The Cleveland Browns — Getting It Right?
After controversial national anthem shenanigans, the team showed class before yesterday’s game.
At the opening of the 2017 NFL season, a group of Cleveland Browns players took a knee (ostensibly to pray) during our National Anthem. Recall, if you will, that former San Francisco star quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who started this absurd celebrity knee protest, is now unemployed – and his likeminded NFL players are blaming his unemployment on “racism,” even though more than 70% of the NFL’s multimillionaire players are not white.
A week after the Browns’ protest, former Browns Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown criticized the Browns team and Kaepernick for disrespecting our country:
> Colin has to make up his mind whether he’s truly an activist or whether he’s a football player. … I’m going to give you the real deal. I’m an American. I don’t desecrate my flag and my national anthem. I’m not gonna do anything against the flag and the national anthem. I’m going to work within those situations. But this is my country, and I’ll work out the problems, but I’ll do it in an intelligent manner.
As a result of Jim Brown’s remarks and protests from NFL fans, at their next game all the Cleveland Browns players stood for the national anthem.
A week later, the Browns organization took another step in the right direction. Ahead of their game against the Pittsburgh Steelers – and the anniversary observance of the 9/11 Islamist attack on our nation Monday, the Browns took the field flanked by U.S. military personnel, police and first responders. This was, arguably, a repudiation of Kaepernick – and by extension, the former St. Louis Rams and their fake “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” charade after the Ferguson race-bait riots of 2014.
As for Kaepernick, who infamously complained, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” don’t feel too bad for him. According to Business Insider, “After leading the San Francisco 49ers to consecutive NFC championship games and one Super Bowl, Colin Kaepernick was rewarded with a ‘record’ seven-year, $126 million contract in 2014. But after three seasons of declining production, including one season of headlines surrounding his protest of the national anthem, [Kaepernick has only] received $39.4 million from the deal.”
Not a bad run for a child born to a destitute white woman, abandoned by his black father, then adopted and raised in privilege by Rick and Teresa Kaepernick, an affluent white couple. His anger is badly misplaced — it is his birth father who was his “oppressor,” not America, where a very generous white couple came to his rescue. (Wait, that sounds a LOT like the bio of an “oppressed” former president.)
As for the NFL, their MSM viewer ratings are the worst on record for an opening season – and the same can be said for ESPN’s ratings.
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