Ungrateful is the new uppity.

[57Brave]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news...trong-to-the-nfl-ungrateful-as-the-new-uppity

It’s impossible not to be struck by Trump’s selective patriotism. It drives him to curse at black football players but leaves him struggling to create false equivalence between Nazis and anti-Fascists in Charlottesville. It inspires a barely containable contempt for Muslims and immigrants but leaves him mute in the face of Russian election intervention. He cannot tolerate the dissent against literal flag-waving but screams indignation at the thought of removing monuments to the Confederacy that attempted to revoke the authority symbolized by that same flag. He is the vector of the racial id of the class of Americans who sent death threats to Louis Armstrong, the people who necessitated the presence of a newly federalized National Guard to defend black students seeking to integrate a public school. He contains multitudes—all of them dangerously ignorant.

 

[57Brave]

Garfield HS, Seattle, team takes knee during anthem

 

[cajunrevenge]

Just because they call themselves Antifa does not make them Anti-facist. If anything they are anti-first amendment. Really they are just mad their authoritarian asshole list to the other sides authoritarian asshole. Both sides suck.

 

[Runnin]

 

[Hawk]

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article175221406.html

Finally, a third meme – this one promoted mostly by fans of the protests – claims NFL teams only began participating in the national anthem after the U.S. Department of Defense paid the league millions of dollars to promote patriotic displays in 2009.

This meme typically reads, “No NFL player stood for the national anthem until 2009 – before then, the players stayed in the locker room as the anthem played. NFL teams got patriotic in recent years because it was good for business. A 2015 congressional report revealed that the Department of Defense had paid $5.4 million to NFL teams between 2011 and 2014 to stage on-field patriotic ceremonies; the national guard shelled out $6.7 million for similar displays between 2013 and 2015. It can be called “paid patriotism.”

This one’s somewhat true but ultimately dubious. According to Snopes, players have always had the option to stand on the sidelines during “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But the NFL has received millions of dollars from the Department of Defense and various state National Guard organizations in recent years to honor soldiers at games to bolster military recruitment efforts. In the end, linking those payments to a specific year when players were required to participate in anthem-related events – which, as we’ve seen, they aren’t – seems to be a stretch.

 

[chop2chip]

I wish Trump would stop fanning the flames on this one because I can not wait for this stupid controversy to be over with.

 

[Julio3000]

I do find it interesting that the opprobrium is directed at "ungrateful" millionaire players (who are well-compensated and also daily risking their future health for that paycheck) and not NFL owners, who are about as disreputable a shower of assholes as ever walked the earth, who have apparently heretofore thought that a weekly display of jingoism inoculated them from criticism.