Trump’s Culture Changing Response to the NFL Anthem Protests

(Note: We hope to address the underlying issue of the anthem protests — police misconduct toward African Americans, in a later post. Here, we’re focusing solely on the reasons the NFL has not required players to stand during the anthem, and the impact and cultural significance of Trump’s intervention.)

Trump’s Culture Changing Response to the NFL Anthem Protests

“Honoring the flag before games is not an endorsement of all that America does and presently is. It’s rather a reminder that, in spite of our deep societal flaws, we remain committed to our democratic and constitutional structure of governance, because it gives the best chance for individual voices to be heard and for existing grievances and injustices to be peacefully redressed. We, the NFL owners, therefore require that all coaches, players, and staff on the sidelines before the start of games to respectfully stand and honor the flag during the national anthem ceremony.”

Had the above statement, drafted by the prodigious legal talent here at Proofs and Spoofs, accompanied the San Francisco 49er’s suspension of Colin Kaepernick at the time of his initial anthem protest, it seems very likely that the anthem protest controversy would have suffered a quick death. That’s been the Proofs and Spoofs position for some time, and President Trump expressed the same view during a cable TV interview.  (Clearly, great minds think alike. Then again, so do mediocre ones!)

Despite much ignorant talk, the protest doesn’t invoke the First Amendment, since the federal constitution is a restraint on government, not private entities. Moreover, the collective bargaining agreement between the players and owners doesn’t include a provision allowing players to use the anthem ceremony as a protest venue.

And, while the NFL doesn’t unequivocally mandate that player’s stand for the flag, they have issued guidelines, which convey the league’s expectation that:

During the National Anthem, players on the field and bench area should stand at attention, face the flag, hold helmets in their left hand, and refrain from talking. The home team should ensure that the American flag is in good condition… “(Kansas City Star, September 25, 2017)

Surely, NFL owners knew there would be a hue and cry from among their fan base for players’ slighting of the flag and the troops that defend it. The anthem protests have unsurprisingly hit the NFL owners in the wallet, and no doubt are irritating at best to the majority of owners.

Why would these owners undermine their own guidelines and financial interests?

It seems very likely that the owners feared something much worse. Suspending Kaepernick easily could have led to Black Lives Matter protests at all NFL games, as well as earn the condemnation of liberal elites who substantially shape public attitudes and frame the national debate. We’re convinced that NFL owners primarily feared being tarred with the “R” word and an accompanying public shaming.

Such a charge would have exerted incredible pressure against the sponsors of NFL games, jeopardizing the vast advertising revenue the league enjoys. This was the realistic nightmare scenario that NFL owners surely feared. And so they punted – a shank that traveled less than 20 yards. (You knew we had to include as least one football metaphor.)

Now the story has taken an unexpected turn because a lone (albeit well-armed) gunslinger stepped out into the thoroughfare and landed a direct hit on the left’s race-based intimidation racket. Yes, none other than quick-draw Donald. Naturally, he was widely mocked and criticized for his typically brusque, unsympathetic, and profane remarks aimed at the flag protesters. It’s un-Presidential when Trump twitters an obscenity, but it’s not un-journalistic for a large majority of the press to ignore and relentlessly violate the line between news and opinion reporting – a line that’s now as clear as chalk lines on a football field after three days of hard rain. (We’re sticking with football metaphor thing until our editor throws the yellow flag.)

Nonetheless, Trump’s intervention is hugely important. Instead of immediately and slavishly bowing to liberal elites any time their allegiance to politically correct shibboleths is tested, institutional and corporate America will have to think twice. Trump’s willingness and ability to communicate directly to Americans has struck a massive blow to the old order, in which the slanted arbiters of respectable thinking get to operate the controls over national discourse.

Yes, media fragmentation and the Trump phenomenon were already encroaching and weakening the left’s hold, but the NFL’s revamping of its approach illustrates that Trump’s populist influence goes way beyond the work of government. We predict that the NFL – while doing all it can to retain the appearance of being pro-free speech, anti-police brutality, and paragons of compassion and reasonableness – will ultimately “convince” players to stand, through whatever means necessary. They will lose this fight with Trump, and deservedly end up depicted as his obedient dog – i.e., enemies of all that is good and true.

For gutless corporate types, hewing to the left’s narrative is no longer entirely safe. Trump’s stand for the flag is nothing less than a cultural watershed, breaking open an ever-growing fissure in the left’s cultural dominance.

For as long as we can remember, the political left, its media allies, along with the cool and beautiful people in Hollywood and the music industry, have exercised gargantuan power in defining acceptable cultural attitudes and norms, while mercilessly whacking transgressors of those norms.  Consider, for example, how the owners would have reacted had the protest involved an issue disfavored by media and institutional elites, such as the pro-life cause, school choice, second amendment rights, or opposition to gay rights. Does anyone doubt for a second that NFL owners and Roger Goodell would have acted instantaneously to crush such protests?

While many are outraged by the Trumpian populist uprising and media circumvention, we at Proofs and Spoofs applaud it. As water-carrier for the left, the media (Fox News excepted) is dead wrong on virtually every and any issue of significance, and particularly venal in its role as legal and political sponsor of nearly 60 million murdered pre-born Americans. Trump has unapologetically jettisoned the “polite” rules of political engagement that has too often served as guarantor that the left’s talking points and agenda goes unchallenged.

To this book of rules, which has been a key to the left’s cultural hegemony, we happily say,” good riddance.”