Nike’s marketing executives have laced up and jumped into the culture wars, embracing NFL pariah Colin Kaepernick in their latest ad campaign. More power to them, we say. But don’t pretend the $120 billion company is making anything but a business decision.
Some so-called conservatives, livid at the show of solidarity with a man who they think is protesting the national anthem—he’s not, and has said so a thousand times—are throwing sneakers on bonfires in protest. (Pro tip: If you’re really that upset, donate them to Goodwill instead.) Mind you, these are the very same people who celebrate corporate political speech and scorn boycotts of companies whose positions happen to align with their beliefs.
Meantime, some on the left who today celebrate Nike have wasted breath over many years claiming corporations don’t have First Amendment rights. Nonsense.
Welcome to the world we live in: Corporations glom onto causes. Often it’s purely to protect their interests; sometimes it’s to associate themselves with a position, with a patina of principle. But—spoiler alert—it’s always really about money.
And just as they speak with theirs, consumers can speak with ours. That’s how the game is played in a nation where everything, yes everything, is now political.