NFL player protests tagged posts

A row of black men clad in black uniforms is down on one knee, their arms interlocked along the sideline of what is obviously a football field. Their heads are bowed, while behind them stands a row of racially varied men in casual, mostly identical civilian clothes, their arms also hooked together as they stare into the near distance.

It commands a kind of tender patriotism that asks: What is it to love one’s country, and, for that matter, to love anything?

Music from deep mournful cellos begins to play as the scene comes to life, though the figures and subsequent scenery from around the stadium are animated, and in a rich palette of colors.

It is impossible not to notice that no words are ever spoken, either from the figures on screen or any narrator. It is left to the cellos to carry the entire audio load.

But the pacing and texture of the sounds are just different enough from the original song being rep...

With all due respect for how to best register one’s views on the great issues of the day by adopting one or another postural position during the playing of the National Anthem, I fear President Trump’s odious and frightening comments on NFL game rules are being drowned out. That’s a shame, because his views reveal willful disregard not only for the dead-serious problem of brain injuries in NFL players, but also the larger issue of violence as entertainment and opiate for the masses.

For all of the president’s characteristic crudity in using his bully pulpit to call out “sons of bitches” who take a knee or stay in the locker room during the anthem, he exhibited even more hopelessly warped views in the following segment from the same incendiary speech:

“When the NFL ratings are down massively, massively. The NFL ratings are down massively...