McKaepernism

If the NFL's "flag crisis" is the result of the President's using it as a whipping post to fan (pun intended) his base--and I wrote in the wake of Charlottesville that at the time his standing to invoke patriotism was tenuous--then the entire "backbone" of the "protests" are at least equally fruit of the poisonous tree, the result of a player in decline using intersectionality for PR points after prodding from his "woke" then-new terrorsplainer girlfriend.  (Raised by a middle class family and having absolutely no political conscience prior, where the hell else did he get it?)  

Also, for once, I'll give Roger Goodell credit because he was in an impossible position [a lot of it of his own making, of course, because he's trying to be Bud Selig and he never will], but right now, this was the best the NFL could do (again, because they stepped in it by not doing what the NBA has done for decades).  The fact that no one is happy (the President being less unhappy than most, which is unusual enough) should be one indication that, for now, this was the least bad option. 

"It would be better that they did nothing and kept the status quo"?  The furor did die down as the season went on, and the claims of correlation between viewership decline and the perceived intersectionalization of the league were most likely exaggerated; but after the public layout for ostensibly progressive causes, management had not only the right but the duty to retake control of its product and its presentation.  Argue all you want about the league commodifying patriotism by making deals with the DOD; that just makes them smarter than the other leagues that might not have.  (And the DOD approached them.  Maybe there is something to this "American Football" thing.)

Finally, the "solution" here is actually the simplest one--because the players who might want to protest on company time can do it; it just might be more financially risky.  They are legally free to do so--and free to pay the consequences.  (The few conservatives who’ve defended kneeling and said “you can’t force patriotism” are off the mark: this is about enforcing a workplace policy.  It bears no resemblance to Pledge-in-classroom issues; the NFL is not a public good.)   I suspect that a kneeling player will be fined between 10-50K, and his team(s) will be forced to fork over between 100-250K.  Token pocket-change fines would make this policy completely meaningless; however, don't underestimate the ability of the league to permanently blackball and/or damage the career of a player who gives it a PR shiner, even if it does so selectively.   

(While I've practically advocated that Tom Brady should be made the football equivalent of Barry Bonds because of Deflategate, even Bonds' excommunication didn't occur until after his retirement.  Kaep and Eric Reid will be as perpetually radioactive as Ray Rice because their sins were in public view.  Hard to tell if a ball is slightly deflated unless it's being dribbled.  Hence, the notion that the punishments are disproportionate and/or racially motivated don't hold water.)

The NFL also need not overthink the possibility of sustained mass protest as a reflexive response to the new policy.  First: if the kneeling resumes to any major degree and a new ringleader can be identified--a Kaep will be put in the ass of that player's NFL career.   Second (and this is the other reason Goodell's move is the least bad of all the moves): the "protests", should they occur, might happen early in the season but then will die down as the season goes on and either fines accrue; after Mohammed Abdul-Rauf was fined by the NBA in 1995 and started to then show up for the anthem, he stated that he acquiesced in standing by reexamining his position and finding in Islam that he could do so, indicating that punshined participants will find a similar way to rationalize backtracking.  Moreover, if team dissension starts costing games and/or playoff spots, the protesters will further eat themselves.  If that happens, it might even make the NFL more fun to watch both on and off the field. 

In the meantime, as much as the Trump-base types hare ostensibly unwilling to brook dissension, those rallying around the Kaep because epater le Trumpois have demonstrated as much inflexible fealty to the tenets of hard left intersectionality, as evidenced by Linda Sarsour tying the NFL's deKaepitation to "right wing Zionism", and Marshawn Lynch's Viva Mexico helmet dance.  (Or maybe it was a rally Kaep.)

Call it McKaepernism.

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.