It is extremely unfortunate that Super Bowl-bound wide receiver Stefon Diggs felt the need to tear a page from John Carlos and Tommie Smith's disgraceful display of disloyalty to our country at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City by turning his back while our national anthem was being played at the AFC Championship Game, which the Patriots (how's that for irony?) won (even though they didn't cover the 4 1/2-point spread, winning only 10-7).
Don't idiots like Diggs and Colin Kaepernick merely stir up more hatred, which Donald Trump exploited by getting elected President not once, but twice?
And how come, from 1932 until 1952, the Republicans were never sore losers, as the Democrats held the White House, along with huge majorities in both houses of Congress? (Indeed, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, Michigan Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg called for a "loyal opposition," with all Americans standing behind Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt).
As Aesop wrote in one of his fables, when the fox couldn't reach the grapes, he claimed that they were sour.
The bottom line is that nobody likes a sore loser — as was proven when Carson Beck refused to shake Fernando Mendoza's hand after the conclusion of the college football championship game.
Contrast this with when Paul Robeson led dockworkers in Oakland in singing the national anthem in 1942 (a decade later, Robeson was forced to plead the Fifth Amendment as to whether he was not then, or had ever been, a member of the Communist Party).
And people born before the so-called "baby boom" — whose last year was actually 1957, not 1964 (see Why Nothing Works: The Anthropology of Daily Life by Marvin Harris) — deeply resent the counterculture of the 1960s and '70s, and have voted accordingly — which is why Trump was elected President in both 2016 and 2024.
Can you blame these voters for believing that this is still a Christian nation, with all of what that entails?
And not for nothing, but older whites form a vastly inordinate number of both season ticket holders for most teams and NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers — so why shouldn't the NFL kowtow to their interests?
Generationally speaking, it is kind of interesting that the commissioners of both the NFL and Major League Baseball were born just after the so-called baby boom ended (Rob Manfred in 1958, and Roger Goodell in 1959) — which explains, in both cases, that they have about as much idealism as one might find if looking for a kumquat in the local produce aisle at a supermarket.
For both Manfred and Goodell, it is all about how much revenue they can generate for their "clients" (the owners), not what is necessarily good for the integrity of their respective sports (although in Manfred's case at least, a salary cap — hopefully combined with a wage floor — is at least arguably what baseball needs at this point).
In any event, the 2020s are not the 1960s — and anyone who thinks otherwise is doing a lot more harm than good.
Yes, the abolitionists of the 1820s and 1830s did age into the Charles Sumners and Abraham Lincolns of the 1860s — and the Social Gospelers of the 1890s did age into the New Dealers of the 1930s.
But Colin Kaepernick — and Stefon Diggs — aren't going to age into anything.
So they should shut the hell up.
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