People are destroying their Nike gear to protest Colin Kaepernick’s ‘Just Do It’ campaign

09/04/2018

The Confirmation Files Blacks, Sports , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Nike revealed on Monday that Colin Kaepernick — the out-of-work NFL quarterback who generated controversy for kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice and police brutality — would be one of the faces of its 30th anniversary “Just Do It” campaign.

“Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything,” read a teaser for an ad Kaepernick tweeted.

Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything. #JustDoItpic.twitter.com/SRWkMIDdaO

— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) September 3, 2018

Some Kaepernick critics took that to mean sacrificing their Nike products.

Immediately, some people began posting pictures of socks and shoes being defaced or destroyed, or declaring they would be soon switching allegiances to Adidas, Brooks or Converse. (Nevermind that Nike owns Converse.)

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Here’s How Professional Sports Have Come to Sell a Militarized form of Patriotism The melding of sports and the military should be seen as inappropriate, if not insidious.

08/20/2018

The Confirmation Files Blacks, Business, Politics, Race, Sports , , Leave a comment

I can remember lying on my bed with a crumpled up piece of paper in my hand and throwing it at the wall while, in my mind, the announcer’s voice carried on: “It’s a long drive to right field… Furillo is going back, back, back… He leaps! He’s got it!” And I would, of course, catch the paper as it bounced off that wall. It was perhaps the World Series year of 1955. The outfielder was Carl “the Reading Rifle” Furillo. His team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, was also my team until, in one of the tragedies of my young life, they absconded for Los Angeles. In those years, I dreamed endlessly about scooping up balls at second base with the dexterity of Jackie Robinson or at shortstop with the speed of Pee Wee Reese, even as, on any actual ball field, I didn’t dare bend down far enough lest the ball bounce up and hit my chin, and so regularly watched it roll past me into the outfield. Furillo’s camping grounds, right field, was where I so often ended up, even though I could never judge whether a fly ball was short or long and reflexively broke toward the infield as it came off the bat, often with sad consequences.

What kid of that era and those that followed, like TomDispatch regular William Astore, can’t tell such tales of imagined prowess in the world of fandom versus real life on the field. But as Astore points out today, the very nature of the sports experience is now changing. Though professional sports in my childhood (the Korean War years) and my youth (the Vietnam War years) had next to nothing to do with the U.S. military, today, in a country that I’ve regularly described as being “unmade by war,” the worlds of professional sports and youthful dreams about it are both being eerily militarized. Stranger yet, as with our forever (yet curiously forgotten) wars of this century, that process of militarization is getting next to no attention here, even as sports hits the political headlines almost daily and is a constant focus of attention from the White House on down. Football, in particular, is regularly in those headlines as (mostly black) players are endlessly accused of taking a knee to diss the flag, the National Anthem, and the troops (none of which is actually true), while that flag, that anthem, and those troops are, in fact, being grotesquely misused to create a miasma of kneejerk patriotism. But let Astore tell you more. Tom

These days, you can hardly miss moments when, for instance, playing fields are covered with gigantic American flags, often unfurled and held either by scores of military personnel or civilian defense contractors. Such ceremonies are invariably touted as natural expressions of patriotism, part of a continual public expression of gratitude for America’s “warfighters” and “heroes.” These are, in other words, uncontroversial displays of pride, even though a study ordered by Republican Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake revealed that the U.S. taxpayer, via the Pentagon, has regularly forked over tens of millions of dollars ($53 million between 2012 and 2015 alone) to corporate-owned teams to put on just such displays.

Full story By William Astore / Tom Dispatch/AlterNet

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An open letter to the NFL’s owners from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

08/09/2018

The Confirmation Files Politics, Sports Leave a comment

To deny professional athletes the right to express dissent in a peaceful manner is a disgrace to the Constitution, the opposite of patriotism and shameful moral weakness.

Dear NFL owners:

Whew! What a tumultuous year for your league. Slipping attendance and ratings. Continuing concussion controversy. Lawsuits from cheerleaders who refuse to shut up and smile. Domestic violence accusations against players. The Papa John’s founder mouthing off about something or other. Players taking a national anthem knee (NAK, for short). President Trump’s “problematic” rambling.

— Read on www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/jul/31/kareem-open-letter-nfl-owners

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NFL’s National Anthem Policy Exposes Free Speech Hypocrisy of Right, Left, and Trump “You have to stand proudly for the national anthem,” Trump says, “or you shouldn’t be playing.”

05/25/2018

The Confirmation Files Business, Education, government, Legal, Politics, Racism, Sports , , , , Leave a comment

Donald Trump, who won the presidency in part by promising voters he would stand against the oppression of political correctness, is now taking a victory lap after successfully pressuring the National Football League to protect the delicate feelings of its snowflake audience.

The NFL announced yesterday that all players on the field during the singing of the national anthem would be forbidden to kneel, sit, or show any disrespect whatsoever. Teams that allow players to publicly protest racism and police brutality will be subject to fines. Players will be expected to confine their dissent to the locker room, concealing it from easily offended consumers of sports entertainment. GOP spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany summarized the new policy thusly during an appearance on Kennedy last night:

Players will respect our military, they will respect what our flag stands for and the unity of what our national anthem stands for, and if they don’t want to respect it, they can take a hike and go to the locker room. Now everyone has to respect our military, including multimillion-dollar football players.

The new policy is undoubtedly crafted to appease not just some viewers but Trump, who has repeatedly attacked the NFL for failing to punish the defiant players. “I don’t think people should be staying in locker rooms, but still, I think it’s good,” Trump said on Fox and Friends this morning. “You have to stand proudly for the national anthem, or you shouldn’t be playing, you shouldn’t be there, maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.” Vice President Mike Pence tweeted the news, adding a single remark: “#WINNING.”

Sadly, the NFL’s bowing to Trump’s whims may indeed be a win of sorts for this administration. It will please the many conservatives who routinely complain that the campus left is hypersensitive but embrace the victim role when the shoe is on the other foot. Just take a look at the Twitter feed of Turning Points USA Director Charlie Kirk, a well-known critic of political correctness on campus.

Kirk’s pinned tweet is video footage of him discussing campus culture with Sean Hannity, Eric Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. “College campuses have become a place where the administrators and the elites want everybody to look different but think the same,” Kirk explains. “And it’s all about conformity. If you have any point of dissension from the status quo of liberal orthodoxy, you will be punished.” Just under the pinned tweet is Kirk’s most recent tweet: “Stand for the national anthem!” Talk about conformity.

The NFL is of course a private entity, and requiring players to stand for the anthem isn’t a First Amendment violation. But as National Review‘s David French points out in a terrific New York Times op-ed piece, Google, Mozilla, and Yale are all private too. Yet conservatives see nothing wrong with bemoaning these entities’ internal crackdowns on speech. Indeed, concern that social media giants like Facebook and Twitter are censoring conservatives is now a major concern for the right. There was even a panel discussion about it at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference.

Middlebury College shouldn’t sit idly by while students literally attack Charles Murray, and Twitter shouldn’t scrub all non-leftist views from its platform. They shouldn’t do those things because they have made commitments to the spirit of the First Amendment. They say free speech matters to them, and it is perfectly fair for conservatives to hold their feet to the fire when they fall short of those commitments.

But conservatives are being brazenly hypocritical when they celebrate the NFL’s decision to muzzle its players. The NFL might not have made any commitment to free expression, but its players were engaged in one of the most civil and least disruptive forms of protest imaginable. Saying that simply kneeling for the national anthem is so offensive that it must be confined to the locker room or banned outright reflects the same hypersensitivity that plagues the social justice left.

Ironically, the best defense of the NFL’s new protest ban is an argument most often put forward by leftists who defend disinvitations and shut-downs of offensive speakers on campus. I have frequently seen the following XKCD cartoon posted in response to such incidents:

PoliMath @politicalmath

Guys. The NFL ban on kneeling is absolutely awful and I hate it. It is anti free speech.
It is also 100% in line with the “showing you the door” attitude on free speech you’ve been pushing the last several years.
Please think hard about that.

The government was partly involved in the NFL case, since Trump’s displeasure was a motivating factor. But there’s little doubt the league was also trying to appease some viewers who were uncomfortable with the players’ protests. This is what comes from defending a safe-space mentality: more safe spaces, and not just on the campus quad but in football stadiums as well.

By Robby Soave/Reason

Posted by The NON-Conformist

Trump pushes for stronger border in wake of Colts’ Edwin Jackson killing

02/06/2018

The Confirmation Files Politics, Sports , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

President Donald Trump urged for tougher border security Tuesday after Indianapolis Colts linebacker Edwin Jackson was reportedly killed by an undocumented immigrant in a vehicle collision.

Image: Darron Cummings/AP Photo

“So disgraceful that a person illegally in our country killed @Colts linebacker Edwin Jackson,” he tweeted. “This is just one of many such preventable tragedies. We must get the Dems to get tough on the Border, and with illegal immigration, FAST!”

Prior to the president’s tweets, however, Chad Bouchez, Jackson’s roommate, said during a CBS interview, that Jackson would not want his death politicized. “He would not want that,” Bouchez said. “I don’t think Edwin would have judged anyone on where they were from or anything else. ”

The man accused of hitting Jackson and his Uber driver with his vehicle in Indianapolis on Sunday had been deported twice, according to Indiana State Police. Manuel Orrego-Savala, 37, might have entered the U.S. on or around July 1, 2004, according to an email Monday from Nicole Alberico, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to CNN, an ICE statement said the accused also has other “misdemeanor criminal convictions and arrests in California and Indiana.

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Bill Would Require NFL Team to Refund Snowflake Fans Offended by National Anthem Protests If fans of the Indianapolis Colts are going to be offended by something, it should be their team’s on-field performance this season.

01/08/2018

The Confirmation Files Blacks, Entertainment, Politics, Sports , , Leave a comment

When Indiana State Rep. Milo Smith left the Indianapolis Colts’ Sept. 24 game, he felt triggered.

Not because his Colts played terribly, although they did a lot of that in a year they won only four games (including the one Rep. Smith attended) and finished dead last in their division. No, it was because Smith had personally witnessed a handful of the Colts’ players take a knee during the national anthem.

Smith (R-Columbus) was so offended he introduced a bill last week that would require the Indianapolis Colts to offer refunds to fans who purchase tickets if those fans are also offended by players kneeling for the national anthem.

“To me when they take a knee during the national anthem, it’s not respecting the national anthem or our country,” Smith told the Indy Star. “I’m pretty patriotic, and it didn’t sit right with me.”

A gross abuse of legislative office? A misguided attempt to impose government force on a private transaction? A potential violation of the U.S. Constitution? Smith’s proposal is all three.

“His proposed law is an absurd assault on the First Amendment because it tackles, if you will, political speech of the players by exerting economic pressure on their employer, the Indianapolis Colts,” says Jane Henegar, executive director of the ACLU of Indiana. “The First Amendment protects each of us from government controlling what we say, and it certainly protects businesses and their employees from government regulation that seeks to discourage speech based on its content.”

Smith is, of course, free to express his disagreement with the players’ decision to kneel for the anthem. He’s completely free to voice those opinions to newspapers like the Indy Star or to post on social media—like President Donald Trump has done, often, throughout the current football season. He’s also free to stop buying tickets to Colts’ games, stop watching National Football League games on TV, and to request a refund from the team for the game he attended in September (good luck with that last one).

Being a member of the state legislature does not give Smith the right to legislate against every little thing that offends him. It’s no better than would-be senator Roy Moore arguing that it’s illegal to kneel during the anthem. It’s no better than the suggestion, made by Trump in September, that NFL teams should fire players who protest the anthem.

Those protests, by the way, started as a way to make a point about police brutality against blacks—something that’s been largely forgotten as the protests and reactions to them were subsumed by political tribalism once Trump got involved.

Conservative snowflakes who turn to government as a means of solving their problems, whether in the Indiana statehouse or the White House, will end up like the Colts did this season—big, big losers.

By Eric Boehm/Reason

Posted by The NON-Conformist

Colin Kaepernick a finalist for ‘TIME’ Person of Year

12/04/2017

The Confirmation Files Politics, Race, Racism, Society, Sports , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

XXX IMG_2017_8_29_KAEPERNICK_1_1_0SJFJKT8.JPG

Image: Kelley L Cox, USA TODAY Sports

Free-agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick was announced Monday as one of 10 candidates for TIME’s Person of the Year for 2017.

Kaepernick, who last played for the San Francisco 49ers in 2016, joins President Donald Trump, special counsel Robert Mueller and the #MeToo movement, among others, on the short list for recognition. Each year, the magazine strives to identify “the person or group of people who most influenced the news during the past year, for better or for worse.”

Trump was recognized by the magazine in 2016, and German chancellor Angela Merkel was its 2015 recipient. TIME will announce its latest “Person of the Year” on Wednesday.

Kaepernick was the first NFL player to take a knee during the national anthem last year, describing it as a means of protesting police brutality and racial inequality in the United States. He became a free agent in March and has yet to sign with an NFL team this season, prompting him to file a collusion grievance against NFL owners.

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