On Thursday night, at the first preseason NFL games, players continued to protest racial inequity and police violence by kneeling or raising a fist during the National Anthem. After two years of the players’ patiently explaining that these are not “protests against the anthem,” or “protests against the troops,” or protests against apple pie, many in the mainstream media are being willfully obtuse in their headlines and reporting—surely to the delight of people who want the players to “shut up and play.” This isn’t just happening in the confines of Fox News. Even NPR sent a tweet with the headline, “The national anthem protests live on in the NFL.”
The greatest cheerleader of this willful ignorance is, of course, Donald Trump who railed against the players Monday morning in yet another effort to distract, demonize, and deflect from the numerous scandals engulfing his administration. People can find the tweets for themselves. It’s his usual shtick, although with the new addition that the players don’t even know what they are protesting against. He hates these players not only because it’s red meat for his base. He hates them because they are using their platform to force a dialogue about racism, criminal justice, and police violence.
READ MORE: The Nation
August 13, 2018 at 4:31 pm
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore/
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,/
A home and a country should leave us no more!/
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution./
No refuge could save the hireling and slave/
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:/
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave/
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!