NFL Commissioner Trump
The President who promised the American people they’d win so much, they’d get tired of winning has been unable to notch a meaningful victory on health care, infrastructure, tax reform, immigration or any number of other supposed legislative priorities. But Donald Trump seems to finally have a “W” in his sights in, of all things, a sideshow culture war of choice waged against the NFL: The league looks poised to force players to stand at full attention during the national anthem.
Granting that Trump’s railing against the supposed “sons of b-----s” struck a chord with football fans, this is a deeply dispiriting development.
Tuesday, the same day Trump, with all the subtlety of a tin-pot dictator, threatened to attack the league’s tax status, commissioner Roger Goodell released a memo to owners declaring that “everyone should stand for the national anthem” — hinting that at a league meeting this weekend, the strong suggestion would become a formal requirement, with who knows what penalties attached.
Players’ decision to kneel during the anthem was, we repeat, a miscalculation. Whatever their intent, Colin Kaepernick and others who sought to make a powerful statement against the killing of unarmed black men by police appeared to be aiming their ire at central symbols of America: “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the Stars and Stripes.
That didn’t advance the conversation about very real injustice.
But being wrong is a right in this country — a notion that Trump, who has never seen a situation of which he could not take demagogic advantage, refused to accept.
And so, America is now about to unfurl this irony: On Sundays, the only people in a football stadium required to stand during the national anthem will be the (predominantly black) professionals on the field. Not owners or fans or vendors or journalists covering the game.
Nor do public high-school or college football players have to stand; law and precedent protects their First Amendment freedom to engage in silent protest, just as any public school student can opt out of the Pledge of Allegiance.
No, only the grown men at the pinnacle of the sport, who tried to quietly and honorably make a point, will be made to engage in compulsory patriotic ritual, on the theory that as privileged millionaires they have ceded their rights to do otherwise.
All because the President of the United States abused his bully pulpit to lash out against a cause with which he disagreed.