwisely choosing to air their
grievances during the national anthem. He understood that even those who might
otherwise be sympathetic with the players were disgusted with the way they were
choosing to protest, perceiving it as a slight against the entire country,
including especially veterans, the active military, and first responders.
Some people (apparently
including most of the NFL and its owners) do not understand the concept of the
sacred. They do not understand that, to many people, how you say something is
as important or more important than what you say. As one example, many people
are perfectly fine with criticism of the Catholic church, but if you do it by
dipping a crucifix in a vat of urine, even many non-Catholics will react with
disgust and rejection. Failing to respect the national anthem and the flag is
perceived by many as equivalent sacrilege. For those people, who probably
comprise the vast majority of this country, there can be no willingness to
consider the players’ message as long as they are using the anthem and the flag
as their method of protest.
He also knew that the NFL
players who were not participating in the protest were still
insanely protective of their teammates’ right (and their own) to participate in
a dumb, counterproductive protest. The average NFL player has been coddled
since youth due to their freakish athletic ability and constantly treated like
a Special Person who is entitled to do or say basically what they want. There
is no surer way to goad a professional athlete into doing something than to
suggest that they ought to not be allowed to play their sport if they do it.
Trump also knew
that huge portions of the country was sick of the so-called thoughtful analysis
and protest-feting that all of the sports media and virtually all the political
media have engaged in since Kaepernick began this slow-motion debacle. And he
knew about the latent jealousy and resentment many people have toward
professional athletes, who get paid millions of dollars to live a life that
everyone wants (or thinks they want).
And so, Trump exercised his
talent to tap perfectly into the zeitgeist of the moment and say what a lot of
America has been dying to hear for months: These pampered athletes ought to
shut up and stand respectfully for the national anthem, or their teams should
fine or suspend them.
Whether it’s right or wrong
for the president of the United States to be saying such things about private
companies is completely beside the point. Trump’s comments tapped perfectly
into the raw emotions of middle America and gave them voice. They were both
crude and perfect, just like David Ortiz famously booming “THIS IS OUR F***ING
CITY” on live television from Fenway Park after the Boston Marathon bombing.
The people who tsk’ed Ortiz for dropping an F-bomb in prime time were so
irrelevant that Ortiz didn’t even get fined by the FCC.
The same is true, from a
political standpoint, for the critics of Trump’s remarks. Yes, they were
probably not proper, strictly speaking, from the president of the United
States. No, the average person does not care.
The players and owners of the
NFL, however, are decidedly NOT the average person. Trump could not have more
perfectly aimed jabs at their sense of entitlement if he tried. Overnight, he
somehow convinced almost the entire NFL to make themselves wildly unpopular in
the name of responding to some tweets.
Think, for a moment, about the
stupidity of the message sent by players who protested for the first time
yesterday: The actual issues that Kaepernick protested weren’t enough to make
you join the protest, but some tweets by Trump were? Racial injustice is fine
with you, but you simply can’t support your country while the president is
tweeting mean things about football players? As my friend, Caleb Howe wrote this morning:
Then there’s the NFL players who are taking a knee, and their supporters
on social media. They are angry about President Trump tweeting about them. Why?
This is what you wanted, isn’t it? National attention, a huge clash of points
of view? What do liberals always pine for? Oh right, a “national conversation.”
Well … you’ve got one.
Now that you have it, wouldn’t it be logical to talk about your issue?
The one that was the reason Colin Kaepernick gave for starting this protest in
the first place? I would think that. I would think “well, I’ve got the mic now,
so I can talk about this thing that is the reason why I even did this.” But of
course, that’s not what people are talking about, is it? Instead it’s all about
Trump.
How dare Trump tweet? How dare he hate protests? How dare he think
people should be fired?
What a wasted moment…
Trump gave this protest, on a silver platter, the chance to be about
the exact thing the original participants wanted to talk about, the very reason
for the protest in the first place, and in response the left has made it about
protesting the fact that Trump is president. Or the fact that he tweeted.
That’s just … dumb. …
But we still aren’t actually talking about race. So the conversation
you wanted that Trump gave you is being squandered on a conversation about
Trump. In which case I guess it’s not about
having trouble accepting it when you get what you want. It’s more like not
knowing what to do with it. The proverbial dog catching the mail truck. Smooth.
This is exactly correct. And
what’s worse (for the players) is that they are definitely going to lose this
fight with Trump, and it won’t be close. Here in Nashville where I live, the
Tennessee Titans suicidally decided as a team yesterday to not take the field
for the anthem. Maybe that will play in Seattle (the Seahawks likewise refused
to take the field) or to some lesser extent in Pittsburgh, but here the
backlash has already begun. While driving my son to school on Interstate 65
this morning, I saw numerous Titans bumper stickers visibly defaced on cars. I
also saw several new stickers I’d not seen before — the NFL logo with a red “no
smoking” circle imposed over it.
#EUA: Resposta de um fã do Pittsburgh @Steelers após quase toda equipe ficar no vestiário durante execução do hino nacional pic.twitter.com/sAB7WlRxTT— RENOVA (@RenovaMidia) 25 de setembro de 2017
It’s as if Trump dared the
entire NFL — from the ownership on down — to intentionally piss off America and
make really sure everyone knew they were doing it just because they hate Trump,
and the NFL obliged.
Regardless of who is right or
who is wrong, it’s not hard to predict how this particular scrum will end.
Trump’s approval rating will probably go up another 5 points in spite of
the fact that the wall still isn’t being built, the Obamacare repeal is
circling the drain for the last time, and tax reform appears stalled. The NFL
will probably suffer another ratings drop and more lagging ticket sales.
The NFL got rope-a-doped. And
who knows if and when they’ll get up from this beating.
Leon Wolf, Managing Editor, The Blaze, 25-9-2017
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Disrespecting The National Anthem And The American Flag Are Not Legitimate Forms Of Political Protest
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