Take a knee: how conservative media is reacting to NFL protesters

Donald Trump’s inflammatory comments about Colin Kaepernik’s protests late last week, where he called for any “son of a bitch” who kneeled during the anthem to be “fired”, drew a widespread response among NFL teams on Sunday. Players dropped to their knee during the anthem, and some were booed for their trouble.

Conservative pundits, for the most part, wrote this up as evidence of Trump’s political genius: the arch populist had trolled pro football, and put himself on the side of popular sentiment. Whether they took this as an occasion for concern or for gloating largely depended on their prior opinions of the president.

A far smaller group tried to put this into proportion alongside the other problems that the game, the president, and the country are experiencing. But none, as far as I can tell, took the protests seriously as a response to the brutal reality of white supremacy.

Why Donald Trump is president

Publication National Review

Author Rich Lowry is editor of National Review, and a familiar face in these parts.

Why you should read it Lowry has offered this and another post on National Review in the last couple of days, essentially arguing that the whole affair shows Trump’s mastery of populist politics. He may be right that Trump has used controversy as a way to align himself with “common sense” and pull his base closer, but this type of column depends on ignoring, or explicitly denying, that race is at the center of this “culture war”, and that Trump is appealing to white resentments about protests by black players against police violence.

Extract “It is a classic example of Trump’s, at times, gut-level political savvy. This kind of thing is why he’s president. He takes a commonly held sentiment – most people don’t like the NFL protests – and states it in an inflammatory way guaranteed to get everyone’s attention and generate outrage among his critics. When those critics lash back at him, Trump is put in the position of getting attacked for a fairly commonsensical view.”

Trump: wouldn’t you love to see NFL owners fire protesting players?

Publication Hot Air

Author Ed Morrissey is one of the early conservative blogosphere’s survivors – he started at his original home, the one-man “Captain’s Quarters”, in 2003. Since then he has become a widely published rightwing pundit.

Why you should read it In this piece, written between Trump’s inflammatory comments and the weekend’s protests, Morrissey concedes that Trump’s comments were contextually inappropriate. But he also thinks that Trump is accelerating a dynamic that helps him: if the NFL protests continue through 2020, the resentment they fuel will help with the president’s re-election.

Like Lowry, Morrissey avoids discussing the racial aspects of this resentment, and also the fact that black protest is the customary alibi for white racial reaction. Nevertheless, it’s hard to deny that this dynamic has been, and will be, the fuel of Trumpism.

Extract “This fad may have petered out naturally after a few more months; Trump’s all but guaranteed that we’ll get it through the 2020 election. And that may mean that NFL players will need to keep it going through 2024, given the unpopularity of the protests everywhere else. It’s a win-win, I guess. However, as Michael Ramirez pointed out two days ago, the market provides a much more effective response than government pressure.”

Hey, ‘kneelers’ – let’s get a few things straight

Publication LifeZette

Author Arch-Trumpist Laura Ingraham is the editor and founder of LifeZette. Her brand strategy is to give hardcore nationalism mom appeal by applying a peppy, pop-culture sheen to it. Ingraham divides her time between the website, talk radio, Fox News, and churning out bestselling conservative tomes.

Why you should read it Ingraham argues that footballers taking the knee are misunderstanding the nature of the national anthem and its symbolism. She points our that even when conservatives disagree with the President (Obama) or the laws (abortion), they still sing The Star-Spangled Banner with their hands on their hearts.

Extract “It’s a shame that so many young Americans – and so many NFL owners – don’t understand the basic meaning of a longstanding ritual that has been around for decades. We should probably be having a conversation about how to teach civics in this country. But in the meantime, someone needs to tell these young men that kneeling for the anthem is seen by most of us as an extremely offensive attack on the country. It’s a shame the president is apparently the only person in authority who is willing to do so.”

Football is problematic, but not because of #TakeTheKnee

Publication Foundation for Economic Education

Author Jennifer Maffessanti is an editorial assistant at FEE. Here, she offers a take in keeping with the Foundation’s tendency to stake out a less overtly rightwing, less hard-edged, more culturally modern libertarianism.

Why you should read it Maffessanti makes the obvious point, and asks the obvious question. If you really care about NFL, given everything else that has happened in the sport, why would this be the thing that turns you off the game?

Extract “If you want to be done with the NFL and boycott them, fine. That’s your right. So, the rampant drug use, physical and sexual violence, animal abuse, and widespread brain damage were fine, but the peaceful exercise of free speech is not? Duly noted, guys.”

Kaepernick and Curry pop the sports bubble

Publication American Greatness

Author Chris Buskirk is publisher and editor of American Greatness, which came to prominence as the Journal of American Greatness during the election campaign, and was briefly heralded as the organ of the intellectual vanguard of Trump nationalism. Following the departure of its most prominent writer, Michael Anton, for the White House, American Greatness has increasingly looked like just another rightwing hot-take factory.

Why you should read it Buskirk’s article exemplifies the smirking triumphalism that conservatives have been exhibiting as a growing protest movement in the NFL has coincided with the sport’s apparent decline.

He is more confident than he ought to be that there is a direct relationship between these two facts: surveys suggest that game delays, domestic violence scandals, and the abandonment of cable TV by “cord-cutters” have also played a big role in the game’s ratings slide. But you can expect the right to keep beating this drum. It offers a way to put pressure on the NFL and the protesters, and allows them to think that their own views line up with popular opinion.

Extract “Several new studies prove what we already suspected: fans are leaving the NFL because of the players’ political activism that disrespects our country, its heritage, and its people. Sports executives such as CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus get it, too, but they’re caught in a crossfire that is only partly of their own making.

“If they take a public stand against the anthem protesters, the backlash from the left would be swift and vicious. If they do nothing and allow the protests to run roughshod over the sensibilities of their customers the verdict of fans will be slower but more costly. Wall Street analysts are worried, forecasting losses of $200m from just a 10 percent shortfall in expectations this year.”