{"id":1790,"date":"2016-11-07T11:11:14","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T15:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=1790"},"modified":"2016-11-07T11:11:14","modified_gmt":"2016-11-07T15:11:14","slug":"the-national-anthem-protest-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=1790","title":{"rendered":"The National Anthem Protest Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

This essay originally appeared in the Durham Herald-Sun<\/em> on Sunday, November 6, 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"football-anthem-protest\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I listen to sports radio while running errands. This helps me follow what fans are being told to care about and what they are inculcated to talk about with one another.\u00a0 This is how I recently came across Colin Cowherd.\u00a0 Cowherd, the host of a Fox Radio show, was explaining Monday Night Football\u2019s apparently suboptimal ratings.\u00a0 By Cowherd\u2019s reckoning, the NFL is punishing ESPN for periodically featuring journalism.\u00a0 The NFL is delivering bad match-ups on Monday nights to try to bring ESPN to heel, Cowherd explained.\u00a0 Cowherd was clear ESPN should know their place, and keep \u201cpromoting the brand\u201d of the National Football League. \u00a0ESPN, by Cowherd\u2019s analysis, had made a reckless decision by covering stories critical of the NFL.\u00a0 Just before this analysis, Cowherd had told listeners that most people in the U.S. dislike an athlete named Colin Kaepernick.<\/p>\n

Here is one story that ESPN risked to cover journalistically. On May 24, 2016, ESPN reported: \u201cAt least a half-dozen top NFL health officials waged an improper, behind-the-scenes campaign last year to influence a major U.S. government research study on football and brain disease, congressional investigators have concluded in a new report . . . the NFL pressured the National Institutes of Health\u201d to defund a $16 million study, because the study \u201cwould be detrimental to the league\u2019s image.\u201d \u00a0ESPN concluded: \u201cTaxpayers ended up bearing the cost instead.\u201d\u00a0 How dare ESPN cover a Congressional Report on the NFL, especially when Congress is supposed to be in gridlock?\u00a0 (That was irony and a bad pun.) \u00a0Two Republican U.S. Senators from Arizona collaborated on another report, in 2015, on the NFL and the Department of Defense.\u00a0 As ESPN reported: \u201cthe NFL received $7 million over three years from contracts.\u201d Senator McCain \u201csaid he was \u2018shocked and disappointed to learn that several NFL teams weren\u2019t sponsoring these activities out of the goodness of their own hearts but were doing so to make an extra buck.\u2019\u201d Senator McCain noted that \u201cthe military faces cuts in spending\u201d and that there is no reason to think (or studies to show) that displays of patriotism on the field will help recruiting.<\/p>\n

\"football-anthem-highschool-protest\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A friend told me I will \u201cneed a bigger paddle to stir this pot.\u201d I do not have a big paddle, so I will now come at the National Anthem controversy by way of a Southern classic from 1974.\u00a0 The first time I heard Kid Rock\u2019s execrable cover of \u201cSweet Home Alabama\u201d I threw up my hands, asking what this world is coming to. It seemed to me that Mr. Rock had trashed a good ballad.\u00a0 Then I saw a documentary that interviews and features African-American women who served as back-up singers coterminous with the Southern Rock Era \u2013 women like Merry Clayton.\u00a0 The film is called \u201c20 Feet from Stardom.\u201d \u00a0Merry Clayton there explains how she and Clydie King came to sing back-up on \u201cSweet Home Alabama.\u201d \u00a0Clayton told Dorian Lynskey in a 2014 Guardian<\/em> article:\u00a0 \u201cI said we\u2019re going to sing the crap out of this song. They have the nerve to sing Sweet Home Alabama! That\u2019s the white interpretation of Alabama. It\u2019s not sweet home to black people! It’s not sweet home at all<\/em>. We\u2019re going to sing it like a protest song.\u201d Clayton explained in 2013 to journalist Sam Adams for \u201cA.V. Club\u201d that hearing Neil Young\u2019s 1970 song had hit a nerve with her, \u201cI read the lyrics and it was during those terrible racial times . . . Dr. King had just been killed . . . it was a highly racial time, not just for black people, but for everybody in the world. We had the Vietnam War going on at the time; our boys were going to war and being killed.\u201d\u00a0 Clayton\u2019s words helped me truly to hear lyrics I had allowed to wash over me.<\/p>\n

\"darlene-love-lisa-fisher-merry-clayton-judith-hill-music-cares-grammy-parties-2014-650-430\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There is a reason why NFL players across the league are not standing up during the National Anthem. The rule stating that players will be on the field during the Anthem is new.\u00a0 As Tom E. Curran of Comcast Sportsnet New England explained on ESPN, this requirement was started in 2009.\u00a0 It is part of the very same military recruitment scheme that Senator McCain rebuked.\u00a0 Men standing 2000 feet from stardom are being asked to stand and pretend like their friends are not concussive and their fathers and cousins have not been killed and traumatized over a lie about weapons of mass destruction.\u00a0 Some people are so devoted to the idea that this country has lived only in valour and equality that we cannot move forward in truth.\u00a0 I love football, and I love democracy.\u00a0 Real journalism matters for both.\u00a0 If you have been fuming over one young man\u2019s courage to name that this country we love has problems, please ask more complicated questions about our history and about our present.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This essay originally appeared in the Durham Herald-Sun on Sunday, November 6, 2016 I listen to sports radio while running errands. This helps me follow what fans are being told to care about and what they are inculcated to talk about with one another.\u00a0 This is how I recently came across Colin Cowherd.\u00a0 Cowherd, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,221,210,207,8,204,202],"tags":[222],"class_list":["post-1790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-football","category-journalism","category-love","category-organizing","category-television","category-war","tag-nationalanthem"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7EotM-sS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1790"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1795,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790\/revisions\/1795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}