Ann Killion: Readers weigh in on Kaepernick

Tuesday was a rough day to open an email box brimming with feedback about Colin Kaepernick, to sift through some hateful, racially tinged missives as the aftermath of Charlottesville, Va., played out across the country.

“Nobody cares!” screamed email after email, which often then went on at length to explain why nobody cares. Yet the issue of an athlete engaging in a nonviolent protest against racial inequality during the national anthem continues to generate an enormous amount of feedback, including from people who vociferously claim not to care and from others who admit they care very much.

Kaepernick’s protest can no longer be looked at only through the prism of last autumn and the issues at that time. Now they are viewed through the heightened tension of the immediate moment.

That could change his status, as some readers pointed out.

“In a perverse way, the Charlottesville event may increase Kap’s stock,” one reader noted. “Any moment now I would expect an NFL owner to make a media splash by signing Kap.”

Valid point. But as we know, P.R. is not exactly the NFL’s strong suit.

Others pointed out that Kaepernick is getting far more grief than others do for their political activity: Tom Brady had a MAGA hat, and several NFL owners invested millions in the Trump campaign.

But Kaepernick is blamed for bringing politics into sports. Some think he has nothing to complain about. After all, society is fair now, right?

“I wondered what he was bitching about,” one writer said. “I could see it if were were suddenly back in the 1960s when it counted. But now there’s only accolades, no rocks or ropes, for protesters these days.”

More than one reader suggested — as I have in the past — that the national anthem has no place before a game between teams that represent corporate entities, not nations. The tradition started sporadically after World War I and grew over the years as a marketing ploy, not out of patriotic fervor.

“Here’s a modest proposal,” said one reader. “Stop playing the national anthem at football games.”

I took note, closed my email box and turned on the Nice-Napoli Champions League game. No “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem. No “Inno di Mameli,” the Italian anthem.

Just two teams taking the field and starting to play.