The NFL Panders to Trump
Colin Kaepernick is suing the National Football League for colluding against him, and his case keeps improving. One day before the league announced its stupefying plan to suppress the protests against racial injustice, documents and testimony uncovered by Kaepernick's lawsuit revealed that teams consider him talented enough to be a starting quarterback in the league. The argument that Kaepernick, now 30, isn't fit to play in the NFL was already bunk. Now we see that teams were willing to make themselves worse, in some cases, all to ensure that he didn't have a job.
This is how far the NFL has gone to make sure that fans don't receive overt reminders of white supremacy as they try to enjoy the game. Kaepernick, and those players who have followed his lead, have always been clear that they sought to bring attention to the disproportionate police brutality that African Americans suffer, along with other varied symptoms of this nation's original sickness. To dispel a Trumpian myth: This has never been a protest of the American flag. This truth has been conveyed ad infinitum to Commissioner Roger Goodell and the owners of the 32 teams, including in private meetings last fall with a few top NFL athletes. Yet almost immediately after finalizing a $90 million partnership with players to aid social justice efforts, the league has again presented a willful misinterpretation of the protests – and in its official rules, no less.
In league meetings on Wednesday, the owners decreed that players could no longer kneel or exhibit any other gesture during the national anthem that, for whatever reason, precedes each game. According to the new rules, athletes may either remain in the locker room or stand on the field at attention, but teams and league personnel will face fines should any player demonstrate during the anthem. While a 15-yard penalty for violations had been proposed this week, the final rule assesses fines to the offending team.
The rules were met with considerable resistance. New York Jets owner Christopher Johnson – brother of Woody, President Trump's ambassador to the United Kingdom – quickly declared that he would pay the fines any Jets player was assessed for protesting, offering a roadmap to any team seeking to kneecap the new regulations. The NFL Players Association's statement ripped Goodell and New York Giants owner John Mara by name. "What NFL owners did today was thwart the players' constitutional rights to express themselves and use our platform to draw attention to social injustices like racial inequality in our country," wrote Malcolm Jenkins, the free safety for the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles, in a statement. "Everyone loses when voices get stifled." His teammate, Chris Long, who had demonstrated support for Jenkins during his prior sideline protests, wrote on Twitter that the new rules represented "a fear of a diminished bottom line" and "also fear of a president turning his base against a corporation."
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/nfl-protest-rules-w520646?utm_source=rsnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=052418_12
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