Are you ready for some football?

The NFL as an organization is really easy to hate, all of its branches, from the commissioner down to the player's union, seem designed to enhance some form of social injustice. I mean if we aren't mad at Roger Goodell and the owners for tacitly approving the blacklist of Colin Kaepernick, we can be mad at specific players for committing brutal domestic violence crimes and their union for often convincing the league to let them off with slaps on the wrist, if that. The league authorities are of course just as susceptible. And for a multi-billion dollar a year industry like the NFL to be tax exempt as it is a non-profit organization somehow is mind boggling.
This is all without getting into the cultural racist baggage of watching minorities beat each other up for sport.

It's a hard organization to like is what I am saying, and as a football fan myself, Seattle Seahawks specifically, I find myself in a hard position to justify supporting any game at all. But I do anyway, which makes me a hypocrite I know.

All that said, the President of the United States of America is doing his damnedest to make the NFL the good guys. Choosing, for reasons completely beyond my comprehension, to lash out at Colin Kaepernick and others who have been protesting during the national anthem, either by kneeling or making some other show. He spoke at a rally on Friday referring to players like that as "sons of bitches" and has since suggested several times that the owners should be firing any player who does so.

As I write this it is September 25th, sixty years ago today the President of the United States ordered the military to escort black children to school in support of desegregation, Today POTUS uses his bully pulpit to attack the members of a largely black industry when they have the gall to speak out for their rights as humans.

The Toddler himself has a fraught relationship with football, pretty much being responsible for destroying an entire league during the 90s in an effort to bury the NFL in a lawsuit, which failed miserably and this appears to be another defeat in his string of encounters with the organization.

His base has been pretty loyal to him despite his almost methodical series of failures and refusal to do the things he promised to do when elected, now I am speculating of course, but my guess is that there is a pretty large overlap between that crowd, and NFL fans, this means I don't know how it is going to turn out in the court of public opinion. I would like to say woe betide he who threatens the holy institution of football, and the stars who play it, on the other hand his fans are incredibly racist and might be willing to burn down their institution out of spite, just as Governor Faubus did with Little Rock's high schools in 1958.

On the balance, I believe this hurts him more than it helps, obviously. The NFL and the team owners certainly are jumping at the chance to support their players, probably out of a desperate grab for good press, possibly out of legitimate concerns for race relations and freedom of speech, but the fact is that these billionaires, many of whom donated money to The Toddlers campaign, have spoken and acted publicly against him. And I do not believe they would do so if they truly feared backlash from the president or from his fans.

We on the left have a habit of shifting our opinion on people and institutions rather swiftly and for little reason, see how Bush, either of them, are now sort of regarded with a fond reminiscence by many progressives because they didn't whole heartedly back The Toddler during the campaign. Or the whiplash that is John McCain. We shouldn't make the mistake of viewing the NFL as an ally here, as an organization it's only real positive(?) characteristic is that it doesn't act specifically out of hate for any race or ideology, being motivated solely by profit, if it can be convinced that being moral makes it more money, then it will, if not, well then. In general as an institution? Pretty shitty, as a barometer for the rate of social change? I remain optimistic.

I know there will be those who claim that the weekend tweetstorm is only to distract from our incoming war with North Korea, or Puerto Rico being without power, or whatever you pet cause is and I seriously couldn't care less about that, as always it is possible to care about multiple things at once, and before any of you chime in with "I don't watch/like/know what a football is". Shut the fuck up, this is important too and I don't care if you don't know these people. What the NFL is, outside of the owners, is the possibly the largest concentration of wealthy and influential minorities in the country, they command a huge market share and have more followers, in total, than virtually any other group in the world, let alone the country. Sports is important in America, perhaps it shouldn't be, but for the moment it is, and currently our president is going out of his way to antagonize both players and fans of the most popular sport in the country in particular, and professional sports in general as well. The conservatives should fear, deeply fear, uniting that group against them and should be going out of their way to prevent the players from realizing the influence they might hold. The presidents actions, attacking them specifically for a perfectly legal demonstration of their rights, forces them into the political sphere and could be just the thing that galvanizes a new power base opposing him.

Even if you don't like football, this is something worth paying attention to, perhaps it blows over in a week, perhaps not, but it is still important, particularly with the NBA season starting up as well here in a week or two.