It required a high level of self-absorption and a correspondingly low grasp of irony for bench-warming quarterback Colin Kaepernick to begin protesting “racial injustice” during the Obama administration.
In all of recorded history there have been exactly two Western nations that have elected black presidents, and in Haiti’s case I’m using the term ‘nation’ loosely. Also, ‘elected.’
The protest didn’t offend Obama, who lacks an emotional investment in football. I imagine he’s more of an Ultimate Frisbee kinda guy. The interesting speculation is wondering what George Bush would have said if Kaepernick had begun taking a knee during his administration.
I’m thinking Bush would have deployed his standard response: Hunker down and hope it goes away. At best we would have received a statement much like Obama’s on-one-hand-and-on-the-other deflection that equated the loss of a United States soldier or Marine as the moral equivalent of the shooting of strong-arm robber Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.
Bush was one of those caretaker conservatives who knew better than to rock the Cultural Marxist’s boat. He certainly wouldn’t get into some unseemly social dispute that might matter to conservatives, particularly when the disagreement involved a minority.
That’s why Trump in the White House is such a danger to the leftist elite that currently rules our culture. He will get into those fights. Trump relishes those fights. And the leftist bullies running roughshod over the culture hate it when the victim finally fights back.
They like it even less when the victim wins.
Only in America could a black quarterback who was raised by white parents, attended a prestige university and earned millions as a professional football player think it made sense for him to insult the flag and the patriotic Americans who love it. Not only that, this emotionally immature narcissist thinks he should be praised for his ‘brave’ stand and embraced by the league.
That’s why Kaepernick is currently suing the NFL and alleging he was ‘blacklisted’ and denied the job that’s rightfully his.
This is like a waiter, who moonlights as a member of PETA, demanding he be hired by Outback Steakhouse so he can tell customers: “Meat is Murder.” Or a car salesman demanding he be hired by GMC trucks so he can tell potential buyers that not driving an electric car makes them climate criminals.
Using someone else’s business to deliver a message that insults the customer is economic appropriation. NFL owners decided indulging a leftist-approved protest was one thing and watching TV ratings plunge after the protests began was quite another. That’s why owners, after a boot in the behind from the unhousebroken Trump, have decided to confine all demonstrations to the end zone, while banning them from the sideline.
If the under-the-man’s-boot millionaires of the NFL want to work in a quick protest during the end zone touchdown celebration they can pantomime away, but there won’t be any protest during The Star-Spangled Banner.
Naturally, much of the Opposition Media considers changing employee conduct rules to prevent insulting the customer a racist act.
Kevin B. Blackistone, an oppressed black man who is a Washington Post columnist and university professor, believes Making America Great Again involves putting blacks back on the plantation. His column blasting the new anthem policy begins with the harrowing tale of NBA player Sterling Brown’s encounter with Milwaukee PD.
It’s proof of how debased America’s political culture is when the hero of Blackistone’s tale of oppression crying out for justice is a jerk who takes up TWO handicapped parking spaces and refuses to follow lawful police orders. Brown is perfectly healthy professional athlete who doesn’t believe the rules the rest of us follow apply to him. And besides, didn’t those cops in their ratty polyester pants KNOW WHO HE IS?
That’s the type of injustice Kaepernick and the rest of his hey-look-at-me followers are protesting. Somehow it escapes their notice that the athletic merit that allows blacks to dominate the rosters of NFL teams all out of proportion to their percentage of the population has a flip side. The lack of behavioral merit exhibited by some members of the same racial category results in their being over represented on the arrests and incarceration side of the ledger.
Unfortunately, being a ‘social justice’ advocate means never having to acknowledge the law of cause and effect.
None of these fanboy reporters ever asks the question that any movement should be able to answer, which is: How will you know when you’ve won?
Is it when blacks are allowed to vote? When a black woman has the top rated national talk show? When the US elects a black president?
The fact they can’t answer the question shows how empty their movement really is.
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Copyright 2018 Michael Shannon, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
Michael Shannon is a commentator and public relations consultant, and is the author of “A Conservative Christian’s Guidebook for Living in Secular Times.” He can be reached at [email protected].
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