Three Dolphins kneel and Saints link arms as a new day of NFL anthem protests begin (London game)

Against the backdrop of President Trump’s latest tweet urging NFL players to stand for the national anthem, three members of the Miami Dolphins took a knee during the national anthem and the New Orleans Saints knelt, then rose to their feet before Sunday morning’s game in London’s Wembley Stadium.

The Saints, as quarterback Drew Brees had promised in a tweet, emulated the Dallas Cowboys, who last week took a knee with owner Jerry Jones, then stood for the anthem. “As a way to show respect to all, our #Saints team will kneel in solidarity prior to the national anthem & stand together during the anthem.”

The Saints linked arms, with Adrian Peterson holding his hands in prayer. On the other sideline Julius Thomas, Michael Thomas and Kenny Stills chose to kneel. Dolphins players did not link arms as so many others teams have done. Many players on both sides placed their hands over their hearts.

A little over 24 hours earlier, President Trump had tweeted at NFL players over the anthem, writing: “Very important that NFL players STAND tomorrow, and always, for the playing of our National Anthem. Respect our Flag and our Country!”

Fox Sports showed the anthem, sung by Darius Rucker, although it was unclear whether the network would do the same for its 1 p.m. EDT kickoffs. Last week, Sports President Eric Shanks had indicated the network would revert to the usual practice of selling that time to advertisers. The anthem is typically only shown on telecasts on the Thursday night kickoff game and before the Super Bowl.

If only the USFL were out there, it would take over and the NFL would be toast. I am rooting for a professional lacrosse league to expand and grow. All the decent kids in America who used to play football are now growing up with lacrosse. It is a better sport long term for this country with respect to head injuries and other football issues. It combines the speed of football and has some hitting with the stick and throwing skills of baseball and basketball. Offense movement is like basketball, and there are a lot of soccer elements, too. Great sport. It now has a once a century chance to supplant football.

Athletes gain celebrity “status” for making big bucks in big leagues when playing with their small balls. They are then courted by smug, opinionated celebrity hucksters from pop culture, Hollywood and social media. With that backdrop, athletes become more ego-centric. They then instruct us in the error of our ways because we do not accept their political or societal opinions. Listening to them we hear that we mere taxpayers, and one time fan base, are not relevant. Why? Because our opinions may differ from theirs.

The athlete’s vast political partisanship is on abject display when they turn stadiums into theaters of the absurd by “taking a knee” in tax payer funded stadiums. Colin Kapernick deserves note for writing the ultimate self-serving script for disrespect. Celebrities see we taxpayers, we members of their once thriving fan base, we members of American society in the lowest of low terms. Athletes see us as ill-informed, misogynistic, spouse beating, child abusing, drug abusing, animal mistreating, burglarizing, murdering, social misfits; oh wait that’s the NFL players rap sheets. In Hollywood, those items are considered resume builders.

These athletes and celebrities are people who screech they want “equality.” They want to end “oppression.” They want to end “mistreatment.” Yet their behavior reveals what they really think of us: we are not “equal” to them in their rarified existence. They oppress and mistreat we everyday Americans by attempting to force their negative, often vile, hate filled, celebrity view of us in whatever venue they have: sports, film, television, newcasting, print and social media.

If the inhabitants of celebrity world, sports and Hollywood truly believed the equality rhetoric they espouse from their security gated, wall surrounding compounds they would look no further than their own industries. For true equality, sports teams should either be comprised of an equal number of players from all races or as representative percentages of races in the United States of America. Where’s the equality of representation in major league sports, social media, the social media moguls, Hollywood and the gated communities in which they live?

In the end, let us say athletes went from jocks to jerks and Hollywood is still on the casting couch.

He did stand during the actual playing of the national anthem, and I recognize that he is trying to thread a needle of showing ‘unity’ with his teammates, while not formally protesting during the song itself.

But there’s no needle to thread here. Either you honor the anthem and keep it free from politics, or you don’t. By taking part in a protest seconds before the anthem, he is disrespects the flag and the anthem. The fact that he did it on foreign soil makes his actions all the more despicable.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.