This is the most sensitive, snow-flakey response I've ever seen.

You're basically asking that NFL games be your safespace. You don't like the way mean Mr. Football Player exercised his free speech rights and are interpreting a peaceful gesture as a "monumental slap in the face" and an insult.

Toughen up. People are going to disagree with you, even about what the flag stands for. You're not obligated to take what they say to heart, but as an American, you should support their right to say it, even if it hurts your feelings.

Well then you really need to get out more.

I asked this question earlier - why have we militarized sporting events particularly pro football? Here is an interesting article about it:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/8/22/1414641/-Sick-...

There were about 10 protesters last week and this week there were close to a thousand because of Trump's absurdity. Trump is allowed to be absurd because of the ignorance of his base, catfan 28 might be in their top 10 percentile as far as IQ and he is no genius. The latest tweet coming from the White House states that players should dispute the police at games, vesus the flag, so even Trump realizes that his tweets were moronic. He could really walk right out on fifth avenue and shoot someone and still have the majority of his base.

A few days ago and earlier this year, a couple of old family friends of my parents died in the town where I grew up. One was a Korean War vet, the other a WWII vet, one Black one Jewish. They knew a lot about the history of my town and told me about the presence of the Klan and how they tormented the lives of Blacks, Jews and Catholics back in the 1920s up until WWII. The last conversation I had with them was as the Colin Kaepernick situation broke last fall. With what they faced growing up, I asked them what they thought of the protests. In unison, they told me that someone would have to cut their legs off, for them to ever kneel in protest. They became so angry over the Kaepernick protests, I actually had to change the subject because they were visible angry at him and at the time the slowly growing movement. I actually feared I was helping raise their blood pressure.

Last night I also remembered my occasional meetings with Dean Kahler, the former Athens County Commissioner who was the most seriously injured survivor of the Kent State shootings. He never had a problem with the national anthem or the presence of military at our sporting events. I knew he was a pacifist but wondered why at certain Democratic Party events, that I attended as a student, he was always engaged in cheerful banter with some of the union guys who were veterans and was near his age or a little older, and why these same guys avoided other candidates and elected officials like the plague. When I asked them, these union guys unloaded, "&%#!! spoiled brat flag burners," they exclaimed. Really I said, being too young to know how pervasive that sort of activity was, I was given a quick tutorial by these gentleman who watched some of these candidates and elected officials do it with their own eyes. They told me they liked Dean Kahler because he wasn't disrespectful to the flag or soldiers.

Where is the respect gone among those NFL players who make more money that any of us can imagine? Why aren't they helping with perceived injustices and why are they listening to left wing hipsters? Why did people who suffered severe injustice 70, 80, 90, 100 years ago never even fathom showing disrespect to the flag? Why are so many people from so many nations trying to come to our country if it is such an unjust place?

MLK, Rosa Parks, not to mention Fred Douglass, Robert Smalls, John Brown, and our local hero Milton Holland are rolling over in their graves at that comparison. I was actually around during the 1960s Civil Rights Era, and I was 100 percent behind the movement and sympathized with their goals and understood their strategies. This current "movement" has neither a clear strategy nor a well-thought set of goals. It's sort of an ad hoc improvisation more than anything else.

You seem like a good enough guy, so I want to be clear that I'm not trying to claim you didn't support the Civil Rights Movement, but statistically it's really unlikely that you did.

White Americans, by and large, were critical of the methods of the Civil Rights movement. Only 15% of Americans thought, for instance, that lunch counter sit-ins helped the Civil Rights Movement's cause. The vast majority of people oppose protest movements in the moment.

Which is, I think, the point DelBobcat was making. I'm sure he's not saying that the NFL Players are akin to Fredrick Douglass, he's pointing out that Fredrick Douglass, Martin Luther King, etc. were hugely unpopular in their times.

I understand your clarification, and I accept that that's what DelBobcat meant. His remarks were subject to multiple interpretation. I really can't speak for others, but I do know that everyone in my household (I was a sophomore in high school in 1959-60) were strongly supporting the lunch counter sit-ins and most of the other demonstrations to end apartheid in the U.S. South. Much of this was probably due to the influence of my parents (one a Republican and one a Democrat) who strongly imbued us with a sense of the equality of all human beings. One of my early experiences, when living in Annapolis, Maryland, as a very young boy was to see the "White" and "Colored" water fountains in the public square. I also saw two old black men on a public bus, who I later learned had been slaves when they were very young. (Do the math, if you don't believe me.) These men were approaching 100. Their outer ears were missing. I again learned later that this was done as a punishment for being uppity slaves. They were teenagers when war clouds of the Rebellion were on the horizon. These things made a great impression on very impressionable young man.

Exactly the point I was trying to make, thanks BLSoS. I'm not saying the players are making the sort of sacrifice or effecting change in the same way these great civil rights leader did. But I am saying those leaders were also incredibly unpopular. It certainly remains to be seen how history will view these protests.

And OCF I have to agree with BLSoS here. You seem like an incredibly good fellow. But if you supported the Civil Rights movement you were the lonely guy in the room a lot. I'm not saying it's not true, but it's more likely that your memory has changed the details of what really happened in those days. That's not a knock on you, it happens to all of us. The human memory is a funny thing and it is very capable of playing tricks on us all.

And we cannot know how MLK would have felt about these protests but I venture a guess that he would have been 100% supportive and The King Center and King family agree with me.

Many are "more dedicated to order than to justice," offended by kneeling during the Anthem & not by racism & modern-day lynching. #TakeAKnee pic.twitter.com/E23oM1ZW6X— The King Center (@TheKingCenter) September 23, 2017

And another good story. I found this paragraph to be most interesting:

“People that are taking a knee are not saying anything negative about the military, they’re not saying anything negative about the flag, they’re just trying to protest that there are some injustices in America,” Villanueva said.



http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2017/09/25/steelers-alejand...

Ohio Cat Fan, first of all excellent post on your family's early backing of the Civil Rights Movement. It might surprise some to realize that one of the most conservative Republican congressman in the House of Representatives, Congressman Bill McCulloch of western Ohio supported the cause, and he wasn't alone alone. In many cases they were miles ahead of many Democrats in that era.

As for Hilton Head Island, there is some great historical information on the island concerning it's role in American History from the Revolutionary War through the Civil War and it's development as a tourist mecca. The whole South Carolina coast from Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie (where a young Edgar Allen Poe was stationed in the 1820s) near the popular vacation spot (Sullivan's Island and the Isle of Palms) all the way down the coast to Hilton Head.

I remember my dad and me stumbling upon an historical marker near Georgetown where George Washington disembarked and had a "splendid repast" with the citizens of the town before moving to his next spot following the war, but I believe before he became President, but don't quote me on that one. It is a very interesting historical coastline to say the least.

I don't necessarily agree with all the opinions expressed here by Burgess Owens, a former NFL star, but I think they do add a different perspective to the discussion.

I was trying to cite something I' read off the top of my head, but it turns out my numbers were off. The point still stands, though the level of support was slightly higher, while still hugely outweighed by those disagreed. You can see an infographic citing the polling data from 1961 here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/19... .