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NASCAR turned off some fans on Wednesday by announcing it was banning Confederate flags from all of its events. It also lost a driver.
In a Facebook post, Ray Ciccarelli wrote he was ending his NASCAR Truck Series career after this season because of the decision.
“Well its been a fun ride and dream come true but if this is the direction Nascar is headed we will not participate after the 2020 season is over,” Ciccarelli announced. “I don’t believe in kneeling during Anthem nor taken ppl right to fly whatever flag they love.
“I could care less about the Confederate Flag but there are ppl that do and it doesn’t make them a racist all you are doing is f–king one group to cater to another.”
Well, the national anthem wars are not over at the National Football League, but they don’t want people talking about it, or at least—they don’t want the Dallas Cowboys talking about it. The NFC East team has reportedly been told by the NFL’s front office to more or less shut the hell up about the anthem. Dallas quarterback Dak Prescottsaid over the weekend that the anthem protests took away from the game. This came after Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said his team would have a mandatory stand policy for The Star-Spangled Banner last week (via The Hill):
The quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys said Friday that team owner Jerry Jones's policy on standing during performances of the national anthem would not affect him because he would "never" protest during the anthem's performance.
Dak Prescott told reporters that the performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" before games was not the "time or venue" for player-led protests against police brutality and racism.
“It has no affect to me because I do exactly what I’m doing and what I’ve said and what I stand by,” Prescott said of the policy. “Whether I was wearing the star or not, whether I was playing for Jerry Jones, Stephen Jones or any other owner. I believe in what I believe in, and that’s that."
“I’d never protest during the anthem, and I don’t think that’s the time or the venue to do so," he added. “The game of football has always brought me such peace, and I think it does the same for a lot of people."
[…]
"[W]hen you bring such a controversy to the stadium, to the field, to the game, it takes away ... from that," he said. "It takes away from the joy and the love that football brings a lot of people."
Yes, Prescott caught some heatfor these remarks. The NFL knows this is a bad issue for them. NFL ticket sales plummeted, as did network ratingslast season with this nonsense. Of course, no one should be fired or suspended for taking a knee, despite what President Trump called for last year, but with regards to being pilloried on social media and elsewhere—this is what you get. No one is saying they should be thrown into the gulag, but if you’re going to do this be prepared to be torched—big league. Even in deep blue New England, Patriots fans thought it was a sign of disrespect. When people view it as a desecration of those who have served, and especially those who have died defending our country—there is not winning this issue. The pervasive explaining for these protests was the big sign that the pro-taking a knee side had lost. Trump had won. And he will continue to win as long as he keeps forcing the Left into defending the indefensible with these culture battles. In October, The New York Timesreported on the Trump effect over the NFL. The owners knew the stakes in this fight…and they knew they were not on the winning side:
N.F.L. owners, players and league executives, about 30 in all, convened urgently at the league’s headquarters on Park Avenue in October, nearly a month after President Trump began deriding the league and its players over protests during the national anthem.
It was an extraordinary summit; rarely do owners and players meet in this manner. But the president’s remarks about players who were kneeling during the anthem had catalyzed a level of public hostility that the N.F.L. had never experienced. In the spirit of partnership at the meeting, the owners decided that they and the players should sit in alternating seats around the large table, which featured an N.F.L. logo in the middle.
“Let’s make sure that we keep this confidential,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said to begin the session.
The New York Times has obtained an audio recording of the roughly three-hour meeting, and several people in the room corroborated details of the gathering.
[…]
The New England Patriots owner Robert K. Kraft pointed to another “elephant in the room.”
“This kneeling,” he said.
“The problem we have is, we have a president who will use that as fodder to do his mission that I don’t feel is in the best interests of America,” said Kraft, who is a longtime supporter of Mr. Trump’s. “It’s divisive and it’s horrible.”
The owners were intent on finding a way to avoid Trump’s continued criticism. The president’s persistent jabs on Twitter had turned many fans against the league. Lurie, who called Trump’s presidency “disastrous,” cautioned against players getting drawn into the president’s tactics.
“We’ve got to be careful not to be baited by Trump or whomever else,” Lurie said. “We have to find a way to not be divided and not get baited.”
The Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula sounded anguished over the uncertainty of when Trump would take another shot at the league. “All Donald needs to do is to start to do this again,” Pegula said. “We need some kind of immediate plan because of what’s going on in society. All of us now, we need to put a Band-Aid on what’s going on in the country.”
Well, the league then had a stand policy for the anthem prior to the 2018 season, which was then suspended because players didn’t like it. Overall, the NFL has tried to have it both ways in this debate, twisting into a pretzel, and leaving themselves bloodied and beaten in the process.
Apparently, when you’re not an entitled millionaire athlete who has the power of the media behind you, kneeling for the national anthem actually doesn’t go so swimmingly. A group of cheerleaders from Kennesaw State University in Georgia learned this lesson the hard way.
According to WXIA-TV, several of the cheerleaders from the metro Atlanta school decided to assume the now-too-familiar kneeling position out on the field while Francis Scott Key’s greatest hit was played during a Sept. 30 game against North Greenville University.
When the Kennesaw State Owls next took to the gridiron on Oct. 7 to play Texas Southern, the cheerleaders were nowhere to be seen during “The Star-Spangled Banner.” That’s because the administration decided they’d be kept off the field to prevent further anthem-related posturing.
A statement on the decision from the university’s athletics department was a master class in downplaying the controversy, failing to even mention it once.
“The decision…. is part of a number of changes that have been made by a new Athletics administration each game as we continue to refine and enhance the gameday atmosphere for our fans,” the statement read.
“Some of those other changes have included painting the KS logo at midfield for the first time, the addition of metal detectors at gates to expedite fan entry, and music/PA system changes to have more loud speakers by the student section.”
Yeah, because I’m sure the media was breathlessly awaiting the latest music/PA system data. Clear the wire, fellas — I’ve got to send out a flash about the expedited fan entry at future Owls games!
However, the brother of one of the kneeling cheerleaders was willing to speak to WXIA about the situation. He used the paradoxical excuse we’ve heard so much these past few weeks: She was only disrespecting our country’s national anthem because she really loves the country!
“Her and another group of the girls really felt moved to join the movement of talking about racial inequality and criminal justice reform,” Davante Lewis said, “and decided that they wanted to take a knee.”
Lewis says that keeping the cheerleaders off of the field “represents a type of government coercion and a violation, I think, of government interacting against people’s free speech.”
“We really want Kennesaw to reaffirm its higher education institution as a place of free expression and free beliefs.”
This argument actually holds slightly more water here than when it’s used by NFL anthem protesters. Kennesaw State is a public school, which means that the First Amendment right of free expression is extended to those on campus (a fact that must certainly come as a surprise to the suzerains of Berkeley).
That said, it still doesn’t hold a whole lot of dihydrogen monoxide; there is no guaranteed constitutional right to be on a football field — or in any other campus facility, for that matter — at a specific point in time.
If you’re an Ohio State student, for instance, you have every right to hold up a sign that says “Jill Stein 4 Prez!” on campus. You do not, however, have the right to climb over the stadium railing and run onto the football field with said sign during the fourth quarter of the Michigan game. When the campus police invariably chase you down and get you in a headlock, the Constitution ain’t going to help you out.
Unless favor is being shown to one political group at the expense of another — for instance, allowing a liberal speaker while cancelling a conservative one over “security reasons” — a public college or university has every right to restrict access to certain places to certain people. The cheer squad isn’t a political group. In fact, judging by the video, the majority of the cheerleaders chose to remain standing, so it’s not as if their opinions were somehow monolithic. Nice try, though.
What we ended up with, instead, is an object lesson in how people are a lot less tolerant of disrespecting the anthem, the flag, and those who have served it when the people who are doing it aren’t famous or rich.
