The Colin Kaepernick National Anthem media-storm raises a number of issues that have yet to be addressed in the MSM, and I just wonder whether maybe now isn’t the time to introduce some of them before it’s too late and the story is pushed aside by the flood of October Surprises that will surely dominate the hottest month of the election cycle. And so here are three antinomian issues you may find worthy of studied consideration . . . or raging ridicule. As always here at LogoPhere, your choice.
Issue #1: Police unions are not the victims here; they are the problem – one of America’s scariest problems.
On August 29, 2016 the San Francisco Police Officers [sic] Association was the first cop-union to whine about Kaep’s freedom of speech when Martin Halloran, the union’s president and a self-designated political speech censor, fired off a letter to NFL commissioner Roger Goodel and 49ers CEO Jed York. The letter can be, I believe, accurately summed up as superfluous stupidity hinting of extortion.
Halloran characterized the idea of cops providing security at 49ers’ games as being ironic because – just think about it – you’ve got cops protecting a black guy who is making a public fuss about cops killing black people. That’s what Halloran calls ironic, but it’s not ironic because it’s their freakin’ job to protect everybody in the freakin’ stadium. They don’t get paid to provide security only to those whose political, social, and sexual orientations they agree with.
What is problematic here is not Kaep’s free speech. It is that police unions like Halloran’s don’t represent just hero cops. These unions in cities all across the country represent badge-wearing crooks, cretins, psychopaths, and murderers as well. That’s why cop unions have become one of the most dangerous and pernicious threats to the freedoms and lives of all Americans, but particularly black Americans, whose lives matter, too, and who are targeted disproportionately by said badge-wearing crooks, cretins, psychopaths, and murderers.
For instance, I wonder how ironic Halloran thinks the Mario Keith Woods execution was on December 02, 2015 when what looks to be at least ten of Halloran’s San Francisco cops lined up along a sidewalk in firing-squad formation and executed Woods against a wall. Vid#1 Vid#2 They totally unloaded on him. That hail of gunfire is so heavy you can’t even count the shots. Woods was a small man, but these heavily armed bull cops from Halloran’s union were too frightened to take the little guy down manually. Granted, Woods is reported to have had a knife, but cops are supposed to be trained to disarm or disable such threats without using lethal force, such as a firing squad. But it seems that over the last couple of decades the cop-mantra has become “Shoot often, shoot to kill, and shoot only to kill.” So this vicious gang of cops collectively pee’d their panties and opened up on the hapless Woods.
It appears to me that there are two likely underlying motives for these brutal killings by cops, and they’re not mutually exclusive. Either the cops have become such cowards that they now shoot only to kill or they are killing people unnecessarily in order to collect a paid vacation that goes by the name “administrative leave.” A couple of weeks or a couple of months of administrative leave with pay for killing people is now routine, presumably one of the perks police unions “negotiate” for their members.
If you want to hear a from-the-heart explanation of the problems cops in this country are causing black people, have a listen to this rant on Advise Show that was a response to the Woods execution.
But Halloran’s letter was just the opening salvo of cop-unions whining about Kaep. On September 01, 2016 Bill Johnson, head of the country’s national police union, pitched a bitch to USA TODAY about Kaepernick’s socks. That’s right, his SOCKS – socks he wore during training. Johnson whines about these socks as disrespecting cops. IOW, some cops want to censor not just what people say, but what they wear. If what you wear is interpreted by cops as disrespecting cops, you should be fired – that’s where Johnson is going with this.
Then, the day after Johnson’s anti-cop-sock melt-down, the Santa Clara Police Officers [sic] Association threatened to stop showing up for security details at the 49ers home games if the 49ers don’t put a lid on Kaep’s free speech. Unlike Halloran’s letter, in this one the extortion was not implicit, it was right out there for all to see. That’s right, after all the union rhetoric about how cops are so heroic for showing up at football games to protect the players and fans, the Santa Clara cops are more than willing to make their “heroism” conditional upon the players behaving in a way that the cops approve of. Ironically, the copies of the SCPOA extortion letter I have seen have no signature, suggesting that cop-cowardice in the SF area extends from side-walk executions to public letters trying to squelch free speech about police brutality. I mean . . . we’ve got irony spread all over this Kaep story.
Issue #2: Cruelest irony of all: the slave-owner coward who branded America “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
Just by coincidence, a couple of days after Kaep refused to stand for the National Anthem, David Swanson published an article at FAIR that had nothing to do with the 49ers or Kaep, but raised a very interesting point about the National Anthem. Swanson was writing about a company called Keybridge Communications and at the end of his article he tagged on the following brief bio of Francis Scott Key, who, I’m sure you’ll remember, is the guy who wrote the same song that Kaep refuses to get on his feet for:
Meanwhile, here’s a fun fact: Keybridge is a supposedly savvy PR firm in Washington, DC, that bears the name of a bridge named for Francis Scott Key, who owned people as slaves, supported killings of African-Americans, penned an anti-Muslim poem that later became a celebration of killing people escaped from slavery and of a flag surviving a battle that killed human beings during a war that failed to conquer Canada but succeeded in getting the White House burned. That revised poem became the US national anthem.
It didn’t take long to verify Swanson’s allegations about F.S. Key, who, in addition to being a famed poet, was appointed district attorney for Washington, D.C. by his close friend and fellow slave-owner Andrew Jackson. Of the sources I found online discussing Key’s racism, the work of Jefferson Morely is the most outstanding. I recommend two pieces by him: first, a two-part article in The Globalist and, second, a fascinating story in the Washington Post about the first riot in America’s capital, the “Snow Riot” in 1835. (WaPo’s files have been corrupted and I couldn’t get the entire article to display on my browser, but a complete copy of Morely’s Snow Riot piece can be found here.)
“Well, kiss my asterisk,” says I when I found all of this racism, slave-owner dirt on Key, “This nincompoop who extolled the land of the free was actually a vicious anti-abolitionist.” All these decades I have idolized Key and his rousing song as icons of America’s trademarked freedom. But then I would, wouldn’t I, what with being educated in a virtually all white high school at a time when America’s slave history was taught in about two-sentences, one of which was: “Now, let’s move on.” If black people in this country knew of Key’s rancid, racist history, none of them with any pride or respect for their own history would rise to their feet to show respect for anything Key wrote, much less a national anthem.
So just to get this point straight: Cops like Halloran and Johnson, and white Americans all across the country are excoriating this black athlete who refuses to stand for a song written by an anti-abolitionist district attorney in D.C. who held slaves, traded in slaves, advocated shipping all free blacks to Africa, and prosecuted people for sedition for distributing anti-slavery pamphlets . . . yes, I’m talkin’ about our boy F.S. Key. A venomous, foaming-at-the-mouth racist, Key was among the worst of what was wrong with antebellum America and was one of the least qualified people on Earth to brand America “the land of the free.” (He was also one of the least qualified to brand America “the home of the brave” seein’ hows as a lieutenant in the War of 1812 he led the pack in the infamous “Bladensburg Race” when American troops broke ranks in the face of the British at Bladensburg, MD and were chased nine miles back to Washington where the British commenced to burn down the White House.)
And lest we forget, as a slave-owner Key was a de facto co-sponsor of the Civil War and, therefore, one of those most responsible for 700,000 Americans who lost their lives fighting over the slave issue. And yet today Americans in football, baseball, and basketball stadiums all across America periodically stand like robots, place their right hands over their hearts, and pay homage to their vision of what they think America is by singing this hypocrite’s song. The mind boggles — or at least those minds capable of boggling.
I don’t know what Kaep is going to do or how he’s going to handle the pressure from cops and the media to back down, but I can tell you what I’m going to do: I’ll never stand for the National Anthem again. Ever. I don’t care whose national anthem it is, I don’t sing songs written by repulsive historical figures who advocated owning slaves as a valid component of “American freedom.”
Issue #3: What is Kaep really doing?
As to Issue #3, I just want to throw out some gross speculation about what may be going down here. I have no evidence for this speculation; I only hope it’s true, or at least comes true. I am not trying for a moment to throw shadow on Kaep, for I am 100% in his corner in this fight and I am a #VeteransForKaepernick. Moreover, I don’t doubt for a moment that Kaep’s statements and gestures are sincere. But I do wonder whether an ulterior motive of self-preservation might be pushing him along, maybe unconsciously.
Apparently, Kaep has a contract with the 49ers that says the 49ers will employ him for six years for an average of $19M per year. (The “M” stands for “million,” as in “more money than most of us could ever dream of seeing in twenty life-times.”) And then there is the bonus of over $12M just to sign and other bonuses. So the whole package is worth $116M and he is guaranteed $61M. In return, during those six years Kaep agrees to voluntarily expose himself to potential brain damage in practice and in games for the financial benefit of the owners of the 49ers and for the enjoyment of the fans, the vast majority of whom are white and obviously brain damaged themselves, which is a pretty accurate characterization of American football: brain-damaged white people paying to watch (mostly) black players damage each other’s brains.
Seein’ as how 40% of retired NFL players examined are brain damaged, according to the American Academy of Neurology, if I was as smart as Kaep obviously is, I’d figure out a way to get the 49ers to break my contract before traumatic encephalopathy turned my brain into mush. I mean, you have to wonder whether former NFL QBs like Wayne Clark, Ken Stabler, Joe Namath, Brett Favre, and Bernie Kosar, who have, or had, reported symptoms of scrambled brains, wish they had been more skeptical of the whole violent football paradigm when they were Kaep’s age. Their heirs, maybe not so much.
As an example of how this thing could play out to the advantage of both Kaep and his heirs, if these gormless cop-union leaders are successful in extorting the 49ers into canceling Kaep’s contract, then Kaep pockets his $61M guarantee and walks away with his brain sufficiently intact to spend a long, happy life playing crosswords and soduku instead of quarterback. That, to me, sounds like a very good deal. Let’s hope, for Kaep’s sake, this is what he’s doing or, if not, it’s how this ends.