Yes, I know that your employer can limit speech. But we – as consumers – can decide who to support. Given their approach to CTE and domestic violence, the NFL has repeatedly shown that it doesn’t deserve support. It is a profoundly racist organisation – Tebow style prayers were fine, but God forbid black people be concerned about their lives and safety.
So screw 'em. It’s hard to walk away from a life-long love, but if there are any football (NA-style) fans here, take a good look at what you are supporting.
This is one of the ways authoritarianism gets normalised. This is forced patriotism.
I hope that, in the first preseason weekend in August, we see either entire teams not emerging from the locker room until after the anthem, or, more preferably, kneeling in open defiance of the new policy.
So, aside from this, the way teams treat cheerleaders, the rampant domestic abuse issues, the racist team logos and names, the head trauma and other serious injuries, and the way local governments are pressured for tax breaks, the NFL is pretty much okay, right?
Eh. I don’t think so. They’re privately-contracted players working for a private business on private property, as part of a larger, private organization. A business or venue can generally restrict speech however they like without running afoul of the First Amendment, so long as they’re not acting as an agent of the government.
Now, if any part of the NFL, or any of its teams, or any of its stadiums, is publicly-owned, then there might be cause for a First Amendment lawsuit. I have no idea whether that’s the case, though.
For a second I thought you were talking about the penalty flags. That would make football a lot more interesting. Hell, if someone had to sing a song every time there was a penalty, I’d watch the shit out of that.
But yeah, a love song, with an octave plus a fifth range, containing the word “ramparts”. Yeesh.
It’s a grey area: on the one hand, it’s an employer issue, as @nimelennar states. OTOH, there are issues around taxpayer dollars used to fund the venues and the explicitly patriotic requirements, here.
But with today’s SC, I am not hopeful. This is why nuking this admin won’t matter as much as some people think. Some things can’t be undone for decades.
i’m not a football fan, but this is such crap. so, what happens if the media wants to run footage of a player or players who opts to kneel in the locker room during the anthem? are they going to try to limit their access? what about some other sign of solidarity from players on the field who are standing?
The Green Bay Packers. From Wikipedia, although there’s probably better sources:
The Packers have been a publicly owned, non-profit corporation since August 18, 1923. The corporation currently has 360,760 stockholders, who collectively own 5,011,558 shares of stock after the last stock sale of 2011–2012.
Ick. Sorry. That’s my fault, for choosing poor wording.
By “public ownership,” I mean owned by the State, not a corporation that’s publicly traded.
As an example, the Toronto Maple Leafs used to be owned, in a large part, by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which, in turn, is funded by a partnership between the Government of Ontario and the Ontario Teachers’ Federation.
That’s more what I mean by “publicly owned, at least in part”: in order to sue and win under the First Amendment, you have to show that it’s the government infringing upon your right to free speech, so it would only really apply if the team is government-owned.
Or, some new kind of protest. Maybe folding a bandanna into a rectangle to tie over the mouth? Do it early enough before the anthem that it can’t clearly be called “disrespecting the flag”. If the owners get pissy about it, get media coverage for that, then move the bandanna to other locations and see how absurd they want to look.
Bonus points: for the endgame, get a custom bandanna with a graphic of a gagged mouth and wear it normally.
Vox Day’s publishing house is even mentioning a story by an anarcho-syndicalist like Spinrad on its site? Mind, I do see the put down for a lack of “plausibility” to be expected from a progressive. (Exaggeration for effect seems to pass right over their pointy little alt-right heads.)