Donald Trump baited his hook and, as so often the fish, in this case an already beleaguered National Football League, took it. And the line and the sinker as well.
The NFL is a business, nothing but a business. And, baited by Trump, it has now embraced the commercially unpromising idea of disrespecting Old Glory. To spite Trump, the NFL has hit on the ingenious idea of insulting the values of the fans who buy the tickets and pay the salaries.
From a business model, can it ever get dumber than that?
Yes, it was inappropriate in many ways for a president of the United States to call NFL players who kneel for the anthem SOBs and demand they be fired. He should, after all, have plenty of other things these days to occupy his time.
But that is what Trump does--he picks the right enemies, or at least provokes them into becoming enemies, in this case provoking the NFL into becoming enemies of the American flag while he poses as its stalwart defender.
The NFL, as a business, has customers. Those customers are its fans, who buy the expensive tickets and paraphernalia and drive up the ratings by watching the games on their couches with their buddies and beer and cheese dip.
Rule No. 1 in business is that you never do anything that offends your customers. For the NFL, that would almost certainly include allowing your employees to kneel during the national anthem while wearing the same team jerseys that fans sitting in the stands are wearing.
This isn't, and never was, a First Amendment issue--the First Amendment protects your speech and expression from the government, not from your employer. If you shout "Heil Hitler" with an accompanying Nazi salute at a corporate meeting, you are likely to get fired, and should be.
More precisely, if your speech or expression does anything to hurt the profit "bottom line" of the business for which you work, there is no appeal to the Constitution.
This isn't nearly as complicated as some have made it out to be. The NFL has clear rules against players engaging in "conduct detrimental to the league." Under current commissioner Roger Goodell it has enthusiastically punished players with fines and suspensions for various off-field behaviors that allegedly violate that rule. It has also prevented players from wearing patches and various insignia on their uniforms to acknowledge the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the killings of police officers.
So what, then, could the NFL have done when Colin Kaepernick, in an effort to make himself relevant while holding a clipboard as a backup quarterback, first took his knee?
It could have enforced its rules on player conduct detrimental to the league by immediately suspending or fining him. Or, if not wishing to go that far and run the risk of turning him into a social justice martyr, it could have simply issued a forceful statement expressing disapproval of his behavior.
Employers in other professions don't usually find it all that difficult to communicate to their employees what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable conduct--lest we forget, Kaepernick was wearing the uniform of an NFL team and kneeling in an NFL stadium before an NFL game; he was protesting on his employer's time.
Trump is irrelevant to all of this, except as provocateur par excellence. He will move on to other juicy targets before tomorrow's papers arrive, with the leftist media that has egged on the anthem protests, and which otherwise has nothing but contempt for the NFL, having moved on with him, like the proverbial dog chasing the car.
All of which leaves us to ask some rather obvious questions, first of which is what, exactly, the players kneeling for the anthem are now seeking to accomplish. What are they actually protesting (besides Trump) and what "change" are they demanding so that they (and we) know when they get it and can get up off their knees?
Some see in their action a noble stand against racism, police brutality or whatever. One suspects that the vast majority of a decidedly conservative NFL fan base sees only copycat grandstanding by professional athletes who wouldn't recognize oppression if it hit them in the forehead with a two-by-four and who pick up single-game paychecks worth more than what the majority of the human race earns in a lifetime.
When all is said and done, the NFL has allowed cowardice and fear of violating the strictures of political correctness to back it into a corner. Whatever happens from here on out (and it will likely get worse rather than better), the league will almost certainly take a huge hit from declining viewers and ticket and paraphernalia sales, resulting in tens of millions of dollars of lost revenue.
Maybe the pleasure of sticking it to Trump will have been worth it, but the hunch is that the fans who tune out in coming weeks won't be easily won back. After all, it isn't that hard to find things to do on a Sunday in October that don't involve sitting in front of the TV and being insulted.
The NFL has decided to side with the social justice warrior left. Out of curiosity, how many of them watch football or buy NFL team jerseys?
------------v------------
Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial on 10/02/2017