CSotD: Dear Leader takes a knee
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Dear Leader's Friday night off-script tirade drove Steve Artley to his drawing table for this commentary, which shows Trump taking a knee to protest and reject the burden placed upon him.
For those who missed it, Trump, who can see the good side of Nazis who chant anti-Semitic slogans, expressed no such tolerance for anyone who drops to a knee during the national anthem to protest black motorists being randomly shot to death.
He also came out in favor of massive brain damage. After all, they're only the help.
This is not inconsistent of him: He had previously recommended to the police that they rough up subjects as they arrest them, and he probably didn't mean Biff and Chip in their polo shirts and khakis.
However, he may now have shaken the NFL out of its lethargy.
NFL owners are a conservative lot, and nobody has offered Colin Kaepernick a contract, despite him being a potentially solid backup with a decent if not extraordinary record.
Kaepernick's up-and-down stats are well within the usual level for veterans signed as back-ups. Now they're the excuse to avoid him.
However, if owners have feared the blowback of talk radio and redneck fans — most NFL players are black, but most fans are white — they are not necessarily Trump lovers.
He claims "many" are friends of his, but not a majority and hardly a quorum: Of 32 teams in the league, only eight owners contributed to Trump in 2016, and two of those also contributed to Clinton. Four owners gave to Clinton alone, while another donated to Martin O'Malley.
And, if they had remained silent before Friday, Trump's insane, anti-American rant seems to have forced them to start thinking of their players instead of a vocal rightwing fan sector, because they stood up as a league and then, in many cases, as individual owners, to hit back at the idea that players are "sons of bitches" without the same First Amendment rights as other Americans.
Demaurice Smith, executive director of the NFL lead off a longer statement with this:
The peaceful demonstrations by some of our players have generated a wide array of responses. Those opinions are protected speech and freedom that has been paid for by the sacrifice of men and women throughout history. This expression of speech has generated thoughtful discussion in our locker rooms and in board rooms.
However, the line that marks the balance between the rights of every citizen in our great country gets crossed when someone is told to just 'shut up and play.'
And Eric Winston, head of the players' union, had a thoughtful comment with which I am tempted to close:
I am extremely disappointed in the statements made by the President last night. The comments were a slap in the face to the civil rights heroes of the past and present, soldiers who have spilled blood in countless wars to uphold the values of this great nation and American people of all races, ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations who seek civil progress as a means to make this country, and this world, a better place.
The divisiveness we are experiencing in this country has created gridlock in our political system, given voice to the extreme, fringe beliefs and paralyzed our progress as a nation. Divisiveness breeds divisiveness, but NFL players have proven to unify people in our country’s toughest moments and we will continue to do so now.
We will not stop challenging others on how we can all come together to continue to make America the greatest country on earth.
But I'm gonna give the last word to Teresa Kaepernick:
Gullable theologies
Brigham Young University has an unsurprising reputation for hewing to the doctrine of its Mormon leadership and pressing its student body to do likewise. It occasionally chafes, but nobody enrolls there by accident, either.
Now, as Pat Bagley's cartoon of the angel Moroni indicates, the university is allowing caffeinated Coke to be sold on campus.
This isn't quite like Yeshiva serving pork sausages, but it's quite a break with tradition, as the editorial that goes with his cartoon explains.
Sort of.
This is one rare time when I'm going to encourage you to read the comments, because, as a Roman Catholic, I'm pleased to see another religion where the people can have such a lively discussion of what exactly their traditions are, and come away with a complete lack of clear answers.
Which is kind of odd, considering that Roman Catholics and Mormons are the only major religions I know of whose earthly leaders claim a direct pipeline to the Almighty.
You'd think that would get everybody in line, but apparently it only confuses them into thinking there is a line to get into, which nobody's following properly.
Back in the Day, it was observed that Catholics and Jews were over-represented among the hippies, the theory being that they had the most solid social doctrines against which to rebel. I had already heard this when I moved to Colorado and began to encounter Mormon hippies, and, whatever percentage of the street they represented, they surely did kick back hard.
Later, I got to know a lot of more observant Mormons out there and liked them, though their button-down lifestyle was hardly my own.
The other thing I noticed out West was that there were freakin' seagulls everywhere, not just in Utah.
It turns out, I learned, that Mormons don't believe God created seagulls where there weren't any, just that He sent them into the fields when they were needed.
Once again, that weird gap between what the faith requires you to believe and what the most faithful believe struck a very familiar bell.
It leaves me wondering who would win a basketball game between BYU and Notre Dame, if, every time an ND player made the Sign of the Cross before a free throw, just as he shot, a seagull would fly into his face …
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