Before the singing of the National Anthem, please join Ravens players and coaches and the entire Ravens organization to pray that we as a nation, embrace kindness, unity, equality, and justice for all Americans.All the players shown on camera then took the position that we've seen players use in the protests during the National Anthem. So the position that meant protest was supposed to transform into meaning supplication toward God.
This was coercive prayer, and I don't know what kinds of religious-freedom objections the players and coaches and spectators might feel: Is there something wrong with using prayer this way, to fix a political (and commercial) problem?
The Ravens coach, John Harbaugh — who is a vocal Catholic — made the sign of the cross, and I wondered if there were others whose religion impels them to pray in some special way that was not provided for here and still others who are nonbelievers and troubled by the burden of coerced prayer.
From the fans, I heard loud booing, which I interpret as calling bullshit on the instrumental use of religion to preserve the protest gesture they don't like. Management might have thought the prayer packaging would silence the crowd, lest they sound as though they are objecting to religion. Surely, religion will be respected. They thought wrong. Public displays of religion are often the insincere use of religion as a means to an end and sometimes it works, but it didn't work this time, judging by the boos.
But perhaps that was only a minority booing, the booers will be seen as disrespectful, and the pre-anthem kneeling in prayer will become the ongoing solution to the National Anthem problem. I kind of doubt that, because I associate political liberals with a longstanding objection to prayer before football games. Here, read what Linda Greenhouse wrote in the NYT about Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, the football prayer case. (Yes, this was about teenagers and public school, so there are big differences, but the point is that political liberals tend to have strong compunctions against coerced prayer and little sentimental empathy about football prayer.)
After the prayer at the Ravens game today, there was a particularly patriotic version of the National Anthem, complete with a call to "remove your hats as we honor our nation" and the "military who protect us" and a flyover A-10s — with fireworks — as the anthem — which was "written right here in Baltimore" — was sung in luscious harmony vocal trio from the US Air Force Heritage of America Band. The crowd in the stadium responded to all of that with great enthusiasm.
The players and coaches, of course, rose from the kneeling position before the anthem-related section of the opening ceremony began.
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 208 of 208"Before the singing of the National Anthem, please join Ravens players and coaches and the entire Ravens organization to pray that we as a nation, embrace kindness, unity, equality, and justice for all Americans"
Can't even do that right. As someone above pointed out, these terms have been coopted by the left. Thus, they have tried to switch protesting the National Anthem with praying for progressive orthodoxy. Not really an improvement. Bulk of the fans no doubt saw through this transparent ploy as well as most did here.
By making this racial point, Colin Cancer has made evident that the majority of the NFL are Black Democrats of a rather vibrant anti-white (or at least anti-law enforcement) strain. They are rich black men who have had...issues with the police on a regular basis. So this Colin Cancer thing resonated with them being pulled over and questioned when they feel they should be Earth-bound Gods.
Since their fan base is majority white, status quo, patriotic and pro law enforcement, since many of them are or know LEOs, this is a bigger disconnect than the owners realize. How to unring the bell?
Start hiring a lot more ex-military and white guys perhaps.
"....They are rich black men who have had...issues with the police on a regular basis...."
Adam "Pacman" Jones, who remains gainfully employed by the Cincinnati Bungles, leads the league with ten (10)* arrests. Current salary $6.8 million.
*No report as to whether he was involved in any criminal activity this past weekend.
The "take a knee in prayer" gambit was already tried before this and it didn't work. It was too obvious that it was an excuse to kneel for the anthem. Now we get variations on it where they kneel but not explicitly during the anthem, though the only reason they could possibly be doing this is so they can continue to protest the anthem without technically protesting the anthem. This is turning into the protest equivalent of a thesaurus. Maybe they can do a kneeling pyramid next week, complete with pom-poms.
"Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?"
"I do bite my thumb, sir."
Even street thugs know how to interpret that.
It boggles the mind that the NFL thinks that "unity" with anti-Americanism is a winner. Are they that deep in the bubble?
After the prayer at the Ravens game today, there was a particularly patriotic version of the National Anthem, complete with a call to "remove your hats as we honor our nation" and the "military who protect us" and a flyover A-10s — with fireworks — as the anthem — which was "written right here in Baltimore" — was sung in luscious harmony vocal trio from the US Air Force Heritage of America Band. The crowd in the stadium responded to all of that with great enthusiasm.
I've been to almost all the Ravens home games since they formed. The A-10 flyover and fireworks are staples as is the request to remove hats.
The singers were new only because the last one quit after fans criticized the players, the reference to the anthem being written in Baltimore was new.
I intentionally came in after the anthem because I expected whatever they tried would annoy me and I don't want to be pushed enough to ruin the game. I discussed it with several other fans (these are people I know reasonably well having sat next to most of them for two decades). They were still unhappy about the blatant effort to canonize the players which implicitly criticized those critical of the players.
Texters to the morning sports show called fans opposed to the protesters racist. Thankfully the DJ wouldn't accept that but in my opinion wasn't strong enough in his pushback.
There's a huge gap between "forced" and "coerced." Especially when "coerced" is used to describe social pressure.
Arguably we're all under some level of social pressure whenever we're not actually alone.
In any case, when some players "take a knee" that puts social pressure on other players to do the same. What it especially does is remove neutral space, leaving only "are you with us or against us?" as possible choices. But, that's not "coerced" or "forced"?
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