Pastor Wants High Schoolers Shot At Over Anthem; Trump Wants Them To Find Another Country

Whatever the national anthem means to you, wherever you fall on the question of athletes standing, kneeling, or grabbing some steroids during the boilerplate rendition of America’s theme song, we can at least agree that the anthem doesn’t stand for shooting at high school students. Right? We can build some bipartisan consensus around our shared value that SHOOTING AT CHILDREN is the wrong way to handle teenage disrespect, however expressed.

The debate over Colin Kaepernick’s decision to protest police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem reached its intellectual low point over the weekend. No, I’m not talking about the “NEW” ESPN Sunday NFL Countdown segment on Kaepernick — which may be the worst five minutes of television commentary I’ve seen this year. The low point was not Trent Dilfer explaining how FOOTBAW is more important than anything else. The nadir happened on Friday, in Alabama, from a pastor/high school football announcer. From the Huffington Post:

“If you don’t want to stand for the National Anthem, you can line up over there by the fence and let our military personnel take a few shots AT you since they’re taking shots FOR you,” Pastor Allen Joyner said before a game in McKenzie, Alabama, according to a now-deleted Facebook post that was preserved in a number of places online.

The post noted there was “crazy cheering” after the incendiary comments.

A few thoughts, in no particular order:

* I believe it was the great Baptist leader, Jesus Christ, who once said: “Those who do not swear fealty to Rome should be cast into lion’s den and see if I show up to save their disrespectful asses.”

* Is there a bigger insult to the American military than suggesting it would shoot at unarmed high school students, lined up against a fence? When reached for comment, Gestapo leaders said: “Dude, THAT’S OUR MOVE!”

* The crowd goes wild, at the suggestion of responding to protest with bullets, and yet Hillary Clinton gets in trouble for calling “half” of these people “deplorable”? Half is a low freaking estimate.

* Military personnel are taking shots “for you,” for your right to protest national authority WITHOUT BEING SHOT AT. What part of that don’t you freaking get?

What’s weird to me about this anthem controversy is that if the people who seem most insulted by it had just moved on with their lives, it’d be over by now. The only thing that is giving Kaepernick any power is the police and their pro-authority supporters reacting to it like authoritarian jackboots.

Personally, I never saw the national anthem as standing in conflict with social justice. But when Donald Trump steps up and tells me what supporting the anthem really means, it makes me want to stand on the other side:

“Well, I think it’s a lack of respect for our country,” Trump said. “I think it’s a lack of appreciation for our country, and it’s a very sad thing. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, actually. You know, you are talking about a major sport, maybe the major sport, and when you see that and it leads to a lot of other things. I think it’s a great lack of respect and appreciation for our country and I really said they should try another country, see if they like it better. See how well they’ll be doing. See if they are going to be making $20 million being a second-string quarterback.”

Or kneel on the other side, as it were.

If you really want to make people in this country choose between making a statement against police brutality or taking their hat off for a freaking jingle… you’re not going to find a lot of brothers of all colors who will ride or die with Francis Scott Key.

If you pro-anthem people keep it up, if people like Pastor Allen Joyner and Donald Trump keep acting like this song is some kind of American litmus test, sports leagues are going to end up having to pull the anthem before ordinary games. Drew Magary has already suggested this on Deadspin. What, you think that white people are not going to watch football if the national anthem isn’t playing while they go get the last things they need out of the kitchen? Roger Goodell does not want to have this issue in his face every Sunday. At some point, it’ll be easier to end the song than turn all of his athletes into martyrs by fining them.

And it’s not even basketball season. I promise you, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is watching all this while wearing adult diapers. Football players are generally anonymous and replaceable. There are about 25 of them who “matter,” and most of those are white quarterbacks. The NBA… hahahaha… that is a “black” league supported by “white” advertising dollars where actual cops have already brutalized NBA players. This controversy is an annoyance for the NFL, but it’s an existential threat to the NBA’s business model.

The only winners here are the police. Once again, they’ve succeeded in moving the focus off their indefensible penchant for murdering black people. The fact that the police union has remained unified in its outrage towards Kaepernick, but can’t even say “boo” when one of its own murders a man in the street, tells you all you need to know about where we are with actual reform of police culture.

Alabama Pastor Allen Joyner Says People Who Don’t Stand For The National Anthem Should Be Shot [Huffington Post]

---

Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. This weekend I made my almost-four-year-old stand and listen to the national anthem, because crafting a black male who doesn’t offend white people until he gets paid to do so takes a lot of planning.