update 200530: There’s kneeling. And then there’s kneeling. And I think there’s going to be a lot more kneeling to come. Most of the latter, like the first of it, is going to be pretty benign, though usually involving prayer.
The middle of it casts a pretty dim light on the furor over the former.
Horror and disgust at the killing of George Floyd is understandable and appropriate. Rioting is not. That wasn’t Target®’s knee on Floyd’s neck. That wasn’t AutoZone®’s knee on Floyd’s neck. That wasn’t the knee of the old man running the food truck ya’ll burned down neither. That was a BLUE knee. And if your anger and violence is directed anywhere else you are a fool and a criminal.
3 March 2019
I’m pretty keen on ritual and ceremony, as long as it isn’t too inconvenient. I stand for the Pledge of Allegiance (though I edit the text) and the National Anthem, and I proudly hold my fist over my heart (because the open hand is passive, and I wish to be affirmative.)
If you don’t, I haven’t the slightest problem with that. As long as you’re not making a fuss over my stuff, I won’t make a fuss over yours. Sitting still, or kneeling, or standing, and remaining quiet, is no more “disruptive” than passive resistance is “assault.”
Sometimes it seems like the greatest outrage is that others aren’t outraged enough. When QB Colin started in with his kneeling schtick I thought little of it. As often happens the reaction to the story became the bigger story and we were caught up in tribal fury. Fans in the stands and strangers at the QuikkStopp® and El Donaldo® from his regal rostrum all saw fit to weigh in. I began to care because it was all so fascinating. I get it, we live in the real world with real people, and real people have real delicate little feelings about some of the most ephemeral phenomena. But it didn’t really bother me until Pissed Off Pete and his Foxy Friends presumed to be insulted on my behalf. Some GIs are of sterner stuff than that.
As more and more of the elite privileged began to kneel during the anthem, and the furor mounted, I dared try to calm these waters. Kneeling is, in fact, a stronger act of affirmation than standing. It takes more effort getting down and back up. It takes courage to set yourself against the crowd. And, however righteous or silly the cause, it is even heroic, as these successful millionaires were putting some pretty hefty paychecks on the line.
The Angry Fan was having none of it.
It’s not their ball club, they work for the NFL.
Maybe the owners and the fans might have some say in it.
We come to see a football game, not a protest.
And that’s really the bottom line. My main point is that I don’t care. My other main point is that if the manager says you gotta wear a paper hat to work at McGreasetrap®’s, you put on the paper hat or you check out the other side of the door. If the owner of the Queen City Looters’n’Pillagers® says you stand for the anthem, you stand or you walk.
These issues don’t have to be complicated.
But they are.
Football isn’t always football (and I don’t mean “soccer”), and protests… well, protests are all around us. As I’m protesting my allegiance to the republic, somewhere up in the bleachers a couple of young lovers are protesting their ardor for each other, and on the field a couple of the players are protesting their displeasure at the casualty rate of their inner city brethren. We all protest and none of us need be in any others’ way as we do.
And football? Well, if you’re there for the game, then it really doesn’t make any difference who’s standing — or who’s sitting — or who’s kneeling — because those are all ways of not playing football.
This is where The Angry Fan® loses his shit. He demands to know if “THAT [was] what [I] thought [he] meant!” I then muttered some vague concession that maybe it wasn’t, and that that wasn’t precisely what I intended. I now realize that “football” fans speak of football the way the English speak of high tea. Often, the tea itself is incidental.
And never, but never, fuck with a Briton’s high tea.