How many years now has this country spent slogging through the arguments over whether kneeling during the anthem to protest police brutality is disrespectful? This is year four, is it not?
Pick a side, buddy.
I don’t begrudge Brees or anyone else the right to change their mind about anything. It’s a mark of good character to be willing to relinquish a weak opinion in which you’ve invested time and energy. But don’t do it literally overnight, after four years of sticking to your guns, because you were hit with an avalanche of peer pressure.
That’s not thoughtful reconsideration, it’s conformity.
Here he was yesterday:
Highlight: @readdanwrite asks @drewbrees what the star NFL quarterback thinks about "players kneeling again when the NFL season starts."@drewbrees: “I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country.”
Full exchange: pic.twitter.com/MpCkFyOMed
— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) June 3, 2020
A respectable, even noble sentiment. When the anthem plays he thinks of his grandfathers, both veterans, and the sacrifices they and others have made to protect America. He views it as a moment of pride and unity, and thus resents seeing it used as an opportunity to highlight a matter of national shame and disunity.
He got destroyed for that on social media, and not just by randos.
WOW MAN!! 🤦🏾♂️. Is it still surprising at this point. Sure isn’t! You literally still don’t understand why Kap was kneeling on one knee?? Has absolute nothing to do with the disrespect of 🇺🇸 and our soldiers(men and women) who keep our land free. My father-in-law was one of those https://t.co/pvUWPmh4s8
— LeBron James (@KingJames) June 3, 2020
He’s beyond lost. Guarantee you there were black men fighting along side your grandfather but this doesn’t seem to be about that. That uncomfortable conversation you are trying to avoid by injecting military into a conversation about brutality and equality is part of the problem https://t.co/ON81UsOWPw pic.twitter.com/HH3EVTIH8p
— Richard Sherman (@RSherman_25) June 3, 2020
@drewbrees SMH. You represent New Orleans Louisiana. Don’t ever forget that! #Bottomofthemap
— Tyrann Mathieu (@Mathieu_Era) June 3, 2020
Aaron Rodgers replied to Brees by saying, “A few years ago we were criticized for locking arms in solidarity before the game. It has NEVER been about an anthem or a flag. Not then. Not now. Listen with an open heart, let’s educate ourselves, and then turn word and thought into action. #wakeupamerica #itstimeforchange #loveoverfear #solidarity #libertyandjusticeforall #all”. Meanwhile, closer to home:
https://twitter.com/Cantguardmike/status/1268240391561773057
Michael Thomas is a teammate of Brees’s on the Saints. Another teammate, Malcolm Jenkins, laid him out on Instagram. Some profanity here:
Brees has done a lot of charity work for Louisiana and New Orleans, the population of which is majority African-American, only to be told here by Jenkins that he’s been paying lip service to the concept of brotherhood. Per Quin Hillyer, “His philanthropy, especially for communities of color, is legendary. For years, he has denounced ‘racism … [and] inequality for people of color, for minorities, for immigrants.’ He has been outspoken against the killing of Floyd, participated enthusiastically in #BlackoutTuesday, and urged everyone to ‘model to young people what it is to love and respect all.'” Didn’t earn him any benefit of the doubt as to good intentions yesterday.
Today he recanted:
How are we still having misunderstandings about this in the year of our lord 2020? People who support kneeling during the anthem say they’re not communicating disrespect, they’re communicating their indignation at being disrespected by a justice system that doesn’t treat blacks equally. They do it during the anthem, a moment of supposed national unity, to signal that meaningful unity isn’t possible until the disparate treatment ends. If you don’t accept their explanation or think they should find some other way to make their point, fair enough. (They’d respond that people who are hostile to their message will always find fault with how they’re communicating that message, until they do it in a way that’s so ineffectual that it can be safely ignored.) The point is, there’s no way Brees is still working through this in his mind after four years of digesting it. He’s heard the pro-kneeling arguments ad nauseam and dismissed them; only when he got lambasted yesterday did he relent. So why didn’t he relent sooner? Why step on this rake and make his teammates mad at him instead of changing his mind earlier in a less obviously expedient way?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member