Colin Kaepernick is the man.
This country says one thing then turns around and stuffs it to black people.Especially poor black people. Only fool would suggest that African Americans do not to get a raw deal.
On the other hand, this rah rah rah America shit borders on creepy. The national anthem was not sung at ball games until WWII. It became a thing after that. Fair enough. No biggie.
Then 9-11 came and they stared singing God Bless America during the 7th inning stretch. Fair enough. This shall pass. But it didn’t.
Going to the ballgame is going to church. Fucking prayers replaced by psalms to the almighty U S of A. Fucking creepy, man.
And in between innings, periods, quarters, and halftimes not to mention time-outs some nice person in uniform is trotted out and we all stand and applaud.
They don’t tell us all the bullshit this guy’s gone through physically, mentally, and emotionally. They don’t tell us what opportunities were available to the enlisted before they joined up.
Hey how come the wife ain’t with him? Oh, right. She left him during his fourth tour of duty. He kept coming back more and more fucked-up and she couldn’t take it anymore. Took the kids too. Poor bastard is a mess. USA! USA! USA!
That’s another thing. The USA chant was never heard before the 1980 Olympics when the underdog hockey team from the big country with little self-esteem took on giants of hockey from the Soviet Union and beat them. It was at Lake Placid, NY and 90% of the people in the stand were Americans. And the kids on the team were working class kids.
The 1970’s had a recession, factories closing, Watergate, huge unemployment, inflation, 20% interest rates,civil unrest, Jimmy Carter, a bankrupt NYC, the weather underground blowing up courthouses (happened here) and America sucked.
The 1980 US Olympic Hockey team was so much more than a gold medal for this country and that’s when and why the USA chant started.
Unfortunately it has been corrupted to a nationalistic cheer used when beating a weaker opponent from another country. This includes assaulting immigrants.
And blasphemy if you say anything that suggests you don’t bleed red white and blue.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Kaapernick. I hope more players do what he’s doing. I hope white players join him and fans in the stands join them. Then I hope that by the time the NBA rolls around those guys are all in.
Check out Colin explaining why he’s doing what he’s doing.
Let’s do this!!
——
How about the Globe writing front page stories with big headlines informing the readers of the battle in a NH courtroom to release the sexual history of a young female murder victim? The family would like to keep it private.
I feel so bad for that family and the Globe makes the pain worse by putting her picture on the front page and getting school boys and pervs to click.
What frauds!
I’m happy to play the Voltaire card on Kaepernick, but won’t join him. Flag etiquette is important to me and I also view it as a statement of aspiration rather than fact. At least he wasn’t swearing through it like you did with this post:( I will say the habit we developed of standing for God Bless America became a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Standing is for the officially designated National Anthem, which last I checked was still the Star-Spangled Banner. That song’s unique status is diluted when we start standing for others (though standing for Taps is OK to honor the fallen).
The anthem is a very important thing to celebrate right before cheering on people trying to give themselves brain damage.
…regarding whether it is played at all, but if it is played I will absolutely stand.
Many of my friends on the left attacked me for upholding my alma mater’s commitment to academic freedom and opposition to censorship in the name of sensitivity to marginalized groups. My right wing friends applauded that as a stand for speech. Then the left wing friends praised Kap while my right wing friends were shocked he was ‘allowed’ to do it.
The broader issue is freedom of speech. We have to support it whether we like the viewpoints espoused or not, and I will be consistent in supporting it even if I dislike the speech. Whether it’s allowing Trump surrogates onto campus or the stand Kap is taking. I find the former truly offensive and the latter merely misguided.
I think this move would be more appropriate and apropos, but he has a right to take any stance he wants. Like the POW flag or standing and saluting the anthem, to me it’s a matter of respecting our veterans including many of my friends and family members who served. But I also totally sympathize with a black person’s anger at the national anthem on a variety of fronts.
Do read the link at the very end of jconway’s comment. Key being a racist is one of many reason we need a new anthem. America the Beautiful?
Lest anyone try to represent veterans as a single block, check out #veteransforkapernick.
Finally, I attended two MLB games this year – one in Boston and one in Detroit – and noted that God Bless America was not sung at either (or I was in the men’s room 😉 ).
…that it should be America the Beautiful because that song better encompasses a variety of aspects of our history, geography, and people. The Star-Spangled Banner is about a single specific event that lasted for all of a few hours.
Key was better on race, or at least slavery, than a lot of people of his generation. There is nothing racist about the lyrics of SSB and I oppose dismissing and diminishing historical figures of former times whose mores don’t completely square with ours or make us uncomfortable.
Did you read the third verse and the column jconway linked to that discusses it?
I wouldn’t judge it quite as harshly as jconway’s linked article did, but it was helpful in deciphering its meaning since the poetic syntax was such I was having a terrible time diagramming it in my head. I’d chalk it up to reflection of the time, right up there with the reference to “merciless Indian savages” in the Declaration of Independence.
christopher is never your man.
I pretty much sense I have Trump Derangement Syndrome at this point. I’m happy to judge him harshly:)
And the haters can’t even bring themselves to click on the [Recommend] button for what you wrote, even though they all know you are DEAD ON on both parts of this piece.
…and definitely not for this one.
gonna be nationalistic respectability politics liberals.
Were these folks to read MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” you can just see them looking down their noses and then typing here that they though MLK was “misguided” and “disrespectful.”
…appreciate the Birmingham letter AND show respect/love for country. I thought only right-wingers thought criticism and love for country were mutually exclusive.
What does “appreciate” mean to you here?
Does it mean that you internalize it and that it becomes part of the context you use when evaluating such discussions in the future?
Or, does it mean that while you think Dr. King made a few good points, that ultimately, his opinions on this matter were just one of many, and that his point here shouldn’t be taken too much to heart?
And, is that really what you believe (that whenever you find one refusing to stand during The National Anthem or not saluting either when a soldier approaches or when everyone turns to pledge a loyalty oath to a flag, that that person has shown disrespect for his or her country)?
…or at least none should.
Dr. King did a thorough job of analyzing and criticizing the situation the US was in on matters of racial justice. He said things that needed to be said and, like the Declaration of Independence, succinctly laid out the reasons for the actions he had taken and believed need to be taken. I actually do not see evidence of disrespect or lack of love for his country in the letter. In fact, precisely because he did love his country he believed it was worth pushing for the US to actually live up to its ideal that all men are created equal. If he didn’t feel that way he might as well have given up.
My attitude toward people who do not adhere to flag etiquette isn’t quite as harsh as you imply in your last paragraph, but if you were with me when I notice you might see me make a bit of a face.
I asked specifically about “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” and you’ve dodged the reference a couple times.
Why I’ve mentioned this:
The negative peace that MLK referred to is IMHO quite easy to identify in your criticisms of Colin Kaepernick for not standing for the National Anthem. What is more of interest to you (only going on what you’ve shared here) is that it’s more troubling to you that he didn’t show the respect to the flag that you believe he should have than the content of his speech and his reasons for not doing so.
First, my comment about analyzing, etc WAS specifically about the letter, which I had just reread before making my previous comment. There are things going on that are very troubling to me, in the scheme of things maybe more significant than whether someone stands. My attitudes toward action are more a function of my personality than my politics. I hope that Kaepernick is also taking other action such as political involvement to pursue the changes he wants to see.
Stop being horrible. What actions are you taking on this issue while you criticize him and call him in question for the actions he’s taken?
You can stop with the epithets while you’re at it. Calling someone horrible like you did me is uncalled for. Sitting out the national anthem just doesn’t accomplish a whole lot, at least by itself.
Stop being horrible.
You are calling ME “horrible” instead of my arguments. Do I have to call the editors?
I’m not sure if I agree with the tactic, and I am not quite ready to anoint him the next Muhammed Ali, but what he did do was certainly a political act, and a courageous one. He is certainly going to pay a price for it.
I was just hoping he would get involved in campaigns and work for change, which to be fair maybe he is also doing. I’m not sure why there would be much price to pay. Sure, that particular act strikes me as petty sulking, but it doesn’t affect his ability to play so there should not be any official or unofficial consequences.
He has had a few disappointing years– so he risks his job. If he struggles again now, he will be in for a very difficult time indeed from the fans. And he is on a team with a fervent fan base, which which has been in turmoil for several years running now.
The NFL does not have guaranteed contracts. The 49ers could cut him tomorrow without consequence, other than that they would need a new QB.
And risks his ability to get another job in the NFL, because one of the top sins of an NFL player from the perspective of a team is not domestic violence or drug abuse. It is “creating a distraction,” which he has most certainly done. He has also possibly risked his ability to get endorsement money, since advertisers don’t want to touch controversy with a 10-foot pole.
In my view,he has risked a very great deal, and knows it. Which is why I think the move is courageous.
Why on EARTH are we and the media talking about whether or not some professional athlete does or does not stand during some patriotic ritual?
Why does anybody care?
This is just another example of how the media seizes on some bit of silly trivia and uses it to work us up to a frothing lather about something that is completely and stupidly meaningless.
Sports are really meaningful to tens of millions of Americans, and tangentially meaningful to more than that. When sports and politics (or social justice) intersect, it’s always newsworthy because the union of people who care about one or the other is massive, and it’s pretty uncommon.
What Mr. Kaepernick is doing is news worthy because of why he’s not standing. His personal story (biracial, adopted and raised by a white family) makes it even more interesting.
I’m not arguing that Mr. Kaepernick has earned any moral high ground — he’s no Freedom Rider (yet?). But what he has done is shown that he, a regular guy who gives a damn, can indeed make a social comment about it, encouraging others who feel similarly to also make their own social comments. Mr. Kaepernick happens to have cameras on him at work one day a week, and he’s using that to his advantage.
The issues that Mr. Kaepernick is raising aren’t completely and stupidly meaningless, and I know you share that opinion. So I get that you don’t like professional sports, but I wonder: why shoot the messenger who is spreading a message in which you believe?
I do agree, enthusiastically, that the issues Mr. Kaepernick raises are crucially important.
It simply hurts me that the nation and culture that I actually love has reached the point where such issues only become “coffee machine” discussions when they surface in a professional sports broadcast.
It isn’t that I disagree with you. It is that, in fact, Mr. Kaepernick is not a “regular guy”. He is, in fact, a member of a very select cohort of professional football players. MILLIONS of “regular guys” have been attempting to raise these issues for a long time, and today’s America ignores them.
So I agree with your analysis, and I bemoan the result.
So too were Tommie Smith, John Carlos, and Peter Norman; Muhammad Ali; the 2015 Mizzou football team; Arthur Ashe; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; Jim Brown, and others.
Cultural leaders, be they athletic, art, film, music, literature, or otherwise have always helped guide, shape, and lead our mainstream culture — mostly toward consumption and a level of selfishness. When they instead lead us toward a culture that is more just and more loving, I just assume celebrate it rather than lament it. Kudos to Mr. Kaepernick for forcing sports fans to at least consider the #BLM movement.
We have to press on and support each other in this fight, and I appreciate your efforts in explaining this.
s’tom and I know each other a long time. I appreciate his willing to both “put himself out there” on an issue fraught with accusations of malintent, and for his not being defensive or ugly when I disagree with him, as I sometimes do.
So thanks somervilletom for being part of an important conversation, and I’ll get to one of your stammies soon!
..which is why I find your treatment of some who largely agrees with you on the substance on this thread (yours truly) baffling.
I really don’t see where this agreement on the thread is. I think Colin should be praised, and that other players should follow his lead. Tom, however, acidic as the day is long, made a disparagingly remark about athletes. Perhaps you could point out what you’re referring to.
…that the issues he is drawing attention to need to be addressed, hence my use of the words “on the substance” as opposed to “on the tactics”. That to me is what is truly important.
is that the issue is an issue in the first place because people do not want to think about it at all ever. Hence “blue lives matter” and “all lives matter.”
Guys like him make people think about it.
I invite you to quote anything I wrote here that is “disparaging” about athletes.
I wrote that Mr. Kaepernick is a professional athlete. Surely that’s not disparaging. I wrote of my disappointment with American culture. That’s not disparaging athletes. I said, in my original comment, that I enthusiastically agree that the issues Mr. Kaepernick raises are important.
Once again you distort, to the point of dishonesty, what I’ve said. Please stop.
Re: Kaepernick, I’m always amazed at how people treat athletes like children (or rather, like other people’s children). They thrill to the opportunity to condescend to athletes and judge them. Free speech!
I thought the Globe piece was weird too. In our edition, it was lead story. WTF? Nothing like a leer disguised as concern.
RIP Gene Wilder.
I quote:
and: