First things first; I don’t really care if people stand for the national anthem or not. I do, personally; it’s out of respect for what this nation should be, moreso than what it is. It’s a free country – and that involves freedom to be contrary. As well as to deal with the consequences of being a contrarian.
One of the consequences? The TV-viewing public – at least the ones that watch NFL football, the ones between the Hudson and the Sierra Madre – are not amused by NFL players’ – and the NFL’s – lurch to the left.
And for this, we conservatives need to thank Kaepernick. He may be the pinhole leak in the dam that miiight just lead to the final collapse of mainstream TV – including the business model that keeps our corroded, corrupt mainstream TV news clique – afloat.
So – for this, Colin Kaepernick, I thank you.
I tend to agree. The possibility of private stations that deliver both traditional and online content, could be closer than we think.
Glen Beck has been ranting for months that Trump is angling for his own TV network for just that purpose.
Trump, Roger Ailes and Steve Bannon. The TBN (Trump Breitbart News) Network. The Alt-right and conspiracy rubes need a home too.
Might finally convince cities and states to stop funding gold plated stadia if it happens. Never really understood the case for billion dollar buildings consecrated to the worship of one team, and it’s worth noting that in the age of municipal stadia, Soldier Field in Chicago played host to Northwestern, Army-Navy, Notre Dame, U. of Chicago, the Cardinals, and….oh, yes, the Bears. Worth noting as well is that most of the time, the Bears and Cardinals played their games at Wrigley and Comiskey–privately owned ballparks whose owners knew the value of a dollar.
But that said, if the onset of “Viagra” and “Cialis” commercials wasn’t sufficient to kill off the standard model, I’m skeptical that Kaepernick’s antics will. Hopefully I’m wrong.
I don’t care about football particularly and I agree to an extent that they get too much attention and money for just playing a game.
However, how one chooses to make a patriotic gesture, including any form of peaceful protest, should be individual not compulsory.
That Kaepernick is provoking a shift right is not supported by any evidence that really is substantive. RBG herself, a great liberal icon initially criticized him, although she later apologized for being too harsh.
I’d rather see more people who actually know something about our national anthem, as a context to our modern history. There’s far too much revisionist crap circulating about it that is really fake patriotism, the myth of an exceptionalism that relies on deviating from facts.
Very few people know that the anthem refers to a battle during the war of 1812, not the earlier American Revolution, and even fewer still know that part of why WE declared war on the UK, (not the other way round) in that war was that we had decided to annex Canada — something we had also tried during the Revolution.
We had some legit grievances over impressment and some trade hassles relating to the Napoleonic wars with France, but those really never rose to the level of declaring war. Our interest in grabbing territory was the greater driving force, it was in a sense ‘our Crimea’. The bombardment of Fort McHenry was retaliation for some of our actions in that invasion of Canada, as was the burning of Washington DC – and it was substantially justified on the part of the Brits.
And all that excitement expressed in that song about ‘our flag was still there’? Yeah, they had TWO FLAGS, one they customarily flew during the daytime was the one Francis Scott Key saw in the morning. From an historically accurate point of view, our national anthem has not been our best choice for a patriotic symbol. In some respects it is also reminiscent of Dubya’s war in Iraq being about grabbing someone else’s country, or at least the oil in it.
And yeah, I know – that’s NOT what Kaepernick is protesting. I just hate some of the ignorant right wing crap that is circulating on social media making false claims about the origins of the national anthem.
I don’t expect any of you lot to take my word for this, so here’s a link to history.com:
http://www.history.com/news/how-u-s-forces-failed-to-conquer-canada-200-years-ago
The United States’ first foray into Canada occurred at the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, when colonial troops marched all the way to Quebec City before being repelled. By the time the War of 1812 rolled around almost four decades later, the so-called “war hawk” members of Congress were clamoring for a second go-around. There were even a few calls for part or all of Canada, then a British colony, to be annexed. At that time, around 7.5 million people lived in the United States, compared to only about 500,000 in Canada, many of whom were of French or American descent rather than British. …Almost immediately thereafter [declaring war], U.S. President James Madison approved a three-pronged assault against Canada. Many Americans believed the invasion would be a cakewalk, particularly since Britain was so distracted by the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. Former President Thomas Jefferson called the acquisition of Quebec a “mere matter of marching,” while Speaker of the House Henry Clay, a prominent war hawk, declared that the militiamen of Kentucky were capable of capturing Upper Canada (essentially modern Ontario) and Montreal without any assistance. “There was a lot of saber rattling going on,” said John R. Grodzinski, a history professor at the Royal Military College of Canada, who specializes in the War of 1812.”
The only problem I see with Kaepernick’s protest is too few people really give a damn about why he is doing it, and those who do are too often misrepresenting our history. Such sanitized patriotism is worthless.
Very few people know that the anthem refers to a battle during the war of 1812,
Pretty much everyone I know knows it.
But that speaks to a failure in our democrat-controlled school system.
The rest of your comment is a tangent bordering on a thread-jack. I’m tempted to delete it (as I’m going to be doing from here on with threadjacks), but in such a long post, there is bound to be historical errors to laugh at.
Tl; DG