Multiple Offsetting Fouls: Foul I--Flag Football

Let's start by using the President's specific terminology--you are an SOB if:

• you particularly use the flag and anthem as a platform for protest by singling it out as a symbol of oppression while touting the policies and eulogizing the dead leadership of a regime which is known to be one the most oppressive on the planet;
• your activist girlfriend touts the culture of the land of her childhood which only recently decided they might let women drive (you have to wonder whether she gives Castronick more nightmares than his getting planted by Kiko Alonso);
• and your newest comrade in arms ("comrade" designation is deliberate) is an outspoken supporter of terrorism and terrorists.

If you don't necessarily support all of these talking points but still feel compelled to kneel during the flag display and anthem as a "protest against oppression":

• you may not necessarily be an "SOB", but anyone with any real connection to the flag--particularly those who served in the military--reserve the right to call you that should they so desire;
• you might recover some moral currency if you "protested" the flag but disavowed Castronick and his fellow travellers;
• you also might be more credible if you didn't non-compare/compare Castronick to Rosa Parks, especially when your 0-5 team's play starts to resemble your ability to make historical analogs.

If you are disingenuous enough to believe that you can compartmentalize your "protest" from "disrespecting the flag":

• you also violate your identitarian tenets regarding "cultural appropriation", because you don't get to decide what that symbol means, or when you are violating it;
• you therefore don't get to make that call, because again, only those who have any real connection to the flag through service get to decide that.

If, however, you call out "protesters"/"kneelers" but simultaneously believe that

• Confederate symbolism and service deserve respect and preservation, because they embody timeless virtues;
• that those who want to preserve that particular iconography outside museums and places where they can be viewed outside any context where they can be honored are "fine people"--

--you also might be an SOB.

Furthermore, any attempt to decouple "southern heritage" from the racial supremacism that embodied the raison detre of the Confederate cause, as well as the de jure segregationist regime that persisted in the South until at least 1967, is even more disingenuous than attempts to decouple kneeling from disrespect.

(Two side notes about the Stars and Bars:

a) Those who ask "what about those who rode into battle in World War II and liberated the camps with Confederate flags painted on their tanks and jeeps" should be reminded that there were jeeps and tanks with the Hammer and Sickle that also fought the Nazis and liberated numerous camps.  Let's see if the Confederate flag advocates would accord the same respect for the "timeless martial virtues" represented by the flag of the USSR as they would for that of the CSA.

b) Those worried that "if they come for that flag, they'll come for the Israeli flag"--quit being so idiotically guilt-ridden like the "liberals" you decry.  The color standard that actually embodies an secessionist ethnic supremacism analogous to the Stars and Bars is the Palestinian flag.  There's a reason you see neo-Nazis flying Palestinian flags and a market for  Confederate/Palestinian friendship crosspins.  No one flies a Magen David with the Stars and Bars.)

That said, the NFL owners may have made their own mess, but have been given an unwitting opportunity to clean it up.  Until 2009, when the DOD and National Guard began paying the NFL for patriotic displays, teams stayed in the locker rooms until the anthem finished.  Unfortunately, the NFL's flag policies apparently left too much wiggle room, and one player's attempt to make himself relevant while his on-field skills went into a Steve Blass-like decline while simultaneously TL-ing his new celebrity girlfriend metastasized into a PR crisis when one ostensible billionaire who first sued the NFL and lost and then got rejected from buying into it tried to one-up 32 other billionaires who, like POTUS, don't like being told what to do--ever.  And fans are left with a distraction from something that's supposed to be a distraction in the first place. 

(Side note: anyone focusing on Castronick's TD-INT ratio as proof of his competence as opposed to his recent W-L record should remember that the last quarterback who had a similar stat set was Neil O'Donnell.)

Enter ESPN and the suspension of Jemele Hill.  ESPN was likely reluctant to punish an ostensible rising journalistic talent for making political statements [although they were less reluctant to do so in Curt Schilling's case for reasons I need not identify], but when she explicitly made statements threatening the bottom lines of the company she worked for, they had to act.   This is what the NFL should seize on: as the flag is a symbol of a sponsor, attacking said sponsor affects the product.  Nothing clearer than that.  The NFL might then have to admit that its "patriotism" is as plastic as a football helmet, and it might give more credence to the notion that the flag might not even belong at sporting events when the country isn't at war [definition of which is usually eminently arguable]; however, in the end, neither the flag nor the game will be going anywhere.