Incensed that Black Lives Matter-pushing, former San Francisco 49ers second string quarterback Colin Kaepernick has yet to find a new team after a season of constant anti-American protests, a columnist appearing in the Chicago Tribune has now proclaimed the NFL, and the nation, racists who display false patriotism.
She also added that the national anthem is nothing but a “pompous battle number” and not worth the veneration.
In a July 13 column, sports writer Diana Goetsch slammed the country because the anti-American quarterback was passed over for the 2017 season.
Goetsch began her piece by criticizing the National Football League for its habit of keeping players accused of domestic violence employed but refusing to hire Kaepernick. After raising the issue, Goetsch pointedly asked, “What’s worse in the eyes of the NFL—players beating women or kneeling for the national anthem? Answer: kneeling, and it’s not even close.”
Perhaps sensing how obscene her point was, Goetsch went on to say that she wasn’t accusing the NFL of placing patriotism above the safety of women, but she still went on to ridicule patriotism and the NFL’s indulgence in it, calling the practice “deceiving.”
Goetsch also went after the fans, dismissing their patriotism as merely “habit or peer pressure” instead of true sentiment, characterizing the fans’ love of the red, white, and blue as rote and unthinking as “walking the dog.”
Then she insisted that patriotic fervor in sports is nothing but “marketing” because “the NFL sells its huge audience to TV networks, but also to the U.S. Department of Defense.”
Next, Goetsch tried to dismiss the “Star Spangled Banner” as something of a Johnny-come-lately by noting that it didn’t become the official national anthem until an act of Congress made it so in 1931, and wasn’t played to kick off sports events until 1942.
Goetsch also dismissed the song as but a “pompous battle number” compared to the “magisterial ‘America the Beautiful.'”
As if it truly mattered, the teacher at the New York School also noted that players in the NFL didn’t even take to the sidelines on the field for the anthem until 2009. “That’s when the Pentagon started paying the NFL,” she wrote.
The practice of honoring the troops clearly galls her, as Goetsch then revealed her dislike of our troops by slamming the sentiment, saying, “Few would think to ask why military personnel are any more entitled to a halftime tribute than schoolteachers, or bricklayers or the custodians who clean the stadium.”
Despite his obvious hatred for the USA, Goetsch then jumped to give Kaepernick cover for his extremism:
I take Kaepernick at his word when he says he has nothing against the military because it is the paramilitary face of our government—an untreated epidemic of police brutality—that is at issue. His silent protest is in line with a tradition of nonviolent resistance in America, from Thoreau to Rosa Parks to Muhammad Ali, challenging us to form a more perfect union. But for years the NFL has marketed itself by steeping 180 million fans in a narrow and authoritarian version of patriotism: Support the troops, salute the flag, shut up and play football.
Goetsch went on to insist that her hero, Kaepernick, was also dissing capitalism by “sitting out the marketing” with his anti-American protests.
But finally, as she wrapped up, she did say something true about Kaepernick’s self-indulgent protests.
“From the standpoint of NFL owners, this offends too many fans, and scares its sponsors, thereby jeopardizing revenue,” she wrote.
This has a ring of truth to it. After all, why should the NFL bend over backward for Kaepernick’s temper tantrums if it turns off even more fans than they are already losing?
But here Goetsch doesn’t quite seem to grasp where her “logic” fails her. After all, if patriotism is nothing but a robotic reaction to the playing of the anthem, if it is just unconscious training, then why would the fans be so disgusted with Kaepernick’s hatred for the country, for our first responders, and why would they despise his lack of respect for the fans? If their patriotism was just a sort of meaningless muscle memory, why would they be so upset at Kaepernick for his constant stream of hate for the country?
They wouldn’t, of course. The fans would just shrug their shoulders and move on. They wouldn’t have spent a moment’s pause considering Kaepernick’s protests and their resulting pique wouldn’t have let the owners and administrators of the NFL know that any team that took the anti-American protester on would lose support.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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