I suppose if a dictator was threatening to blow up the West Coast, Congress was about to humiliate your plans to stomp on the legacy of your hated predecessor once again, three hurricanes in a row had devastated whole cities and wiped out the infrastructure and crops of a territory, and a special counsel was about to issue indictments for a former White House official, you’d be desperately looking for something to distract the attention of the media and start a Twitter storm.
So that’s what this is all about.
On three teams, nearly all the football players skipped the national anthem altogether. Dozens of others, from London to Los Angeles, knelt or locked arms on the sidelines, joined by several team owners in a league normally friendly to President Trump. Some of the sport’s biggest stars joined the kind of demonstration they have steadfastly avoided.
It was an unusual, sweeping wave of protest and defiance on the sidelines of the country’s most popular game, generated by Mr. Trump’s stream of calls to fire players who have declined to stand for the national anthem in order to raise awareness of police brutality and racial injustice.
What had been a modest round of anthem demonstrations this season led by a handful of African-American players mushroomed and morphed into a nationwide, diverse rebuke to Mr. Trump, with even some of his staunchest supporters in the N.F.L., including several owners, joining in or condemning Mr. Trump for divisiveness.
So, yeah, dividing the country over how to listen to a song would the be way to go.
I learned for the first time that the author of that song was a confirmed racist who believed in shipping all free blacks “back” to Africa. Francis Scott Key wrote the poem that, in the third verse, make clear what his own biography showed. He despised black people, hated the idea of emancipation since he felt they only deserved to be servants of the superior race, the master class. I think I’ll refrain from standing, too. Anyone want to link arms with me?
I go back to the majority court opinion of Barnett v. West Virg)inia “No official, high or petty shall prescribe that which is orthodox in matters of religion, politics or other forms of expression, nor shall they require citizens to perform by oath or act their faith therein.” I had that posted on the refrigerator for years back in Ohio and told my girls to memorize it(that didn’t work, it was like taking the dog to obedience school). Hope that my memory is right on the quote.